Reddit mentions of Size Small - 6 Pairs (12 Gloves) Gloves Legend White Coin Jewelry Silver Inspection Cotton Lisle Gloves - Medium Weight

What a demoralizing way to start the day, and what a familiar feeling.

Techniques that I find some success with involve

-- Envision what to do instead:

• I don't always succeed, but here's my ideal thing to do when I find my hands scanning for stuff to pick or find myself all leaned in to the bathroom mirror mid-pick
  
  
• Close my eyes
  
• Lean back from the mirror & drop my hands
  
• Deep slow breath, relax as I exhale b/c a pick is always a bit tense
  
• Pull a smile across my face (I swear it helps, just try forcing the smile)
  
• Make eye contact w/ my smiling face in the mirror and tell myself, "good job, girl"
  
  
• Like I said, I don't always succeed at that, but it feels good every single time I do. Better yet, I have cut down on the amount that I pick with this method.
  
  -- Ways to practically prevent the behavior:
  
  
• wearing a full coverage t-shirt vs a tank top around the house b/c visual access to my chest means I will inspect and pick
  
  
• for your situation, waking up and immediately slathering your hands with hand lotion or vaseline and putting on a pair of little white gloves like these. Any skin treatments you need to do in the bathroom could still be done with the glove on, use your gloved finger tip like a makeup sponge/fancy lotion applicator. The gloves are very inexpensive and can be bought in 12 packs, so you really could put on brand new clean ones every other day if you're not wanting to put a worn glove on your skin (though I'd argue the damage the glove is preventing has a bigger impact than any cream your finger is applying)
  
  -- Substituting another behavior in its place
  
  
• maybe spend a little time pampering your hands w/ the hand cream or vaseline, focus on loving and massaging your cuticles and in between your fingers, make it a moment of self-care that isn't about your face and patrolling for textural abnormalities, but by all means slap the gloves on before those hands start wandering
  
  
• maybe it's shoving on the gloves then jumping out of bed and fleeing the scene as quick as you can, literally run away from the picks, run away from the self-defeat, go in the kitchen and get a cup of tea brewing quick as you can, step outside into the sunlight or right next to a window and take a moment to look up cute animal videos (rabbits eating raspberries or something) b/c you know you wouldn't pick at a cute lil animal and you want to be at least as good to yourself as you would to a pet rabbit. Anything to change the scene, change the vibe. I never, ever feel like walking our dog 1st thing in the morning (he can have a potty break asap but I'd rather wake up a bit before suiting up for a walk) yet it is so rewarding when I do, it wakes me up better than anything else and it puts a positive spin on my mood.
  
  
• I'd put a calendar or journal by my bed with a fancy pen or marker that I like the way it writes, and try to pick up that pen first thing when I wake up, even if it's just to doodle. Perhaps I'd write my goal: "I don't want to pick my skin anymore," or "I don't want to have to put on cover up every day," "I want to feel confident in a tank top," "I want to go in the bathroom and exit without picking." But sometimes the notion of self-improvement is deeply unappealing, so perhaps I'd just write about what I want right in that moment: "I want to get out of bed without feeling defeated, I want to get out of bed without picking."
  
  -- Positive self-talk/coaching where I specifically talk to myself as "You" rather than "I"
  
  
• there is research that endurance athletes who encourage themselves by speaking to themselves as, "You got this, you're doing great" have better performance and outcome than ones who directly speak to themselves as "I can do this." My guess is that maybe it helps to create a little distance between you and the huge effort required, b/c it's a little overwhelming just to feel it smooshing down on you. So I try to coach myself as "you" in moments where I'm struggling - perhaps I notice I'm picking and I hear a faint lil, "stop, shouldn't do that," in my head and I'm geared up to blow right by it and keep picking, sometimes it can really help to encourage myself in the 3rd person like "girl, take the out, grab that life preserver" or take a deep breath and remind myself, "you're allowed to stop"
  
  -- Speaking to my compulsion as such
  
  
• Yes, I know, anxiety and compulsions never did ask to be answered by logic, they are so much more emotional than logic, but it helps me to remind myself that it is my compulsion telling me to squeeze those pores, not anything remotely necessary or anything related to self-care/proper grooming
  
  
• I have to remind myself that if picking those pores was the way to unclog them, well I've picked them so much that they'd never ever clog again, ergo picking them is NOT grooming and is NOT necessary, it is my compulsion feeding me false information "Ew, look at that dark full pore, best get that out of there." It honestly does help me to answer that thought with, "But that's not going to fix it, what am I doing, it's been squeezed a million times and still clogs, squeezing it will only lead to more clogging and more squeezing. I want to stop, not continue, picking my face"
  
  
• I'm rambling, sorry, but the nature of my compulsion is so strong that when I'm doing it in that moment, it's like I've convinced myself I need to, like I'm doing something that needs to be done. So it really helps to remind myself that "Picking is the bad thing, not that clogged pore" and "My skin looks bad b/c of my compulsive picking, not b/c of clogged pores"
  
  -- Visually tracking my successes
  
  
• Put a calendar or sheet of paper by your bedside, along with something you enjoy writing with, a big fat marker perhaps. Mark your success however you want - green dots for picks resisted, checks for the picks you stopped mid-pick, red dots for picks you did, the word 'promise' next to a number if you promise not to pick for that many more minutes (I know I'd start with a "1"), or a number next to the word 'safe' as a way of writing how many minutes you laid there w/o picking - anything that makes a nice visual record of how things went down
  
  -- Trying to feel accountable
  
  
• this sub and writing so much about how I struggle with skin picking has helped. I don't want to be full of hot air. I don't want to talk about how I try to quit and then indulge in a way too long pick session. It has helped to feel vaguely accountable to (the idea of ) people in this sub. When I write to someone on here I promise (the idea of) them that I will resist my next 3 picks. And those picks are usually very easy to resist compared to others where I'm less focused.
  
  OP, I belieeeeve in you. I bet you can kick your next couple picks' butts (heh). And that's what it comes down to for me - just keep quitting