Blog

I’ve had an ear picking habit and a problem with compulsively cleaning my ears off and on for most of my life. Luckily, I’ve learned techniques to overcome these urges most of the time, which has made a big difference in both my skin and my life overall.

A significant number of people have an ear picking habit. This habit can include picking at and compulsively cleaning the inside of the ear or picking skin on the outer ear. If you have this issue, you’re probably wondering why you have an ear picking habit, if it’s normal, or what you can do about it. 

What an Ear Picking Habit Looks Like

An ear picking habit looks differently from person to person, depending on the individual and their preferences.

Often people just pick the skin on their outer ear. This often starts due to dry skin, eczema, a pimple, or some other skin issue and eventually turns into a habit.

Many people are triggered by scabs on their ears. Either the scab will itch or the roughness or unevenness of the scab will give them a bit of anxiety or uneasiness.

People with this problem often have a desire to keep skin even and smooth and anything dry or rough will trigger them to pick. This compulsive picking will make it hard for the scab to ever fully heal and since the scab continues to be on the skin, they continue to pick until it becomes a well ingrained habit.

For other people, their focus is more on the inner ear. For these people, there is often a feeling of discomfort or an itch in their inner ear that they want to relieve.

To accomplish this, people usually resort to inserting objects into their ear. Objects people report using include cotton swabs, needles, bobby pins, tweezers, earpicks, and toothpicks. Some people also obsessively clean their ears with ear drops or peroxide. 

Once people pick skin from their ears, a common compulsion is to roll skin between fingers or to eat it. 

Why People Pick Ears

In all ear picking habits, the act of picking gives some relief or satisfaction that is reinforcing.

For many people, their ears feel itchy or uncomfortable or the skin is dry. In these cases, ear picking is like scratching an itch. It’s done to relieve discomfort.

At other times, ear picking just feels good.

Why does it feel good to pick or clean ears? Your ears are an erogenous zone so they have tons of nerve endings. This makes rubbing or massaging them stimulating and/or relaxing. Just like a massage feels good, messing with your ears can feel good too. This is often reason enough for many people to develop an ear picking habit.

Another reason many people develop an ear picking habit is because they have problems with self-regulation. Innumerable things can make self-regulation harder, including trauma, depression, anxiety, ADHD, autism, personality disorders, or just too much stress in your life. And ear picking can sometimes help you regulate your body and emotions better.

How does it do this? Well, your ear is connected to your vagus nerve. This is a massive nerve in your body that connects your brain to most of your organs. Stimulating this nerve can send relaxing signals to your body, which helps calm the body. Then the vagus nerve sends signals to your brain that your body is calm. This helps with emotional regulation. 

So if you are struggling with self regulation, an ear picking habit is actually something you found accidentally that helped regulate your body and emotions better.

Unfortunately, this method of self-regulation isn’t harmless and should be replaced with less harmful behaviors such as a breathing exercise or cognitive restructuring, which you can learn in cognitive behavioral therapy.

Lastly, sometimes an ear picking habit is just a habit without an underlying reason for it anymore. Usually this happens when it served a purpose at one point in time, like with self-regulation. However, you may have gotten better at self-regulation, but still kept the habit.

This can happen because repeating a behavior over and over again builds neural connections in the brain and nervous system. Once you have those connections built, you can get stuck doing a repeated action over and over again, even if it’s not serving a purpose anymore.

Luckily, your nervous system can adapt and change based upon your behaviors, so you can change these connections by stopping your habit.

Is Ear Picking Normal?

If we include regular users of cotton swabs who use them to itch or clean the inside of their ears even though it’s known that this is bad for your ears, up to half of the population compulsively picks ears from time to time. So ear picking and compulsive ear cleaning is not abnormal by any means.

However, if your ear picking habit has caused damage to your body or emotional distress and you have not been able to stop despite lots of effort, your picking should be concerning to you. In this case, there are therapies and medications that may help you, so it’s a good idea to seek medical advice.

Is Ear Picking Bad?

A common adage among ear doctors is, “do not put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear.” They say this to emphasize the fact that putting anything in your ear, including cotton swabs or your finger, can cause more problems than it solves. 

First of all, putting anything in your ear is a great way to push earwax back into the ear, causing it to get backed up. You can also rupture your eardrum which can cause long term damage, hearing loss, or require surgery. 

Putting things in your ear can also lead to swimmer’s ear or an ear infection. Rubbing the delicate skin inside your ear causes inflammation, which causes scabs and scar tissue to form. This interferes with your ear’s natural ability to clean itself and fight germs which leads to infection. 

And if you think you’re off the hook because you only pick the outer ear, you’re not. Picking at your skin causes chronic irritation in the skin because of constant destruction and rebuilding of cells. And in rare cases, this can trigger squamous cell carcinoma, a slow growing skin cancer.

So whether you are picking inside or outside of your ear, there can be serious consequences to your ear picking habit if you can’t get it under control.

Quick Tips to Stop Picking Your Ears

If you’re struggling with an ear picking habit, it’s best to seek professional help. But to get you started, here’s some quick tips that many people have found useful in beating an ear picking habit:

Fix Underlying Problems

One of the first things you need to do is address any underlying issues that cause irritation, itchiness, or other discomfort in your ears.

If you’re having recurring irritation in your ears, you may have an allergy, dry skin, eczema, infection, or another physical issue that is the cause. Sensory or hearing problems like tinnitus or hearing loss can also cause uncomfortable feelings in the ear, including a blocked feeling or tingling.

Your primary care doctor, ENT, dermatologist, or audiologist may be necessary to get a correct diagnosis and fix the problem.

Stop Using Cotton Swabs

Cotton swabs like Q-tips push wax further into the ear canal which can cause sensations that trigger you.

Many people find that if they stop using cotton swabs for a few weeks or months, the discomfort in their ears gets better over time because the ear is cleaning and healing itself naturally. This reduces all the feelings that trigger picking and compulsive cleaning.

Stop Using Ear Buds

Like cotton swabs, earbuds can irritate the skin in your inner ear. They also can cause ear-wax build up. All these problems will make you more likely to want to pick your ears. 

Chew Gum

Chewing gum serves several purposes. First, chewing stimulates the vagus nerve, which is relaxing and helps with self-regulation.

Secondly, chewing gum can slightly stimulate your ears, helping to satisfy your compulsion to touch or pick at them a little. This also helps to move old, dry ear wax out of your ears, which can reduce ear discomfort. 

Keep Hands Busy

With all nervous habits, including ear picking, you can sometimes beat them by replacing them with less problematic habits that keep your hands busy. There are tons of ways to do this, including using fidget toys or doodling.

Try Different Soap

Soap is often an overlooked issue with dry, itchy, or irritated skin. But harsh soaps are often a cause of skin conditions. Replace your soap with a gentler one and see if that reduces your urge to pick at your ears.

Sigh

When you feel the urge to pick, scratch, itch, or whatever, let out a long sigh. Then when all that air is out of your lungs, breathe in deeply but naturally.

Then just focus on your breath. Think about how it feels coming in and out of your lungs and how relaxing it is. Don’t try to force anything. Just observe your breath and think about how relaxing it feels to exhale.

This is often enough to get you through the urges and allows you to resist picking until you overcome the habit. 

Hide Tools and Triggers

If you use tools like cotton swabs or bobby pins to pick, get rid of them. Seriously. Get them out of your house so you’re not even tempted to use them.

If there are other things that trigger you to pick, get rid of them or keep them out of sight when possible. 

Reduce Anxiety and Stress

This is easier said than done, I know. But as I’ve mentioned, picking is often a tool for self-regulation. If you can reduce the anxiety and stress in your life, you will need less help with self-regulation and you will notice the frequency and severity of your picking going down.

Lube Up Your Ears

If you have a scab or wound on your ear, put an ointment on it, such as Neosporin, so that it can heal up quickly. Make sure you put this on multiple times a day, but especially at night.

You can also put vaseline or lotion on your outer ear so that it’s too slick to pick easily. This will deter you from picking because it will be harder and less satisfying.

Related Questions

Why does my child have an ear picking habit? 

Ear picking, pulling or rubbing is normal in infants before 4 months of age. They are discovering their bodies. However, excessive picking at the ears or picking or pulling after 12 months of age isn’t common. This could be a sign of infection, allergies, or other medical issues so you should talk to your child’s doctor about it.

Want to remember this? Pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it later!

References

Deutsches Ärzteblatt International: Otitis Externa

Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology: Systematic Review of Pharmacological and Behavioral Treatments for Skin Picking Disorder

Journal of Public Health in Africa: Self-Ear Cleaning Practices and the Associated Risk of Ear Injuries and Ear-Related Symptoms in a Group of University Students

Laryngoscope Investigative Otolaryngology: Right Dominance in the Incidence of External Auditory Canal Squamous Cell Carcinoma in the Japanese Population: Does Handedness Affect Carcinogenesis?

Psychosomatics: Psychogenic Excoriation and Cancer

Seattle Children’s Hospital: Ear – Pulling At or Rubbing

Studies show that almost everyone picks or pulls at their hair and skin every once in a while. But since most people don’t talk about it, people often wonder if their picking behavior is normal. Or if it’s bad to pick at certain body parts, such as the eyebrows.

So is picking your eyebrows bad? Picking your eyebrows isn’t bad in and of itself. If done in moderation, it’s probably nothing to worry about. But if you pull out too much eyebrow hair or it’s a compulsion you can’t stop, there can be serious consequences to picking or pulling eyebrow hairs out. 

Consequences of Picking Your Eyebrows

Picking a few eyebrow hairs out now and then won’t have any long term consequences. They will grow back in two to four months and all will be well again.

However, if you are picking large patches of hairs out of your eyebrows, this can pose many problems.

First, there are cosmetic issues with this. Your eyebrows will not look normal and will stand out. You can potentially cover this up with makeup, such as eyebrow pencils. But many people, especially girls and women, who pick large patches of their eyebrows out experience feelings of shame, embarrassment, or loss of self-esteem due to the physical changes to their eyebrows. 

Over time, this can affect your mental health, leading to anxiety or depression. So overall, you will have a lower quality of life.

In addition to the short term effects of picking hairs from your eyebrows, long term picking can cause permanent hair loss. This usually takes many years of picking, so don’t freak out too much. But pulling out hairs over and over again can cause scarring in the hair follicle, making it no longer able to grow hair.

Because of this, some people who are long-term hair pullers find that they have bald patches that don’t go away.

An additional consequence of pulling eyebrow hair comes with what you do with it. About 20% of people who compulsively pull their hair also have a compulsion to eat that hair. This can cause “hair balls” in the gastrointestinal system that can cause health problems or require surgery. 

Is Picking Eyebrows Normal?

Everyone pulls or picks their hairs, skin, or nails from time to time. But most people are able to stop picking or pulling when they put their mind to it. 

A small minority of the population, about 1 to 3% of people, have a condition called Trichotillomania or hair-pulling disorder. You may have this disorder if you have tried to stop pulling hairs out in the past, but have not been able to successfully stop and this habit is causing a lot of problems in your life.

Most people with this disorder are women and the most common places they pull hair from are the scalp, pubic area, and face, including eyebrows.

People who have this disorder tend to feel a lot of shame around their behavior and avoid social situations due to feelings of embarrassment. It can be a very lonely, isolating experience. 

What Causes Picking Hair from Eyebrows?

There are many reasons people pick or pull hair from their eyebrows. A major reason is that it’s a form of self-soothing and helps with emotional regulation.

When you are stressed, anxious, depressed, bored, or otherwise just not content with life, you need ways to regulate your emotions and get into a place of homeostasis again. 

Grooming behaviors calm the nervous system, so it makes sense that a lot of people find themselves compulsively picking, pulling, or biting their hair to help regulate emotions and the nervous system.

Another aspect of picking hair is habit. After you have performed an action over and over again, it can just become ingrained into your nervous system and hard to stop doing. 

If you have a hair pulling disorder, it’s likely that you have other psychological disorders such as OCD or PTSD that may be an underlying cause. It’s also possible that you simply inherited a genetic predisposition to pick or pull hair.

No matter the cause, your nervous system is plastic. That means it can change with experience and time and there are lots of tactics and therapies that can help you stop picking hair from eyebrows.

How to Stop Picking Your Eyebrows

Research shows that one of the most effective methods for treating compulsive hair picking and pulling is cognitive behavioral therapy. This is best done under the direction of a mental health professional trained in cognitive behavioral therapy or habit reversal therapy.

But you can also try some of these techniques on your own if treatment isn’t an option for you:

Become Aware

Keep a diary of your eyebrow picking. Note when and where you are most likely to pick your eyebrows and any triggers you notice, including lack of sleep, feelings, people, or medications. 

Reduce Triggers

Once you understand your triggers, it’s time to make a plan to reduce them. This can be as simple as avoiding caffeine and getting more sleep or as complicated as learning how to manage difficult emotions that trigger your behavior.

Replace Eyebrow Picking

Another tactic for to stop picking eyebrows is to replace that behavior with less problematic behaviors. Many people find success by keeping their hands busy with a squeeze ball or fidget toy. 

Seek Emotional Support

Stopping a hair pulling habit can be a huge obstacle and it’s best to have lots of support along the way. Reach out to friends and family for encouragement. If you care not comfortable talking to your friends or family about your hair pulling, seek out others online who know what you are going through.

Say No to Shame

Work on letting go of any feelings of shame you have over your behaviors. You should also give yourself tons of self-compassion and praise any and all effort you put toward overcoming this habit. The better you feel about yourself, the better your emotional state will be and the easier it will be to change your behavior. 

Talk to Your Doctor

If you continue to struggle with picking your eyebrows, despite motivation to quit, you should talk to your doctor. Although cognitive behavioral therapy is a first-line treatment, this doesn’t always work for everyone. There are medications and other therapies you may want to try at that point.

N-acetylcysteine (NAC) in doses of 1200 mg twice a day has been shown in studies to reduce compulsive hair pulling in adults.

There are a few other medications that have shown promise in studies as well, including clomipramine, olanzapine, and dronabino.

In addition, dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and exposure therapy are other therapies that have successfully treated trichotillomania in some people. 

10 Quick Tips for Stopping Eyebrow Picking and Pulling

Practice deep breathing. When you feel the urge to pick, breathe out slowly until all the air leaves your lungs, then continue to focus on your breath until the urge to pick or pull hairs goes away. 

Put bandages on your fingertips. This makes it harder and less satisfying to pull out hairs.

Keep lotion with you at all times. When you feel like picking, use that energy to apply lotion carefully to your fingertips. This will keep your hands busy and make your fingers too slippery for picking out eyebrows. 

Put essential oil or perfume on your fingertips. The scent can help bring awareness to your picking when you begin to do it automatically. 

Oil your eyebrows. Use coconut or olive oil and rub them into your eyebrows throughout the day. This will keep eyebrows slick so you can’t grab them. 

Try bilateral stimulation. Pat your arms, shoulders, or face using your palms or fingertips. Alternate the movement so that you are only patting one side at a time. This lowers your fight or flight response and helps with anxiety. It also gives you a source of stimulation that you may be craving when you have an urge to pick. This video shows an example of this technique:

Wear gloves. Figure out the times you are most likely to pick and put on gloves during those times so you won’t be picking without knowing what’s going on.

Doodle. If your picking happens during lectures or in school, doodling can help you keep your hands busy without bringing attention to yourself. 

Wear Make-up. Watch makeup tutorials online and get really excited about having pretty eyebrows. Then start going all out on your eyebrows. The thought of ruining your all the effort you put into your eyebrows or smudging your makeup may help you stop picking at them. 

Use a fidget or sensory toy. Amazon has endless versions of fidget toys to choose from (click to see the most popular). You can also try sensory items like kinetic sand, play foam, or silly putty. These items reduce anxiety and keep your hands busy so you’re less likely to pick at your eyebrows.

Want to remember this? Pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it later!

References

Acta Dermatovenerol APA: Trichotillomania: a Psychopathological Perspective and the Psychiatric Comorbidity of Hair Pulling

American Family Physician: Diagnosing and Treating Hair Loss

Indian Journal of Psychiatry: Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling Disorder)

National Health Service: Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling Disorder)

I’ve struggled with skin picking my whole life. When my skin picking was at it’s worst, calluses on feet were a favorite target. It got so bad at times, I would have large, bleeding wounds and be in so much pain that I couldn’t walk. If this sounds too familiar, I’m here to tell you that you aren’t alone and that there is a way out.

Is it Bad to Pick Calluses?

As tempting as it is to pick calluses on your feet, calluses are adaptive. This means that your body created them to protect you from something. Usually the cause of foot calluses is friction from poorly fitting shoes, abnormal walking patterns, or high levels of physical activity. They form to create extra cushion to protect your skin and soft tissues.

So picking or removing calluses before addressing the cause of them is not helpful to your body. In addition, aggressively stretching or pulling to remove calluses can backfire because it can signal to your skin that you need more protection there, creating even thicker calluses next time. 

And with picking in particular, you are likely to tear skin at some point, causing pain, bleeding, and making your skin susceptible to infection.

What to Do When Picking Calluses Causes an Injury

If you pick your calluses pretty regularly or obsessively, you have probably experienced pain, bleeding, or some other form of an injury. This sucks, but thankfully, it’s usually something you can treat at home and will get better really quickly. Here’s some tips to keep in mind when you get an injury from picking calluses:

Stop the Bleeding

Your first priority is to stop any bleeding. Apply pressure with a clean, dry towel or bandage for several minutes. If the bleeding doesn’t slow down, lie down and prop your foot up so it’s higher than your heart until the bleeding stops.

Clean the Wound

Once the bleeding has stopped, it’s time to clean your wound. Start by washing and drying your hands well first. Then wash your foot under running water and pat it dry gently with a clean towel. If you have no running water nearby, use a topical antiseptic spray such as Bactine and let the area air dry.

Dress the Wound

Once your wound is clean and dry, you can begin to dress it. To help with pain and prevent infection, you can apply a wound cream such as Neosporin, but this is optional. Then put on a clean bandage. 

Replace yoru bandage everytime it gets wet, dirty, or if blood soaks through it. To help remove the sticky parts of the bandage, you can soak it in water first. 

Reduce the Pain

To reduce pain, take a simple over-the-counter pain medication such as acetaminophen. Another option is to use a topical spray with Lidocaine. My favorite is Bactine. 

In addition, wear well-cushioned and roomy shoes until your wound heals. You can also reduce discomfort by wearing thick, soft socks. Try to stay off your feet as much as possible. 

When to Contact Your Doctor About a Foot Injury

Most wounds from picking calluses can be easily treated at home, but if you experience any of the following, it’s best to contact your doctor for medical advice:

• Bleeding that won’t stop with direct pressure.

• A wound deeper than ½ inches. This may require stitches to heal properly.

• Signs of infection. These include an increase in pain, swelling, or redness or pus draining from the wound.

• Fever of 100.4 degrees F or higher.

• You have diabetes, Raynaud’s disease, or another condition that affects circulation or wound healing in the feet. 

Is it Normal to Pick Calluses?

Most people pick their skin, including scabs, acne, and even calluses from time to time.

However, if you have tried to stop picking and have not been able to stop and it has caused significant problems in your life, your picking is more severe than the average person’s and you may need to seek help from a doctor or mental health professional.

In addition, sometimes medications can cause picking as a side effect, so check side effects of the medications you are taking or talk to your doctor. 

Either way, know that you are not alone. Everyone picks skin from time to time and it’s nothing to be ashamed about.

There is a lot you can do to stop your picking on your own. If that doesn’t work, know that this is a well-known disorder that you can get professional help for as well.

How to Stop Picking Calluses

The secret to stopping picking calluses is to identify what triggers you to start picking and then avoid those triggers.

Think about when you pick your feet and where you are when you pick them. These are your skin picking triggers.

You probably have multiple triggers. Common triggers include feelings such as stress, anxiety, anger, or boredom.

You may also be triggered by sedentary activities such as watching TV, browsing social media, or reading. Being tired, hungry, or otherwise out of balance can trigger you to pick as well. 

Figure out a strategy to avoid your triggers. Reduce stress in your life and learn better strategies for emotional self-regulation. Change up your routine and environment so common triggers aren’t in your day to day life. 

Quick Tips to Stop Picking Calluses

Identifying triggers and avoiding them is a journey that isn’t going to happen overnight. However, here’s a few quick tips to get your started that apply specifically to picking calluses from feet:

• Keep your nails short. If you have short fingernails, it’s almost impossible to pick skin.

• Get rid of tools you use to pick your calluses. If you use manicure tools, tweezers, or other items to pick at your feet, get rid of them or hide them in an inconvenient location. The more hoops you have to jump through to get to them, the better.

• Keep your hands busy. When you are feeling bored or need stimulation to help regulate your emotions, it’s good to have alternatives such as play foam, kinetic sand, or a squeeze ball handy.

• Wear socks or shoes as much as possible, even to bed. This can sometimes stop picking in its tracks without any other strategies. 

• Get rid of calluses on feet in other ways. The calluses themselves are often a huge trigger, so getting rid of them may be the best thing you can do to stop your foot picking. I go into how to do this in the next section.

• Give yourself self-compassion. You are not weird. You are not bad. Everyone has bad habits. EVERYONE. This is just your bad habit. If you beat yourself up over it, your emotional regulation will get worse, which will make it harder to stop.

Get Rid of Calluses on Feet without Picking

As we’ve established, picking calluses on feet can cause injury and infection. But gently removing them the right way and then preventing new ones from forming can help eliminate your number one trigger for picking, which are usually the calluses themselves.

Remove the Callus Gently

To get rid of a callus on your foot, first soak your foot in warm water for 15 to 30 minutes.

Then use a pumice stone, washcloth, or sandpaper to gently rub off a layer of skin on the callus. You don’t want to rub too much off at once because it will trigger your body to make another callus. This process may take up to a week. 

For some people, this step is impossible because the action of rubbing the skin off triggers your compulsion and you end up rubbing too much off at once.

If this sounds like you, try a pedicure instead. If that’s not an option, you can probably skip this step and go straight on to moisturizing. It will just take longer to get rid of the callus.

Moisturize Daily

Use a foot cream designed for calluses to soften the skin. This will slowly get rid of calluses and prevent new ones from forming. My favorite foot cream for this purpose is O’Keeffe’s Healthy Feet Foot Cream (click to check out the before and after photos in the reviews on Amazon).

Adjust Your Lifestyle and Clothing to Prevent Calluses

Since calluses form to protect soft tissue from excess friction, you need to address the sources of that friction. Often this is as simple as wearing non medicated callus pads, cushioned socks, or shoe inserts that keep your feet from rubbing against your shoes.

You should also be avoiding shoes that don’t fit well or cause a lot of friction such as flip flops, high heels, or sandals. 

Want to remember this? Pin this to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it later!

References

American Family Physician: Common Questions About Wound Care

American Family Physician: Corns and Calluses Resulting from Mechanical Hyperkeratosis

American Family Physician: Skin and Soft Tissue Infections

Fairview Health Services: Foot Laceration: All Closures

Mayo Clinic: Home Treatment Options for Corns and Calluses

National Health Service: Cuts and Grazes

National Health Service: Skin Picking Disorder

Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment: Excoriation (Skin-Picking) Disorder: a Systematic Review of Treatment Options

Safer Care Victoria: Care of Open Wounds