This post was written by Oge, a HabitAware Collective member living in Nigeria. We provided her with a few questions, and she responded. Her responses stopped us in our tracks.
You can follow Oge on her BFRB advocacy instagram, or on her personal instagram!
Take us back to the beginning.
When did you first notice your BFRB? How old were you, and what was life like carrying it, especially as a younger woman? What did you believe it meant about you?
When I first started hair-pulling, I was in senior secondary school; SS2 going into SS3.
It was that puberty age where everyone wants to be beautiful and everyone wants to be complimented for something. I used to get a lot of compliments about my hair, particularly its appearance. My hair wasn't fully 4C, so it looked different from what was common. The interesting thing was that although people complimented my hair, it wasn't very long. With 4C hair, it might not look long until you stretch it, but with my hair, what you saw was what you got.
They started comparing my hair length to other girls, and that began to get to me.
I'd pull out strands just to examine the length. It's so crazy thinking about it now. Every time I pulled one out, I'd notice the little white bulb at the end. I'd play with it and wonder, "Why does it have a white bulb?" It was just curiosity at first.
Then I graduated from secondary school, and I still kept pulling. One day after graduation, I remember pulling out a strand and wondering what that little textured bulb would taste like. I started plucking it with my teeth, and that was really how my BFRB took root.
The point where I realized I was in the soup was when I developed a visible bald spot.
One day, on a visit to my aunt, she looked at me and said, "What's happening to your hair?!"
I remember thinking, “Oh no, it’s bad”
Looking back now, I sometimes wonder whether the reaction people had made it even harder. You know how, when a child falls, if everyone gasps and panics, the child is more likely to cry than if everyone simply says, "You're okay."
Sometimes I wonder whether all the alarm, shame, and stigma around BFRBs made it feel even bigger than it already was.
I don't know if that's science-based, and I haven't done any experiments, but I do wonder whether treating it like something alarming and shameful made it more difficult to recover.
How did it show up beyond the behavior itself?
Not just the habit, but how did it affect how you saw yourself, how you moved through the world, what you believed was possible for you?
The biggest thing it affected was my confidence.
For the longest time, I tied my ability to succeed to my ability to stop pulling.
I'd think,
"If you can't stop your hands from pulling your hair, why do you think you can lead other people?"
"If you can't stop yourself from pulling, why do you think you're disciplined enough to study, pass exams, or succeed in this role?"
BFRB became the lens through which I interpreted all my abilities.
And because I wasn't doing well with the habit, you can already imagine how I judged myself in every other area.
For a long time, I didn't think it affected my relationships, especially romantic relationships.
But sitting here now, it kinda did. I have not dated much, and BFRB at the time were not the major reason a relationship ended or didn’t take off, but somewhere inside, I believed it would be great to stop pulling first. That was the version of myself I wanted to bring into one.
It also affected how I moved through the world.
I realized that for many years I was just showing up but not being present and there’s a difference.
I was there physically.
I was me.
But I wasn't owning the moments or carrying the energy I should have had. Expressing enthusiasm is still an area of development for me.
What did you try before finding the Collective?
Were there moments you thought you had figured it out? What worked, what didn't, and how did that feel?
Thankfully, I have a friend who's really into hair care, so she was always encouraging me to keep taking care of my hair regardless of the pulling. She would recommend routines and remind me that my hair still deserved care.
Also, the focus was always on two things:
How do I stop pulling?
And how do I regrow the hair so people won't know I'm a hair-puller?
I tried covering my hair, I tried taping my fingers, didn’t work. I tried fidget toys. Those didn't really work for me either because I still needed my hands for everyday life.
Although I will say there are many more fidget toy options now than there were back then, so maybe I'd be open to trying different ones.
I also explored hypnotherapy, but I couldn't afford it.
I had people who tried to support me, almost like therapists, but it wasn't consistent because it wasn't a paid professional relationship.
Major breakthroughs happened when I began tracking the behavior, where and when it happened, the situations in which I didn't pull, and then intentionally creating more of those low-pull situations while reducing the high-pull ones.
How did you find the Collective, and what changed when you did?
Walk us through it. What did you expect? What surprised you? What does it actually feel like to be in that space?
I actually found people with BFRBs through social media first.
And honestly, that alone changed a lot.
Just knowing that I wasn't the only person in the world dealing with this was incredibly comforting.
In fact, ever since then, one of my biggest recommendations to anyone going through anything is:
Find your people.
If you have sickle cell, find people with sickle cell.
If you have ADHD, find people with ADHD.
If you're a widow, find other widows.
If you're a mum, find other mums.
If you're an artist, find other artists.
Whatever you're going through, find your community.
There's something so powerful about being surrounded by people who genuinely understand your experience.
They can relate.
They can validate your experience.
They can recommend tools that have actually worked for them.
So community has become one of my biggest recommendations for anyone.
Although I found community before it officially became The Collective
This was different.
Social media meant messaging one person at a time.
The Collective meant sending one message and having an entire army ready to encourage you.
It feels safe.
You just know that everybody there is for you.
The check-ins are amazing.
And sometimes I'll go into the resource hub and think,
"There is so much gold sitting here."
Those recorded resources are incredibly valuable.
One thing that surprised me at first was that there weren't many people of colour.
Thankfully, that's changing now, and it's really encouraging to see.
It has been life-changing, I’m just grateful that it exists and I’m a part of it.
Tell us about that moment turning 30.
You heard something in your head that shifted everything. Tell that story in your own words. And then speak directly to someone who is where you were. What do you want them to know?
Turning 30 was interesting, super grateful, yet nothing prepared me for all the feelings it came with.
After that conversation we had, I realized it wasn't going to be a one-time mindset shift. It’s something I needed to remind myself of constantly.
Gosh, I became so aware of my age, I was counting everything.
Thirty years and two days.
Thirty years and one month.
Thirty years and two months.
I'd never been so conscious of my age before.
And I felt behind.
Not necessarily behind other people, because like Aneela recently reminded us, there is no race.
It was more that I felt behind compared to where I thought I could and should have been.
Career, Finances, Looks, Health, Socially.
Almost every area of life.
Then I remembered something you had shared in the Collective:
"You're not starting from scratch. You're starting from experience."
It’s really empowering, beyond BFRB.
One thing I did from that moment was that, I took every role I'd ever had and every responsibility I'd ever carried and put everything into ChatGPT.
For years I'd looked at my career and thought it was all over the place because my job titles had been so different across various industries from oil and gas, tech, entertainment as Business Development, Finance Associate, HR Assistant.
But when I explained what I had actually done in those roles, ChatGPT showed me the common thread running through all of them.
It helped me see strengths I'd been overlooking.
It even showed me that the way I'd described myself on my CV was selling myself short.
That was incredibly empowering.
So if you're 30, or 40, or 50, 60 or even 70 and you feel like BFRB has robbed you of so much, or you feel behind in any way, I want you to know this:
Your experience has value.
The fact that you're aware of where you are, is already a good place to start because awareness is always the first step.
In Igbo, we have a saying that translates to:
"Whenever you wake up, that is your morning."
You're not late.
You can begin from here.
Everything you've experienced counts for something.
You may have to do the work of figuring out how all those experiences connect, but once you do, run with it.
Thank you Oge, for sharing your story with us. We are so honored to have you as part of our Keen family.
Speaking up about your experience with a BFRB is such a difficult step in the process, because it's confronting so many truths: not that many people know about BFRBs, and a lot of people have misconceptions on what they are. The way to change that is to spread and share our voice.
Co-founder Aneela is sharing her story in her upcoming (releasing Fall 2026) memoir, Aneela, Where Are Your Eyebrows? published by New Harbinger.
Getting Aneela's memoir on shelves will platform the raw truth of living with trichotillomania and help shine a light on these BFRBs that so often go hidden and stigmatized.
If you want to help spread BFRB awareness, pre-order today!
