In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers are looking for a little help.
Part 1: Jitesh Jaggi keeps his struggle with trichotillomania a secret, until one day his wife catches him in the act.
Jitesh Jaggi is a recent immigrant from India, currently living in Chicago. He ended his career in Finance one day when he lost all his data that he forgot to save on an Excel sheet, and realized that he just didn't care. That tipping point led to him becoming a writer and he is currently working on a book of essays. He is a two-time Moth StorySlam winner and a producer for the Story Collider. He loves writing bios because he can refer to himself in the third person. Jitesh can be easily bribed with books and chocolates.
Part 2: When Devan Sandiford finally decides to seek therapy, he finds it more difficult than expected.
Devan Sandiford is the Program Manager of Community Engagement at The Moth. Born and raised in a small town in Southern California, Devan spent his childhood and young adult years keeping his personal stories hidden from almost everyone. Then feeling a voice within him longing to be heard, he moved to Brooklyn, New York to push himself out of his comfort zone and find his voice. Devan is now a published writer and award-winning storyteller. His stories have been featured in the Washington Post, The Moth Podcast, Writing Class Radio, Speak Up Storytelling, The Womanity Project, and many other outlets. Devan is also the founder of Unreeling Storytelling—a Brooklyn-based organization dedicated to finding people who are quietly waiting to speak and yet urgently needing to be heard. To experience more of Devan’s unfolding collection of stories visit his website at devansandiford.com and keep an eye out for his upcoming memoir—currently titled—Human, Like You.
Episode Transcript
Part 1: Jitesh Jaggi
I have a problem.
I touch myself a lot.
Not in the way that you're probably thinking, but it is pleasurable. I pull the hair that grows on my face obsessively. I did it for six years before even realizing that it's a thing I do. I guess I did it unconsciously or perhaps deliberately avoided thinking about it because it sounds so crazy, even to me.
My condition is called trichotillomania. And even though it's a mouthful, it's important to name it, to call it out in the open because it thrives on secrecy.
For years, it was my dirty little secret but, one day, my wife caught me in the act. We were laying on the bed, watching some cheesy rom-com movie, and before we even reached the meet-cute, I felt my fingers across my cheeks, brushing against my two-day stubble. I had unconsciously began searching for the perfect hair, flipping through each strand like I was picking a book from a library shelf. And finally, I found the one, a thick strand of hair.
I hold it between my thumb and my index finger. And as if to tease myself, I give it a slight tug, then snap, I pull it out. It gave me a dopamine boost.
Jitesh Jaggi shares his story with the Story Collider audience at North Center Town Square in Chicago, IL in September 2021. Photo by Seed Lynn.
“What is this thing that you do, Love?” my wife asked.
Immediately, my reflexes kicked in. I pretended to scratch my face.
“Oh, no. It's just my chin gets itchy sometimes.” I lied.
On the bed, on the floor next to me were hundreds of tiny little hair from my face, and I scattered them with my feet, literally sweeping my problem under the rug.
That night, I couldn't sleep. Could there be others who deal with something as weird as this? And how do I even go about inquiring about it? Like, “Hi, Jenny, I'm doing good too. And how about you? Picked any eyebrows with your bare hands then painted over the area with a pencil lately?” It's just not conversation for polite society.
But I needed to know more.
When I typed ‘hair pulling’ in Google, it led me to a porn site. It was clearly not what I was looking for, but I stayed, just to be sure.
Over the next few days, I kept searching with other variations of random keywords. And finally, I came across the term ‘trichotillomania’, and it gave me a shudder, especially because it contains the word ‘mania’ in it. I was scared that my fear that I was a mad person doing crazy things was indeed true.
But the more stories I read on the internet about trichotillomania, and there were hundreds, if not more, the more I came to the realization that it's not something to be ashamed of. Birds do it. Animals do it. Humans occasionally do it. It's just that some of us forgot where the off switch is.
So hair pulling is not something that I do voluntarily. It's something that I cannot stop doing. The difference is that it pegs the problem correctly. One of impulse control.
So, armed with this new knowledge, I finally found the courage to tell my wife Whitney. She listened to me and did not call 911 on me. That changed something. Out of the two people who now knew about my condition, only I was the one who thought of it as appalling behavior.
My partner who deals with mental struggles of her own thought nothing of it. “Fine,” she said, “we'll just get a better vacuum.”
Now, I was sort of a little bit getting assured to start looking for a cure. Habit-changing exercises, gadgets, affirmation only took me so far. I would resist the urge one day and I'll get back to it the next.
Jitesh Jaggi shares his story with the Story Collider audience at North Center Town Square in Chicago, IL in September 2021. Photo by Seed Lynn.
Until last year when I came across an ad by the University of Chicago that they were conducting a research study to test a new drug for trichotillomania and I leaped at the opportunity. They signed me up and put me on the test drugs immediately.
As part of the research, I was required to maintain this diary, this journal where I was supposed to write down my every move regarding hair pulling every day. And over a period of six weeks, as I recorded in my journal, every day my every move, every urge, every action, I was surprised to observe that day after day, I was spending less and less and less time pulling my hair, until it reached zero. The drug had worked.
Until I was told that I was part of the control group who was given a placebo.
I was torn between feeling happy that I was no longer pulling my own hair to paranoid that I had just fooled myself with the help of a very elite university and that my condition was going to return. But until it strikes back again, I was going to do something that I've never done before and could never do before. I was going to grow a beard.
I had always wanted to grow a beard. My wife had downright demanded it, before she knew of my condition. She'd always seen me clean shaven because I could barely go beyond a day or two of stubble without just plucking a bunch of hair from my face and leaving behind an uneven patchwork. It looked like I was carving the world map on my face.
So I thought, for the next few weeks, why not enjoy a beard until the condition returns? And it has to, right? The placebo effect has to wear off at some point.
Months passed and my beard had started to seamlessly intertwine with my chest hair and I couldn't have been happier. It never returned. Turns out that humble little diary, that journal made all the difference. Recording and journaling my habit dragged it from the unconscious and shed light on it, forcing it to be seen and to be grappled with. The more I observed it, the more I wrote about it, the more I talked about it, the less power it had over me. Repetitive behaviors, nail biting, hair pulling, skin pulling, all of these thrive on shame and secrecy and they diminish with kindness and awareness.
Today, I'm clean shaven again but out of choice. But once in a while I do rock a beard just as a reminder to myself that something that had so much control over me, that made me feel that I was losing my sanity, that made me hide from people even before the quarantine, that it has no longer any control over me. I look at myself in the mirror and in my journal. I'm kind of proud of my recovery. So on those days I wear my beard sort of as a crown and as a thank you note to my partner.
Part 2: Devan Sandiford
It's 2018 and I'm sitting in this dimly lit room in midtown. I don't know exactly if I'm in the right place but I am sitting in this chair and there's like these magazines off to the side. I'm in my early 30s and I'm supposed to be at my very first therapy session.
I have gone to the doctor and the dentist my entire life, multiple times a year for the dentist, every year for the doctor, but this is my very first time going to the therapist and I'm a little bit nervous. There was also no sign on the door. I'm really bad at directions so I'm worried that I'm in the wrong place.
I'm sitting there waiting and the time that the therapy session was supposed to start has already passed and I'm like I feel like I might be in the wrong place. I try and call the therapist. She doesn't pick up and I'm like, “Man, what am I supposed to do?”
There's a door in front of me to the right and there's a door in front of me to the left and I'm like I think I just have to kind of just go in. Is this how it works?
Devan Sandiford shares his story with a limited audience at Caveat in New York City in October 2021. Photo by Zhen Qin.
So I wait a little bit longer, as long as I can, and then I'm like, “I got to do it.” I build up all the courage I can. I crack the door open. I look inside and, sure enough, there's a lady sitting down at a desk and a lady sitting down on a couch.
I'm like, “Oh, sorry. Is this Dr. so-and-so's office?”
And she's like, “Yes, but please just go sit down.” So I quickly go sit back down and a few seconds later she comes out with the lady.
As soon as the lady walks out, the therapist just gives it to me. She's like, “Do not ever open my door.”
And I'm like, “I'm so sorry. I didn't know if I was in the right place. There was no name on the door. This is my first time here.”
And she's like, “I don't care. Just do not open the door.”
And I'm like, “Oh, I'm so sorry.”
We walk into her office and I sit down on the couch and I'm like this is not off to a good start at all. Not at all.
I sit down and she takes a seat, not even behind the desk but kind of in this chair that's off to the side. I see her take off her shoes and she puts her feet up on her desk. I'm like, “What is happening? This must all be set up to just see how I react.”
Like it's about your brain and how your behavior is, so maybe this is like some setup. Nobody's just going to put their feet up on their desk.
Like, no, she just leaves it there and starts asking me questions. I do my best to try and open up, but one question after another, as soon as I start answering I feel like she's asking me another one. It's like 21 questions, just one after another.
I can't really pull myself together. I'm glad when we get to the end of the session and I'm ready to leave.
She's like, “You know what, Devin? I'm so sorry about what happened when you came in. I was actually the one in the wrong. We were supposed to have our meeting 15 minutes earlier and I completely lost the track of time and I put you in a really hard spot. That must have been tough for you on your first time. I'm so sorry.”
I'm like that was a really good apology. Was this planned? I think like this part must be planned too? I don't know what's happening.
So I'm like, “Oh, thank you for saying that.”
She's made me feel a little bit better so I decided to do a second appointment. On my way to the second appointment a week later, she gives me a call and she's like, “Where are you?”
I'm like, “What do you mean? We're not on for another 30 minutes.”
She's like, “No, you're supposed to be here now.”
At this point I'm like, “Okay. You know what? Forget it. I don't know if it's me, I don't know if it's you, but this is just not going to work. That's it. I'll just go back to doing what I was doing before,” which is a perfectly fine method. Not quite as scientific, but what I was doing before was working just fine, just pretending like everything's fine.
Devan Sandiford shares his story with a limited audience at Caveat in New York City in October 2021. Photo by Zhen Qin.
So that's what I decide to do. I don't even think about a therapist again. I tried it and it felt like I needed therapy from the therapy session, so not a real thing. I don't think I need it.
I was actually with a friend and she was telling me like, “No, that's how therapy goes. Therapy is like dating. You have to date around before you find the right therapist. You have to go one after another.”
At that same time, I'd seen this really great TED Talk about like the science of psychology and how people don't think it's a real science and how people will go to the doctor if they have problem with their leg but they won't go for their mind. And I thought, you know what? This all makes sense. What they're saying is exactly true.
So I decided I was still not going to go to therapy, because I figured like it's really hard to find a therapist and I'm just fine. The reason I had decided to go to therapy in the first place is when I was six years old, my mom's youngest brother was shot and killed by the police. That was really tough for me.
But at the same time I was six years old when it happened. I was the youngest in my family. My mom seemed like she was perfectly fine. My siblings who had known my uncle longer was perfectly fine. I'd only known him for six years and I was a baby, so I just figured I would keep on going on. And if everybody in my family could be fine, I could be fine as well.
That's what I did for about three years until the spring of 2020 hit. And all over the news, there was one black life after another just being shown murdered and it was really tough for me. I actually have a therapist in my life already. When I said I had a therapist in my life, it was actually my wife's therapist that I decided to steal.
Sure enough, I set up an appointment with this therapist and this time, because it's in the middle of COVID, instead of going into an office in Manhattan, I get a chance to sit down in my own bedroom, in my own desk, in the comfort of my own home on a Zoom screen.
This time I'm sitting across from a person of color, an Asian woman, and the woman before was a white woman. I realize now that I probably shouldn't have done that.
As I sit down with this therapist, right off the bat she's making me feel comfortable. She's maybe 60 years old but she's like calling me ‘dude’. It just makes me relax. I feel like we can just get right into it. Sure enough, she asked me questions, but when she asked me questions she's not ready to ask a follow-up question. There's like this long silence afterwards that means that I'm supposed to continue talking.
As I go through these, she gives me the space to continue talking. I find myself starting to cry. I don't often cry, but as I'm in these therapy sessions I just begin bawling for all the things that I had repressed and held in.
She takes me through all these things about accountability. She takes me through all these things about not holding things in. And she teaches me to have the courage to speak to my parents, because I've never spoken about what happened when I was six years old. So I talked to my mom and I talked to my dad and I talked to my uncle.
I'm doing such a great job in therapy, she decides that we're going to go every two weeks, twice a week I should say. So I'm going through all these sessions. I'm starting to feel better. Everything is starting to turn around. I'm finally expressing myself. And she sends me a text message.
It's like the end of 2020. She sends me a text message that she has a sinus flu. I'm like, “Okay. Take care of yourself,” but in the back of my mind I'm like, “Umm, sinus flu? I think this might be COVID.”
So I tell my wife that and she's like, “No. Why would it be COVID?”
And I'm like, “I don't know. It just seems like in my mind that's what it is.”
And she's like, “No. Just relax,” or whatever, so I do that. And I just wait for two weeks to see if I hear anything from her and I don't. I don't know if I should call her because it's like she has her own personal life. I wait for another week, so it's been three weeks now.
I finally tell my wife like, “No, I think something's really wrong.” And she's like, “Yeah, I think you're right too. I think Suzy didn't want to work with us anymore.”
I'm like, “Why would she not want to work with us? That's like a crazy idea.” But then I think about it and maybe my idea is crazy, the fact that she would have COVID. Why would that be the case? And she would have let us know.
So I calm myself down again and decide to revisit it if she doesn't get a hold of us. I wait for a little bit longer. We decide to reach out to the person that put us in contact with this therapist in the first place and she reaches out to other ones of her friends who have been going to this therapist for 20 years, and they're like, “No, it's nothing. Like, yeah, if there was something wrong, she would have let us know.”
And I'm like that seems reasonable. But in the back of my mind, I'm like, I don't know. Just something doesn't feel right.
As I'm sitting in my room every single day because it's in the middle of COVID, I decide I'm going to start Googling her name. So every few days I'll put ‘Suzy’ into Google and just see what comes up Suzy Vicencio, her last name. I search and search and I don't see anything, until one day I'm sitting at my desk and I see an obituary pop up.
My first thought was I don't know if this is her. It was like a young picture of her and it had a different first name and had ‘Suzy’ in quotes. I'm like, hmm, maybe this isn't her, and I was like trying to trick myself to be okay.
I decided that I better go and just tell my wife because she's been going to this therapist for longer. If anybody's going to need to know, she's going to be the one. I actually waited for my wife to come out of the bathroom and I showed her the obituary, and I said, “I think this is Suzy. What do you think?”
And she's like, “Yeah, I think so to, but let's check with our friend and see what she thinks.”
So we send the obituary to our friend and she sends it on to the clients who've been going for 20 years and they confirmed that this is our ‘Suzy’. When that was confirmed, I thought to myself like, “Ah, that's terrible.” I felt really bad for those people who had been going to her for 20 years. I felt like that would be a really strong connection. I felt really bad for my wife who had been going to her for a really long time. Suzy actually had like a 21-year-old daughter and so I felt like all these people would have the right to mourn. And for me, it was just like I only knew her for six months. I didn't really even know her actual first name so what right do I have to mourn? I just decided to go on with that.
Until one day I was in the shower and, all of a sudden, a flood of tears started streaming down my face. And I started to think about Suzy being the person that I had told the most to in my life. I had never shared these things with anyone. I never felt safe before and I had shared them with her. Even though I had only known her six months, that I had had this bond with her.
And I realized that the things that she had been teaching me over those six months was that I deserve to mourn. That even though I had known my uncle for only those six years, that I had a connection to him and a connection to my family that meant that I should not be repressing these things and that I should actually be working on trying to get to a space where I see myself as being important enough to cry.
And I just let out all the tears for my uncle, all the tears for my mom, all the tears for Suzy, as I thought about the lessons that finally were sinking in. That psychology isn't real science and that there are actually scientifically proven methods for dealing with things. And one of them is not pretending that you're fine when you're not. I was so thankful to Suzy. Thank you.