Co-written with licensed therapist and BFRB expert, Karen Pickett, EMBRACING DERMATILLOMANIA: Through Pain & Recovery shares Angela Hartlin’s unique recovery from excoriation disorder (aka dermatillomania) after appearing together on the daytime talk show, The Doctors. Angela documents her experiences while receiving 12 weeks of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) to address her compulsive skin picking.
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The sequel to the ground-breaking memoir FOREVER MARKED: A Dermatillomania Diary, this comprehensive recovery guide provides skin pickers with an exclusive look into Angela’s therapy sessions, which leads to her radical healing from this highly stigmatized mental health condition.
While primarily focused on reversing her skin picking, EMBRACING DERMATILLOMANIA offers insight into other areas of Angela’s life such as chronic pain, disability, and grief, along with other challenges that affect her recovery.
About
Angela documents the struggles she faces each week while providing insight from the challenges that Karen assigns. Journal entries from Angela’s therapy sessions provides feedback about articles, opinions on the material, and other questions she has asked herself to confront her compulsive skin picking behavior.
Features
This exclusive patient/practitioner collaboration delves into “fight or flight” mode, habit chains, challenging “permission-giving statements”, riding the wave of an urge, values, and much more, including:
Therapies: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), Habit Reversal Therapy (HRT)
Tools: Logging, Mindfulness Exercises, Blockers & Barriers, Fidget Toys
Concepts: Emotional Regulation, Cognitive Distortions, Defusion, Evolutionary Biology, Energy Psychology
Hartlin divulges her challenges in maintaining abstinence from the behavior a decade after therapy, insight about what she learned throughout the process, and shares what was most effective for her in this transformative, yet harrowing, journey to healing.
Note: Click here to read Russell Harris’ article, Embracing Your Demons: An Overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mentioned on page 52.
In The Media
EMBRACING DERMATILLOMANIA: Through Pain & Recovery is teased in the 2022 German publication of skin picking recovery stories, Frieden mit meiner Haut, by Ingrid Bäumer and Christina Gallinat. It has also been mentioned in several podcast appearances and discussed in a The Daily Mail interview in 2023.
- The Dermatillo-Diaries, 2021
- Sickboy, 2022
- Resilient Minds 365, 2022
- The Revolutionized Mind, 2023
- Trich Talks Podcast, 2025 (featuring Karen Pickett)
