As I shared last week, I’ll be a featured speaker at Baldie Con at the end of this month! This is an amazing yearly event that’s intended to provide support and empowerment for the bald community. I was so honored to be invited to speak there. If you’d like to come, it’s September 27 to 29 in Atlanta. Check out the Baldie Con website to learn more.
This month, I’m sharing in detail about my journey with alopecia here on my blog, in preparation for speaking at the event. Last week, I talked about my diagnosis at the age of 8, and what my childhood was like living with alopecia areata. Now, I’ll pick up the story in my teens.
Social awareness as a teen who looks different
As a person enters their teen years, they naturally start to become more socially aware. This is the age when people start to consider what other people might think about them. There’s a leap in brain development that makes it possible to consider the thoughts in other people’s heads, and after that happens, pretty much every teen is super self-conscious for a while.
As I went through that shift as a teen, I started to grow more and more self-conscious – and self-critical. I would constantly look at other people’s hair, and compare mine to theirs. They say comparison is the thief of joy, and it certainly was for me.
I had basically no control over what my hair looked like. I sometimes describe alopecia as an emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes my hair would start to grow back in, and I’d feel hopeful that I would go into remission and get to be “normal” again. But then a new bald spot (or a few) would pop up, and I’d be thrown right back into despair. Up and down, over and over.
I was growing up in a culture where most women put a lot of effort into having beautiful hair. It was considered to be an essential part of womanhood. But as I was on the verge becoming a woman, my hair didn’t look at all like other women’s hair. And there was really nothing that I could do to change that.
I looked different. And in my teenage mind, different was bad. Different meant getting judged and rejected.
Learning to “perform”
I was absolutely sure that if people saw my hair loss, they’d never want to hang out with me again. I’d lose all my friends, no boys would want to date me, and I’d be a total outcast. It all sounds pretty silly now, but at the time, I really believed that’s what would happen.
So I learned to hide it.
Hiding became a huge part of me. I considered the truth of who I was to be unacceptable. I focused a ton of my energy on pretending to be different. In other words, I learned how to “perform.” There was my true self, which I considered to be shameful, and my public self, which was carefully constructed to be what I thought I should be.
During my teen years, I started wearing a weave. This covered up any bald spots, though it still showed my natural hair in the areas where it was thick enough. It allowed me to “pass” as someone who didn’t have hair loss. Even my close friends didn’t know.
Although my weave made me look “normal,” it was also a huge source of anxiety. I was constantly worried that someone would see me without it. Things that should be standard teenage pleasures, like going to the pool in the summer, became a huge deal to me. What if my weave came undone in the pool? I could never really just relax around other people, because I had to keep performing.
Lacking self-love in my teen years
I want to make sure to emphasize that none of this was caused by my family and friends. They never made me feel unloved. They always took care of me and stood by me.
But I was struggling to love and accept myself. I desperately wanted to fit in, to be like everyone else. Sometimes I felt a lot of anger that I had alopecia areata – why was this something I had to deal with, when everyone else’s hair just grew without them even thinking about it? And sometimes I felt really terrible about myself. I felt like a broken person, one who would never have what it took to be a real woman.
I think my lack of self-love and my intense focus on “performing” in those years really set me up for the depression that would set in later. Bottling up my emotions caused me to develop poor coping skills. Instead of being honest about who I was and learning how to navigate that, I was just pretending that everything was fine, while turning all of my difficult emotional energy inward. I kept beating myself up more and more, and there was no one to help me shift that pattern of thinking, because I didn’t share it with anyone.
Exploring how “performing” may have impacted you
I’ll stop here for this week, and I’ll continue the story next week. Now I’d like to invite you to consider how similar patterns might have played themselves out in your own life. Although I’m targeting this to women who have alopecia like I do, this type of pattern could occur for someone with any chronic skin condition.
We’re going to continue to use journaling each week as I tell my story. Just like last week, grab your journal and a pen. Write freely on these topics, doing your best not to edit or judge what you write. Simply write whatever comes. I find this very helpful to sort through my thoughts and feelings and get clarity, and many of my clients have found it helpful too.
Have you ever tried to hide your diagnosis?
In what ways have you learned to “perform,” or put on a “mask,” in order to hide your hair loss (or skin condition)?
Did you feel shame around your condition? Did you feel that it meant that you were a “broken” or “bad” person?
Was there anyone you felt you could share these thoughts with, or did you hide this too?
How do you think these patterns of hiding and performing are still impacting you today?
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