1965 born in Hamburg

1984 Abitur/High School Diploma

1984-89 University of Hamburg, Psychology Major and Degree Diplom Psychologin, Thesis on Hair – A Way of Self-Experience and Self-Finding for Human Beings.  Includes a chapter on Trichotillomania

1990-2017 Emigrated to the USA, 5 years Oahu, 6 years Santa Monica, 12 years Maui, 4 years Sonoma County

1992-1993 University of Hawaii, MA European Languages and Literature, wrote several papers about hair in literature, thesis on Hair Imagery in Grimm’s Fairy Tales

2004-2009 Published Haare im Licht/Hair in the Light, 2004, Nie mehr Haarausfall/Never Hairloss Again, 2007, Die Kleiderdiät/The Wardrobe Diet, 2009

2017 Return to Hamburg

2020 Enrollment as an external student in the doctoral program at the University of Cologne. Participate in meetings and seminars online

2021 Launching D23 Study 1 in February

2022 Launching D23 Study 2 in February

2023 Data collection for Study 1 was completed on May 30, 2023. Data collection for Study 2 was completed on December 31st.

2024 The data was processed, and three articles were written. The first article was submitted.

2025 The first article Validation of the German Beliefs in Trichotillomania Scale (BiTS-D), was published on March 19th.

https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/10.1026/1616-3443/a000793

The second article Hair Care and Hair-Focused Repetitive Behaviors: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study has been accepted for publication in Wiley’s journal Health Science Reports.

The third article The impact of mindfulness-based haircuts on individuals affected by trichotillomania and related hair-focused repetitive behavior disorders and their hair-pulling behavior: A pilot study was published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211364925000570?via%3Dihub

Research motivated by lived experience

My paternal grandmother engaged in nail-biting, and so did my father. My mother was affected by skin picking disorder.

1974-75 I started biting my nails

In 1978, my bangs grew out, and I saw a split hair hanging in front of my eyes. It bothered me, and I felt compelled to cut it off. Didn’t stop looking and feeling for dry and split hairs, breaking or cutting them off for years.

In 1982, I first encountered the term Trichotillomania and began learning everything I could about it to help myself.

In 1987,  I experienced a period of not engaging in hair-focused repetitive behaviors

1996 marked the beginning of a period during which I no longer engaged in hair-focused repetitive behaviors, with relapses in the first few years.

2026 looking back…I have two scars on the insides of my cheeks, which must have come from automatic-unconscious cheek biting while sleeping. I had very few relapses up to my early fifties. During the pandemic, I spent more time at the computer and sometimes needed fiddle toys, but I have remained free of symptomatic behaviors.