Launched into a hunt for imperfections, Camille destroyed her skin obsessively. Until the day when she understood that her anxiety and her desire for hypercontrol were the real culprits.
It all started in adolescence, the age when Camille felt “bad about herself”, in the strict sense. Then begins an obsessive ritual. “From the age of 11, as soon as I came home from school, armed with a magnifying mirror, I hunted down pimples, blackheads and scabs, for hours in the bathroom. Before being ashamed of the carnage, to the point that I I was fleeing outings with girlfriends”, confides the young woman, who also triturated her skin blindly, to try to smooth out the slightest relief. Neither her parents, nor her girlfriends, nor her little sister, to whom she is very close, imagine that it was her mania that damaged her face so much.
Camille has nothing of a problem teenager, but it is a very anxious person who puts herself under pressure. “I wanted to be perfect. At the time, social networks did not exist: my luck. I applied myself to everything: to be good at school, cheerful, kind, smiling. The perfect skin was part of the panoply”, she analyzes. After ten years of treatment with a guilt-inducing dermatologist, and of despair, it was the Internet that gave her the name of her illness: dermatillomania, or the mania of crushing the skin, a TOC which can also “concern the body”, she specifies.
“I was riddled with fears: fear of failure, abandonment, judgments…”
But the Internet does not give it any solution. Camille will make her way on her own, realizing that something deeper is wrong. “I was a student in business school, in a relationship with a boy who loved me even without my layers of foundation. Everything should have been fine. So how to explain this OCD, the fact that I also bite my nails and have bouts of vomiting bulimia? It was not the gaze of others that pushed her to heal, since no one had ever made fun of her, but her own.
“I had a feeling of impostor to pass for a girl super well in her body and her life, while I was destroying myself in secret.” She consults a psychiatrist enlightened which makes him realize that all these tics and OCDs are intended to focus your attention to channel your emotions. “I was riddled with fears: fear of failure, abandonment, judgments…”, concedes Camille. She continues with cognitive and behavioral therapy, personal development books, food rebalancing, relaxation, meditation, a little hypnosis, and manages to overcome her ailments, all related to anxiety.
Getting through it by loving yourself a little more and forgiving yourself more
“Compulsion is a symptom of anxiety, like chasing hair until it bleeds, smoking cigarette after cigarette, or swallowing cake after cake.” In 2019, she created her Instagram account (@peau.ssible), to show that it is possible to get by by loving yourself a little more and forgiving yourself more. The flood of distress messages prompted her to self-publish a book, available on www.peaussible.fr, My story with dermatillomania, where she shares her healing journey.
Freelance in communication, Camille, 31 years old from Orleans, has also been able to listen to her true ambition. “From now on, I want to help others feel good about themselves through individual support. I have other writing projects, my two deep aspirations!” Far from the war on buttons!