Many trichsters ask the question ‘how long does hair take to grow?’ While this differs from person to person, you can have a look at my blog post on hair regrowth for some idea. This post is going to answer the question ‘how long does hair take to grow like it did before?’ i.e. to a state that your hair looks healthy, how it might have looked when you were younger.
How Long Does Hair Take To Grow Back Healthily?
Whilst it is possible that your hair may never grow back, usually, with time, you can expect a large amount of regrowth. But when this happens, the hair is rarely the same. It takes time for your hair to recover, for one main reason:
- When you consistently pull your hair from your scalp, the follicles that have been pulled will become damaged. They take a few months to recover before they are able to produce new hairs, but the damage means that hair will often grow wavy and kinky – a different texture to the way your hair may have been in the past.
- This change of texture can also be seen in the case of eyelashes and eyebrows, though the regrowth is usually a lot quicker.
How To Avoid These Problems?
Evetually your follicles do start to repair themselves, but only if left alone for a while – easier said than done in the case of hair pulling! But if you do manage to leave them alone, trimming the ends of newly grown-in hair can help it to recover its normal texture quicker.
However, you also need to remember that our bodies all change with age. Even in the case of those who have never pulled their hair, the texture will often become more coarse than it was when we were younger. What this really means is that we need to accept change as part of life. In the case of hair regrowth after trichotillomania, we can also be proud in the fact that so much has come back.
I started pulling when I was in junior high, so around the age of 13/14, I’m now 18 so it’s been four or five years. For the past year or so I was able to control my urges, a few slip ups with only half a dozen hairs pulled each time but it was pretty smooth sailing.
My problem? The regrowth which is now shoulder long (my hair grows quickly) is so coarse and kinky and it doesn’t blend in with my normal smooth wavy hair. I guess only time will tell how much my follicles will recover, so long as I keep away from pulling.
Marisol – I get very kinky hairs too, I find it so hard to resist the urge to pull them out so they don’t usually grow that long. From what I have heard though, hair can change texture and can also eventually change back after time. I really hope yours does! And congrats on controlling your urges!
I had the same thing happen to me. when i first started pulling, i just noticed an overall thinning in my hair, then when it started to regrow, my hair just got thicker and more coarse feeling. When i looked closer, i had all these black kinky curly hairs growing in, and since i have fairly straight blond hair it looked baaaad. My scalp was really sore all the time, and i kept pulling out the dark ones. well i finally broke the habit about 5 months ago and have notice a huge change in my texture overall. It is getting much softer and straighter, even though there are still a lot of black ones, they are not curly anymore. About how long did it take your hair to grow back normal?
I had the same experience to. I have wavy straight blond hair and the hair that I have pulled is growing back dark and kinky/ coarse. I pulled my hair line back about an inch on one side, and basically all of it has grown back. For a while it was kinky, but i stopped pulling in that area about a year ago, so a lot of it is normal growth with a few here and there. It is the spots that i pulled aggressively that is really bad. Really rough and kinky. I stopped pulling like 6 months ago, and was wondering how long it will take for it all to blend back in. I have noticed it is not growing as curly now, quite a bit straighter. Do i just need to wait a few more months for my follicles to heal? or am i stuck with this awful growth?
Much thanks!
im 12 years old and im still pulling out my hair and i dont know why i do it, it just feels good and i want to stop so bad but its so hard, how did you guys stop? Does it get better when im older? please help, it embarrassing because every one has their hair down and looks all pretty and my hair is in a pony tail 24/7, even when i sleep.
i first started pulling when i was 10, i am now 30. I damaged my hair so bad by pulling that i had to start wearing a wig when i was 22. Finally 4 months ago i decided to shave my hair completely bald, i thought that it would prevent me from pulling since there was nothing to pull , so everytime my hair started growing long enough for me to pull i would shave it bald again, it was very hard at firs, but i actually got use to fact that there was no hair to pull, after 2 months of shaving off my hair i felt that i no longer had the urge to pull and felt confident that i could control myself, so i stoped shaving my head and my hair is growing back, not like i wanted but at least its growing , im so anxious to see what my hair will look like as time goes by, i use to have such beautiful hair and i hope i can get back with time.