Mental Health and Eczema

My sister is a marriage and family therapist, and I love her. There was a time in early 2023 where I frankly felt so incredibly over my eczema. I was depleted and felt I had no hope. I felt I’d tried everything. I was not happy with my life. She suggested I explore the relationship between my mental health and eczema.

For whatever reason, my first instinct, even though my sister is a therapist, was to see a hypnotist, to see if she could hypnotize me out of scratching. I live on the west coast now. Things are weirder here. Someone I know has a dog hypnotist.

Finally, because I’d tried just about everything else (including hypnotism), I finally figured it was time to listen to my sister and determine whether there was any link between my mental health and eczema.

I’m definitely a high strung, high stress person, and I don’t love my job. My skin was at its best, actually, during the COVID-19 pandemic (mid-2020 to mid-2021 or so). Given I don’t have kids, my responsibilities and commitments actually greatly diminished during COVID. I woke up, worked out, did yoga, meditated, started work at 8:30, took a nice long walk outside after work, cooked a healthy homemade dinner, and spent time with my partner. And that was about it.

I actually look back on those days pretty lovingly. All in all, my mental health was excellent for the first few months of the pandemic, and so was my skin. Now, I travel too much and my job requires me to wake up far too early. That’s real life though. Commitments require us to travel and break routines, and my skin, for one, just can’t hang with this. It does not cope well.

My experience with a therapist in treating my eczema

Ultimately, I found a therapist through my insurance network. I talked to my therapist, mainly, about a sense of dread I had. Things I used to derive great pleasure from were, frankly, painful now. Walking outside when there was even a touch of wind or if it was even slightly too hot or too cold was a terrible experience. Hiking, another of my previous self’s favorite pastimes, was essentially out of the question. I couldn’t do my standard stress reducing activities of running and yoga and meditation because I couldn’t comfortably sweat or bend or sit still and “not think about anything” without scratching my skin off. Turns out this is normal: the National Eczema Association reports feelings of depression and anxiety are pretty normal in folks with eczema. Mental health and eczema (at least poor mental health and bad eczema) seem to be two peas in a pod.

My therapist didn’t have a cure for eczema, but she was another voice in my support network. I got sick of talking about eczema with my partner and my mom. They probably got sick of it too, though they’d never admit that. My therapist essentially became my outlet.

What did I learn about mental health and eczema from working with my therapist?

What a person gets from their therapist is of course personal, but my biggest takeaway from my sessions with her was essentially that I need to let go of some control across my life. It’s OK if I can’t get to all 8 chores I’d planned in a night because I’m leaving for a work trip the next day and they won’t happen otherwise, and so on. It’s also OK if I just don’t feel like doing anything because my skin is too painful and angry.

This made me realize (and this should be obvious given I’m writing this blog) that I was obsessing about trying to control my eczema. I was spending literally thousands of dollars a quarter moving from one so-called “eczema cure” to the next. My therapist helped me take a pause and realize that I may not have the answer. She requested I try to find some joy in the life I was currently living – e.g. playing hooky from work one day to read in the sun when the temperature was in fact, just right, and I could stand to be outside. I’ve tried to take on this approach more since our sessions.

How it turned out

I eventually got over my feelings of extreme dread and hopelessness. f I think this was partially from talking with my therapist and partially because the weather started to improve where I lived (less cold and dry, more humid and warm and sunny). That naturally improved my skin, a bit, and my mood, immensely.

I’d highly recommend hiring a therapist, though, in any case. They may have some helpful tricks for helping you cope. If nothing else, they’re another kind, compassionate soul to vent to.

I’m not a therapist and I’m not a doctor. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please refer to one of the resources below. These are United States specific:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)
Crisis Text Line: Text “HELLO” to 741741