Can you tell what that is? It’s a pen cap. One from a bic cristal pen, in fact. And it seems to have saved me this week. I’ve never really been one to chew on pencils or pen caps or anything. But in a random moment of typing over the weekend I put my pen in my mouth to hold it while I did something else. I realized that with its different edges & textures on it, it was good for satisfying some of the mouthing issues I have when pulling. Sometimes it is my scalp that tingles and I pull because of that. Sometimes my hands need occupying or get bored. Sometimes it is just anxiety and sometimes my lips & teeth need something to do.
Yes, I’m one of the ~45% of pullers who also plays with the hair after pulling (can you believe its that high?) and I haven’t ever been good at subbing that particular part of things. I can keep my head compressed (hat) and my hands busy (knitting, gloves, wrapping in a blanket) but other than when I’m actually eating, I haven’t ever subbed my mouthing behaviors (unless chewing my lips and such counts–but that’s not a “good” sub).
So, I don’t like pens with lids on them anyway. I prefer the spring loaded kind. I hate messing with caps so they usually get separated from my pens anyway. So this is great. Now I can have a few of them laying around and instead of capping my pens, I can suck on them instead.
It’s a little weird, but it seems to help a lot. Are there any day to day items you have around you that may be an unknown tool that you don’t have to go out of your way or spend money on to use?
[...] research. Even though my donations had fallen to zero and I was sad about that, I found a new tool (aka pen caps) and started taking a more proactive [...]