The Bible and the Problem of Hair Pulling on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Heath Lambert and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors,

where we seek to provide biblical solutions

for the problems that people face.

Our guest this week on the podcast is Dr. Keith Palmer, a fellow with the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors and a pastor in Granbury, Texas. And we're here to talk with him this

week about the problem of hair pulling. And Keith,

I think there is a lot of people who would be listening to this and would be surprised to know that

when we talk about the problem of hair pulling, we're talking about an actual problem. We don't

hear about this every day. Explain it to us. Well, thanks for allowing me to be here,

first of all. Yeah, I was surprised, too, the first time this issue came my way. And as I did research

and got to know a little more about it, it was surprising to know that anywhere from two to five

percent of the whole population struggle with this issue.

And all experts agree that that's low because it's so underreported.

So hair pulling or it's sometimes called tricotillomania or trick or TTCM.

It's a behavior characterized by sessions where people pull their hair out.

The onset is anywhere between 11 and 13 years. And by adulthood, this is very interesting, 80 to 90 percent of all people that struggle are women. Some basic characteristics of

the behavior, there's usually a strong urge or tension that builds up and then that tension is relieved or resolved through the

pulling of hair from various parts of the body. And there's two main kinds. This is one of the

interesting features of it. There's a fully focused version where the person is very ritualistic.

They plan it out. They go through a very prescribed program.

And then there's another version where the person is only semi-focused on it.

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