Readers reply: why is it so tempting to pick a scab?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Why is it so tempting to pick a scab? Our bodies create them to help wounds heal, yet those same bodies make us want to remove them. Tabitha Stubbs, Liverpool

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Cruelty-free pork scratching replacement. Yummy! OrkwilPrink

Haven’t a clue; haven’t seen any round here. Solidarity with the strike. bricklayersoption

Good question. Is it “cleaning” behaviour? We like smooth, clean skin and want to remove the dirt; perhaps a scab feels like encrusted “dirt” we want to remove. I remember pulling layers of PVC glue off my skin being almost as much fun. If it was really harmful, you’d think it would have been evolved out. user0

I don’t like to think too much about it now, but 1970s childhood sunburn that peeled off a few days later – you’d see how big a sheet you could remove without it tearing – was fascinating. (Parents didn’t see the need for suncream.) Nivernaise

Relive that childhood: put some shorts and a short-sleeved shirt on and dive on to rough tarmac. I would then re-enact the school nurse’s solution of taping loose cotton wool over the gaping wound – requiring me to spend two hours more in agony while a proper nurse pulled the bits out with tweezers. LlamaInPyjamas

Because they itch like crazy when they start to heal. Almost as if picking the scab is the right thing to do. VirgilKane

My sister was remorselessly bullied by a horrible boy in her year at school. She had an accident and fell off of a roundabout and had multiple scabs on her knees and elbows. The bully took great pleasure in ridiculing her once more. At lunchtime, at the table next to him, she picked her scabs and put them in his gravy. Why do people pick scabs? Revenge is a dish best served … Cogitoergo1

Picking at a scab or any healing wound is like pulling a hangnail from your finger. You know it’s wrong, you know it will more than likely draw blood, but the pleasure you get from it sends the endorphins racing. There is also the feeling of satisfaction you get from removing a scab to reveal a new, perfect, pink piece of flesh, which might result in a smaller scab forming, so you can repeat the process again. Although it’s our bodies’ way of healing and preventing infections, the Savlon and plasters are always at hand to aid our recovery. Andrew Cahill

I have no idea, but I’d love to know – as would, I’m sure, every other person out there with dermatillomania, a compulsive skin-picking disorder. I’m talking about picking the same scab for weeks and months, and multiple ones all over your body. I’ve done it since I was 14 or 15, maybe younger, and I’m 31. It took me until my late 20s to get the courage to tell friends and health professionals that I did it; I found it excruciatingly embarrassing to talk about and tried to keep it from everyone. I wonder if that is why so little is known about it.

Only after I ended up in hospital with sepsis (I still don’t know the cause, but the skin picking is a possibility) did a psychiatrist on the ward do some research and find out there was a name for this disorder – she had never heard of it. No wonder that, at the start of my stay in hospital, the A&E doctor brushed aside my mention of “picking my scabs non-stop” after asking if I’d had any infected wounds lately. I’d been highly anxious in the three weeks before I got sepsis and had been picking a lot, especially on my scalp, because no one can see beneath my hair.

I learned my lesson the hard way and now I’m making a big effort not to pick. Stopping is a slow process and I may never fully stop, but I’m continuing with therapy and trying to ease my nervous system into a calmer place. To help stop picking, and do it more safely when I do, I’ve picked up a few habits. I try very hard to pick only in visible places on my body, so that I or others can check easily for infection; if an area is repeatedly very tempting, I put a blister plaster on it; and I’ve placed stress balls, chewing gum, fidget toys, plasters and disinfectant around my flat in places I’m more susceptible to picking intensely or absentmindedly. For me, scab picking goes a bit deeper – excuse the pun – than the odd pick. Matilda Sims