MY ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN THE FIELD OF BFRBs: DEVELOPING PUBLIC AWARENESS & MOTIVATING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

• In 1990, I single-handedly founded the world’s first organization for BFRBs; the TLC Foundation for BFRBs; in order to create a voice for this uncharted arena of human suffering, and start establishing how these disorders were causing significant public harm, and deserved rigorous scientific investigation. Asking 7 women to serve as my initial board of directors, we were granted nonprofit status in 1991. (see the TLC Foundation for BFRBs)

• One of my first goals was to form a well-respected Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) for the organization.To accomplish this, I sought out and brought together many of the leading clinical, medical, and research-oriented investigators from around the world with an interest in BFRBs. This group went on to develop guidelines for TLC’s funding of scientific research, co-wrote Best Practices for treatment modalities, and empirically proved the significance of the public health impact of BFRBs which validated the need for rigorous scientific exploration of the underlying biology of these problems.

• Over the next twenty-five years, I gave countless interviews, ranging from daily newscast productions to monthly glamour magazines.

• I was often asked to consult with leading scientists, psychiatric & clinical researchers, , pediatric nurses, elementary and High School teachers, along with higher education college professors, in order for them to better understand the emerging field of BFRBs.

• I was asked to be a guest on multiple talk television shows across the country, and was invited to regularly present on BFRBs at various colleges and mental health clinics.

• I have advocated at a national level for BFRBs, through working in alliance with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and other National Organizations (NORD, ADAA, APA, IOCDF, TSA, AAD, AAP). For many years, I exhibited on behalf of BFRBs at all the major psychiatric and therapeutic conferences across the US. Through my work with the NIMH, some of the first serious funding for BFRB Research was implemented.

• During my time at the Helm of the TLC organization, I early on crafted the term “Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors” as it became clear to me that there were a number of troubling behaviors that were not driven by the desire to directly harm oneself, but instead could perhaps be grouped under the definition “pseudogrooming;” in other words body-focused behaviors essentially “borrowed” from the instinctual grooming behavior patterns, and utilized in order to distract or comfort oneself.

• I established the quarterly newsletter In Touch, created an Annual TLC Conference, an Annual TLC Retreat (both attended by participants from around the world), outlined and presented numerous workshops for both clinicians and sufferers across the country, worked collaboratively with SAB members on the development of a Professional Training Institute offering CEUs to therapeutic professionals, developed an educational program for cosmetologists, inspired and supported the TLC SAB to collaboratively write and publish useful Consensus Treatment Guidelines for BFRBs, and much more, all as part of the overarching outreach program I developed to serve the BFRB community. I also facilitated a free weekly recovery support group at the TLC office for 21 years.

• To support scientific research of BFRBs, early on I had established TLC’s Research Fund, subsequently raising money for various seed-research projects. It provided funding for a number of young up-and-coming researchers, as well as funding the TLC Scientific Advisory Board’s Annual meetings and joint colladorations.

• In 2003, I wrote the Foreward to the book The Hair Pulling Problem by Fred Penzel, Ph.D.

• In 2004 I convinced Thomas Insel, MD, the Director at that time of the National Institute of Mental Health, to coordinate with my organization and host and fund an international gathering of experts to investigate BFRBs. As a result of that meeting, TLC’s Scientific Advisory Board undertook the challenge of proving the significance of BFRB’s impact on public health, producing amazing seminal research published in 2006 in leading academic scientific journals, on the insideous power of these disorders and why BFRBs deserve rigorous scientific research. That alone was remarkable.

• In 2007, I collaborated with Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Mario Capecchi, who was researching compulsive behavioral disorders, by arranging for his team to collect bone marrow samples from trichotillomania sufferers (hair pullers) attending the TLC confeence. His research group at the University of Utah went on to discover through preliminary research that a bone marrow transplant reversed a behavioral grooming disorder in mice similar to trichtillomania in humans. This work established a possible link between mutant immune cells and psychiatric disorders.

• In 2009, as a result of my personal BFRB recovery I attended and became a Graduate of the MBSR Teacher’s Practicum, developed and endorsed by the Center for Mindfulness, at the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. My goal was to utilize the language of mindfulness after adapting it to BFRB recovery. These afre the classes I teach today.

• I was participatory in the DSM-5 committees’ updating and revising of the DSM-4 manual, renaming certain disorders and creating new classifications, along with updating the criteria for trichtillomania (hair pulling). This work resulted in TLC helping to get skin picking disorder entered into the newly updated and revised DSM-5 manual, issued worldwide in 2013.

• In 2012, my last organizational act was responsible for the NIMH’s comprehensive neuropsychiatric genomics program agreeing to accept, and store, at the National Center for Genetic Studies, BFRB genetic samples that TLC had collected in order to increase world-wide availability for scientific researchers.

• Over the past 3 decades, I have worked closely with several thousand individuals and families seeking to develop greater self awareness, learn effective living skills, improve interpersonal communication, and establish healthier interpersonal boundaries, all in the service of reducing unwanted BFRBs.

• Developing these skills effectively enhances our relationship with self, and our relationships with others. The sad truth is these skills tend to be at deficit levels in our current culture, yet all healthy relationships inherently depend upon them!

• The main focus of my work today is in helping raise my student’s self-awareness through mindfulness training, and teaching practical BFRB living skills that enable a more fulfilling navigation of life on a daily basis.

• Perhaps, what is actually most relevant, is that I now have over 30 years of strong BFRB recovery, and the daily tools to stay on track.

• (There is so much more, but maybe it will come out if I ever write a book!)

All my Love, Christina