S T A T E M E N T

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Wednesday, April 19, 2023 — 7

The Journal of Psychiatric 
Research asserts that 2.82% of 
18 to 29 year olds have a skin 
picking disorder, which makes 

skin picking most prevalent 
among college-age students. By 
my count, as someone with a 
skin picking disorder, I’m about 
one in 35. That’s maybe someone 
in your first-year writing class. 
Or your two hour computer 
science lab. Or someone in line 

with you at Ricks. Or at least, 
someone 20 feet from you on 
your Commuter North ride.
Skin picking disorders aren’t 
uncommon, they’re usually just 
hidden. For example, Lindsay 
Gellman, reporting for the New 
York Times, followed Deborah 

Hoffman, a Texas woman who 
picks at her back, an affliction 
she was able to hide from her 
husband for 21 years. In fact, 
one of the most common places 
to pick at skin is behind the 
ear: another perfect place for 
concealment. 
Unfortunately, 
my scabs and scars and wounds 
and welts aren’t in a concealable 
place on my body because I pick 
at my fingertips.
Skin picking disorders are 
part of a collection of body-
focused repetitive behaviors. 
BFRBs 
are, 
most 
generally: 
repetitive 
self-grooming 
behaviors that can and often 
do lead to physical damage and 
social impairment. Just some 
examples of BFRBs include hair 
pulling, cheek or nail biting, and 
skin picking. 
The Journal of the American 
Academy 
of 
Dermatology 
investigated 
BFRBs’ 
relationship with the COVID-
19 pandemic and concluded 
that 67.2% of people with a 
BFRB experienced increased 
symptoms over the course of 
the pandemic. What I wish the 
Academy of Dermatology had 
investigated instead was the 
number of people whose BFRBs’ 
origins lie amidst the pandemic. 
Based on anecdotal evidence 
found in Reddit threads and 
FaceBook support groups, I 
think 
the 
pandemic 
jump-
started a significant amount of 
BFRBs — including mine.
There are two avenues from 
which skin picking disorders can 
originate: obsessive compulsive 
disorder and boredom. For me, 
it began with boredom. My go-to 
coping response in the face of 
boredom has become picking 
and peeling at my fingers and 
quite unnervingly, I usually 
don’t notice until my fingers 
are raw and bloody. During the 
pandemic, I had the privilege of 
being extremely bored. I was not 
an essential worker surrounded 
by the virus, nor was I on the 
frontlines combatting the virus 
in emergency rooms; instead, I 
was sitting at home, developing 
a (so-far) unconquerable skin 
picking disorder.
In public, I keep my hands in 
my pockets or folded slyly under 
my armpits. I don’t want people 
to see my fingers, which they 
would if my hands were out in 
the open. They are perpetually 
scabbed, red or bleeding — so 
much so that people notice in 
passing. I carry around silicone 
thimbles, hoping to scratch 
them instead of tearing up my 
skin. I struggle to hold pencils 
because sometimes the stylus 
must rest on an open wound. 
I can’t do the dishes without 
gloves because the soapy hot 

water stings. And man oh man 
do my fingers hurt. All the time.
***
King Midas’ story is tragic, 
and niche-ly similar to mine. 
The myth of King Midas begins 
in Ancient Greece, where he 
ruled over Phrygia (modern-day 
Turkey). He was a kind, gentle 
leader with only two flaws: 
He was foolish — the coded 
mythological word for dumb — 
and, he loved gold … to a fault. 
One day, King Midas, true to his 
character, invited an injured, 
starved satyr into his castle 
for refuge. Lucky (or, soon to 
be unlucky) for him, this satyr 
was a mentor to Dionysus, the 
Greek god of wine and pleasure. 
Dionysus, in turn, granted King 
Midas a wish. Foolishly, as 
was his nature, he wished that 
everything he touched would 
turn to gold.
Maybe it was greed, maybe 
it was fated or maybe King 
Midas was just plain witless 
— because this wish, he would 
soon find out, was a curse. At a 
feast celebrating himself, Midas 
would discover that the food 
he touched turned to gold. He 
couldn’t eat. He grew scared, 
eventually falling to his knees 
and begging for a hug from his 
daughter. She too turned to gold.
The most poignant aspect of 
this myth is that King Midas had 
no escape. He could never heal. 
His affliction was so immediate 
and so severe that he had no 
choice but to watch the world he 
loved turn to gold. In this way, I 
am a derivation of King Midas. 
Everything is at my fingertips, 
but my fingertips are damaged. 
In an almost repulsive way, in a 
way that prompts unwarranted 
comments from my professors, 
in a way that people belittle me 
for, and mostly in a way that 
scares people. The world in my 
grasp, until it sees my fingertips.
***
My fingers have gotten me 
into real trouble before. The 
first thing I remember from 
when I got into my car crash 
were 
my 
tears; 
fear-driven 
tears, searing tears, the kind 
that make the whole world stop 
and order you to feel each one 
as they come. When I tried to 
dial 911, my fingers, I remember, 
were healed. But with every 
battle won, there seems to be 
another to conquer. This time 
instead of bleeding, sore fingers, 
it became fingers marred with 
scar tissue. I had gone through 
the cycle of picking and then 
healing too many times to count 
on my perpetually blood-stained 
fingers. When you pick at scabs 
or at scarred skin, it grows back 
— stronger: Scar tissue becomes 
an 
inevitable 
condition 
of 

healing — a poetic evolutionary 
trait — but also a troubling one. 
For example, scar tissue often 
causes problems with repeated 
heart 
surgeries, 
c-section 
recovery and, apparently, skin-
picking disorders.
The reason I said I was trying 
to call 911 — not that I did call 
911 — is because my thumbs 
wouldn’t register on my phone’s 
screen because of the scarring. 
Me and my face soaked with 
prickling, searing tears were 
helpless. Scar tissue was my 
body’s final attempt to stop me 
from hurting myself. A fresh, 
thick layer of skin which fails to 
conduct electricity enough for 
me to hit the nine. Or the one. 
Or the one.
***
I think a reader’s natural 
response by now is something 
along the lines of if it’s gotten 
you into danger before, and 
it hurts and it renders living 
in the world so difficult, then 
why don’t you stop? I think 
the answer lies within my 
very human relationship with 
pleasure and pain. 
Neuroanatomy would point 
out 
the 
obvious: 
Pain 
and 
pleasure originate from the 
same place: the amygdala. Just 
as you can’t scratch your scalp 
without incidentally messing 
up your hair, you can’t activate 
pain neurons without lighting 
up the pleasure neurons, too. 
The neural circuitry of the 
way humans perceive pain and 
pleasure can, in some cases like 
mine, confuse the recognition of 
the two, so I don’t even realize it 
hurts until the blood is flowing.
***
There are 19 steep steps, 
worn from use, leading into my 
apartment. The path is narrow, 
and I often feel compelled to 
push against the time-yellowed 
walls, hoping to somehow spare 
myself the imminent suffocation 
the stairway threatens.
Being awoken by a fear-driven 
scream is a remarkable sort of 
haunting. The change in mental 
state is severe: a benign lack of 
thought to a malignant brace for 
attack. But this scream, emitted 
from one of my roommates, was 
fueled by the sight of blood. I 
had Rorschach-ed the path’s 
wall with blood — King Midas 
style.
After I managed to brush the 
event under the rug, and sent all 
of my roommates back to bed, 
I sat on stair number 16 and let 
my tears burn my face. One day, 
I will win — I will end this skin 
picking disaster. Until then, I 
think I just need some grace 
— someone to assure me that 
everything I touch won’t wear 
my Midas red.

Design by Grace Filbin

The gory, less greedy, Midas touch

SAMMY FONTE
Statement Columnist

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