Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors Treatment in Rochester, NY

Have Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors Negatively Impacted Your Life?

Do you experience intense, uncontrollable urges to pick at your skin, pull out your hair, or bite your nails? Are these urges:

Leading to visible damage or discomfort?
Causing you to avoid social gatherings, work, or school?
Making you feel guilty or ashamed of yourself?

Over time, your Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRBs) can leave scars or bald spots and cause infections and physical pain. Yet no matter how hard you try to stop picking, biting, or engaging in other repetitive behaviors, your urges are just too powerful and overwhelming to resist. As a result, you find yourself caught in a cycle of shame, distress, and anxiety, making you wonder if it’s time to seek therapy for BFRB.

Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors Often Go Hand In Hand With Loneliness

Because of how embarrassed you are about your behaviors, you may frequently cancel social plans and call out of work. After a while, however, this can lead to profound feelings of isolation—the more you try to hide your struggles, the lonelier you become and the lower your mood gets.

Yet in the past, whenever you’ve tried to open up about your BFRBs to friends and family, they probably don’t understand. They tell you to “just stop” or act like you’re crazy.

As a therapist who is trained to work with people who have BFRBs, I’m here to tell you that you are not crazy, and that I understand how hard it is to manage your urges. My mission is to give you a space where you can talk about your challenges openly, honestly, and without fear of judgment. Together, we’ll craft an individualized plan for managing and reducing your urges, responding to them in healthier ways, and improving your quality of life.

Have any questions about treatment for BFRBs? Send me a message!

If You’re Struggling with BFRBs, You’re Not Alone

According to the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF), roughly 15 to 25 percent of the US population suffers from some form of body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). That means that one out of every four to seven people you meet is likely to struggle with a BFRB.

For many people, behaviors such as nail biting or skin picking are occasional urges that arise during stressful or triggering situations. But for others, their urges become overwhelming and begin to interfere with their emotional, social, and physical wellbeing.

This is the case with many of my clients. For them, their BFRBs are so consuming that their work, school, relationships, and overall sense of wellbeing start to suffer.

BFRBs Often Arise In The Wake Of Stressful Life Experiences

It’s common to feel chronically overwhelmed by the constant demands of work, family responsibilities, daily life, and unexpected crises. For many people, BFRBs can be linked with:

Ongoing academic/work pressures
Perfectionistic expectations
Periods of boredom or under-stimulation
Stressful events (e.g., a divorce, a loved one’s medical diagnosis)
Anxiety or OCD

Sadly, many people with BFRBs believe their behavior is a willpower problem rather than a learned response to triggers like stress, anxiety, or boredom. Without understanding what’s driving the behavior, they focus only on stopping the behavior itself.

Well-meaning loved ones may say “just stop,” which increases shame but doesn’t address underlying triggers. Without effective, evidence-based tools, unhealthy behaviors often continue, which is why therapy is not just helpful, but essential for people with BFRBs.

Treatment Can Help You Effectively Manage Your Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors

You don’t have to hide your behaviors, struggle alone, or feel defined by them. With the right support and therapy tools, you can reduce hair pulling (trichotillomania), skin picking (dermatillomania), or nail biting (onychophagia), and take back control of your life. The goal isn’t to eliminate your urges completely, but to help you understand your triggers and develop healthier ways of managing urges and behaviors, so that BFRBs no longer limit your confidence, self-esteem, relationships, or daily life.

In our sessions, you’ll have a confidential space to talk openly about your behaviors and experiences. Together, we’ll explore triggers like anxiety or boredom, increase awareness of your urges, and practice new ways of responding to stress and difficult emotions.

Most importantly, I want you to know that you are not alone. BFRBs are a surprisingly common way that people cope with stress and overwhelming feelings. There is nothing wrong with you for struggling, and there is no shame in needing extra support as you work toward change.

Tailoring My Approach To Treatment For Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors

The skills and strategies I teach are tailored to each client’s BFRB triggers and patterns. Typically, these skills and strategies fall into three areas: interrupting old habits or building new ones, addressing unhelpful thoughts, and learning healthier ways to manage emotions.

To support this work, I use a wide range of evidence-based therapies, including:

Habit Reversal Therapy (HRT) to help you replace your learned habits with behaviors that reduce stress, boredom, and anxiety
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help you accept your triggers as normal and natural, learn to give them space, and change how you relate to
upsetting thoughts and feelings that increase BFRBs
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to empower you to regulate the difficult emotions that are causing you to engage in BFRBs

Altogether, these approaches enable me to provide effective mindfulness strategies—such as meditation, awareness-building exercises, and grounding techniques—that you can use in daily life. This way, you can build a life where BFRBs are no longer holding you back from happiness, growth, and deeper connections with others.

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You May Have Some Questions About Treatment For Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors…

In therapy with me, my goal is to create a space where you feel safe and supported. Sharing openly about your BFRB experiences can help us understand your patterns, reduce shame, and build practical strategies to manage urges.
What’s more, there is no rush to open up about your struggles. I encourage you to move at a pace that’s right for you, practicing self-kindness and self-compassion as you work through the challenges of life with a BFRB.
Treatment for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors doesn’t have to last forever. While every person’s journey is unique, many clients notice positive changes—like increased awareness of triggers and better urge management—within the first three months of treatment. When you’re ready to transition out of therapy, we’ll create a plan together so you can continue building on your progress and feel confident managing urges moving forward.
The truth is that while medication can certainly help you reduce your urges, it can’t give you lifelong, evidence-based strategies for managing them. Nor can it give you greater self-compassion. Therapy can address the root issues at the core of your struggles with BFRB, leading to lasting relief and deeper self-awareness.
For many, the combination of therapy and medication is incredibly effective, and you are certainly welcome to try both at the same time. For others who don’t want to be on medication long-term, therapy offers a great step-down opportunity, allowing them to ease off of their medications with confidence.

BFRBs Don’t Have To Hold You Back From A Meaningful Life

You’re not alone, and you don’t have to keep living in shame or avoiding opportunities because of your behaviors. Together, we can create a life where your habits no longer hold you back from the things that matter most to you.

To learn more about how I approach treatment for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors, you can use the contact page or call 716-203-1116. I look forward to working with you!

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