From the age of nine, Rosie Myers compulsively yanked the hair out of her own head. Haunted by loss including the prison death of her dad, she would suffer with the condition trichotillomania for 18 years.
After suffering a mental breakdown in 2017, Rosie went for talking therapy which helped her hit the long road to recovery. “I had to go back and speak to the little girl Rosie and tell her not to hurt anymore," she said.
Now aged 30, the Hampshire businesswoman, has managed to conquer her demons and runs ethical haircare brand ‘nope’ with her girlfriend. She says she loves the fact she has been able to turn her pain into her passion.
Rosie first struggled with trauma aged five when she stopped seeing her dad. Then when he died when she was nine, Rosie started pulling her hair out.
"It took over my life," she said. "It was a vicious cycle. I’d feel stressed and I’d pull my hair out, then I’d feel ashamed and would pull more out. It became so deep-rooted in my subconscious to deal with emotional pain by pulling out my hair that I wouldn’t even know I was doing it.”
Rosie does not discuss why her father was in jail or how he died, but she said: "My dad was very troubled and wasn’t in my life from the age of five. But I still always missed him and wondered when I would see him next. After I found out he had died when I was nine years old, my entire world fell apart.”
Despite having therapy at school, Rosie’s trauma took its toll. “I had always been top of the class, but I just started to feel so angry and I would direct that anger at anyone and everyone," she said.
"I would get into fights and I stopped caring about anything. I had all this emotion and I didn’t know what to do with it.
“I remember lying in bed and running my hands through my hair and finding one that felt weird and pulling it out. It hurt, but actually that hurt felt like pain relief, because for a minute it felt like I was in control.
"I was choosing to hurt myself, rather than feeling the constant pain inside that I couldn’t stop. It was a comfort.”
Within three months, Rosie was pulling out her hair every single day, leaving her with noticeable bald patches. “I used to try and hide it from my mum, but I would pull out strands for hours and then look in the mirror and think, ‘Oh God, I have a bald patch on the left side of my head.'
“It became so bad that if I got to breakfast time and hadn’t pulled any hair out, then that was a good day. That’s when I started to wear a baseball hat all the time, to try and hide my bald patches, or I’d try and comb over my hair to cover the bald spots.
“I hated walking in front of people because they would point out the bald patches on my head, so I would always sneak to the back to hide. I used to wear baggy clothing and took no pride in my appearance whatsoever, so people wouldn’t consider me one of the pretty girls.
“I felt so shameful. Hair pulling is such a horrible cycle. I looked like I was going bald and that shame made me feel even worse inside and so I pulled more hair out."
At the age of 11, Rosie finally put a name to her condition, trichotillomania – which, according to the NHS, is when someone cannot resist the urge to pull out their hair. She said: “I remember going onto Google and typing in hair pulling and all these research papers came up."
Several years later, she tried hypnotherapy and stopped pulling her hair out for 18 months. She got a part-time job in a shop then went travelling around Australia, Vietnam and Thailand.
Returning home, Rosie started studying retail management at Bournemouth University but the stress was hard for her to deal with and the problem resurfaced. Then, in 2017, when she lost her pet dog Prince and her grandmother Bernadette, she suffered a breakdown.
Ironically, her mental collapse would be the making of her, as she finally got the help she needed and slowly and carefully worked through her problems. She said: “It was incredibly painful to work through them, but I feel like I can finally look at those feelings in the past.”
Taking time for her wounds to properly heal, it was on holiday in 2018 that Rosie came up with the haircare idea. “I was in Cambodia, really relaxed and really happy," she said.
“I had noticed that my hair had grown back and had a look at the hotel shampoos, but the ingredients were terrifying – full of plastics. I had finally started to love my hair and wanted to take care of it and not to use these kind of products.”
But, despite hunting high and low for an ethical hair care product that actually made her hair feel healthy, she remained empty handed. Resolved to solve the problem herself, after a year of research, she made her own product.
It led to the August 2019 launch of her predominantly online ethical shampoo and conditioner bar business ‘nope’. She said: "I finally felt like I had a purpose to make something better for people and for the planet and to encourage people to love themselves and their hair, too.
"After going through so much, if I can do anything to help people feel better, then it will make it all worth it. I love the fact I’ve been able to turn my pain into a passion for something that I feel so proud of.”
To find out more about nope click here.
