Body Punishment Quotes

“Not unlike alcoholism, the cycle of OCD continues in solitude and isolation … Even in therapy it never occurred to me to talk about plucking out my eyelashes and eyebrows. Not once did I bring it up – not once did it occur to me bring it up, the shame was so deep and ingrained. Fortunately, over the years alcoholism has gotten more and more screen time and does not carry quite the cloak of shame it once did. You won’t necessarily find us shouting it from the rooftops, but then again there are support groups in high schools these days. Hopefully OCD will one day find a similar degree of understanding in the general audience, because that understanding and dialogue are what we need to break not necessarily the cycle of repetitive behavior - because sometimes we can and sometimes we can’t - but to break the cycle of shame. Because I can tell you from experience . . . the shame is a killer.”
― Maggie Lamond Simone, Body Punishment: OCD, Addiction, and Finding the Courage to Heal

“One such cut on my skinny six-year-old leg began healing with a scab that was hard and crusty over the broken skin. As I ran my fingers over it one night, I suddenly felt the need to pick it off, and I did. The pain was momentarily excruciating, then settled into a dull stabbing where it was bleeding again. The part of me that was mortified at what I had done was soon stomped into submission by another part of me – a part that longed to reproduce that momentary excruciating pain again and again. I was slightly disturbed by this turn of events, and way too embarrassed to tell my mother. So I didn’t, for about 40 years.

It was the first of many such secrets I learned to keep.”
― Maggie Lamond Simone, Body Punishment: OCD, Addiction, and Finding the Courage to Heal