Archive for hiding
Life with Hyperhidrosis: The Struggle to be “Normal”
Posted by: · on July 15, 2010 | CommentsLast night I went downtown to meet up with my husband and have dinner with him and his new co-workers. Being aware that I was meeting several new, potentially important people in my husband’s new career would be a more than slightly stressful prospect for anyone. For me (or anyone dealing with Hyperhidrosis), it was a potential nightmare.
I woke up this morning with many thoughts and emotions swimming around in my head. Foremost was the question: Did I pull it off? If you also have HH, you know what I mean by that: Could anyone tell I was sweating? I would venture a guess and say, I don’t think so. Whew– I think… That is half my problem; you can never really know for certain what other people notice or what their judgment is if they do notice. I try to tell myself that I don’t care, but sometimes, I can’t help it. I do.
Well, if no one noticed last night, the only reason I was able to pull that off was because of what I wore and how I conducted myself. It is truly amazing the degree that clothing choices can make a difference in a situation like last night. And last night was like the Hyperhidrosis Trifecta: 1.) Hot, extremely humid night that kicked off with waiting for a train which was, naturally, late 2.) Seeing husband’s new boss for only the second time, meeting his wife, along with about a dozen other people at the company where my husband just started (thankfully, every single one was really, really nice) 3.) Sitting down in a very hot, packed restaurant and staying seated for about 3 hours.
How many times did I half-stand and pull the fabric off my legs? Twist my skirt around? I was startled by how bad this episode was and how nobody else seemed to be overheated. It could have been so much worse, though. If I had not worn a jersey knit, beautifully patterned maxi dress that I was confident would show nothing, I would have sat there in a near-panic for the entire evening. The food was great, the company I was in was even better; I was enjoying myself in that compartmentalized way that you do when you are struggling with HH silently. You know– trying hard to ignore the discomfort, acting as though you haven’t a care in the world, pushing down the anxiety and the sadness. Pasting that smile on your face.
By the end of the night, I was exhausted. I know my advice is all over this website: Hyperhidrosis is just a disorder… It is what you have, not who you are… If you are uncomfortable about hiding an episode, try honesty… You are not alone… I believe all of these things. I try to practice, literally, what I preach. Sometimes, though, I just yearn to be what I know all the sprays, lotions, products, and even surgery can never make me be: normal. But that’s ok. It will have to be. So, I do the best I can, wearing two very important components: the right clothes and a smile.
Could Your Adolescent Be Suffering From Hyperhidrosis?
Posted by: · on June 2, 2010 | CommentsHere is an article I have written to give parents a “heads up” about hyperhidrosis in adolescence:
Adolescence can be an exciting, emotional, and confusing time in your child’s life as well as yours. As a parent, it can creep up on you… One day, your talkative, adoring, happy child seemingly morphs into a stranger. This stranger behaves as though you are the dullest knife in the drawer, is convinced you can’t dress to save your life, and is capable of eating every potato chip in the house in one sitting. Suddenly, everything about you is an endless source of embarrassment. You must drive in the car with all the windows up just in case your horrifying taste in music or a younger sibling’s voice causes your teenager to keel over in mortification.
All that aside, it is surreal and fascinating to see the physical changes taking place before your eyes! Everything is growing, changing, developing… there is a new game in the house: who is taller than who? Of course, along with these incredible changes usually comes an increasing self-consciousness. Self-consciousness breeds secretiveness. This is normal. You must become, by necessity, two parts detective and one part Nosy Parker. We need to stay on top of all the new dynamics in a teenager’s life, and that takes a lot of ingenuity and persistence.
One of the possible changes your adolescent may face is something that very few parents are aware of: hyperhidrosis. Hyperhidrosis, by definition, is a disorder that causes the body to sweat excessively or inappropriately. Some people develop this in early childhood (I did), but it seems that most cases of hyperhidrosis appear along with the changes brought on by puberty. There are several variations of hyperhidrosis: Axillary Hyperhidrosis (excessive underarm sweat), Palmar Hyperhidrosis (sweaty hands), Plantar Hyperhidrosis (sweaty feet), and CranioFacial Hyperhidrosis and Blushing (sweating and/or blushing of the face and scalp). The most common form of hyperhidrosis is Primary Focal Hyperhidrosis, which is a combination of sweating in the underarms, hands, and feet.
Can you imagine how difficult it would be to have this happen to your body at such a time? A teenager is already dealing with the physical changes of puberty, a new-found awareness of the opposite sex, and the emotional upheavals of hormones-gone-wild. Add to this mix the self-consciousness and secretiveness that accompany adolescence.
The upshot here is that your child could be dealing with the bewildering effects of a disorder they do not know even exists, and could be too ashamed to tell you. In fact, most people who suffer from hyperhidrosis live with it for many years without even knowing it is a medical disorder. I grew up with it and until I was in my 30′s, I thought it was “just me”.
The good news is that there are many others in the world who have this disorder– estimates are that it affects approximately 3% of the global population. Therefore, there are many treatments available, as well as chat forums and websites to be found where those who suffer from hyperhidrosis can go to find helpful information and to share their feelings and frustrations.
If your child starts to exhibit anti-social behavior, won’t allow you to hold his or her hand, sweats through their clothing, or acts depressed for no known reason, try to ask them why. Ask their permission to take them to see a specialist who can help them. For the most part, dermatologists can provide the best medical treatment for this disorder. However, not all dermatologists take hyperhidrosis seriously enough or are not experienced in its treatment. Ask before you bring your child to an appointment, because a doctor who belittles the problem can make things worse.
If you think your adolescent may be dealing with hyperhidrosis, please seek help and find out as much as you possibly can about the disorder. Above all, take it seriously. Living in a body that can “betray” you at any moment is embarrassing, scary and frustrating. Too many children suffer from this alone, in silence, believing he or she is a “freak”. It does not have to be that way.
Start a Website About Hyperhidrosis? Am I Nuts?
Posted by: · on April 15, 2010 | CommentsYou may (or may not!) be wondering how and why I would choose to tell the whole world about my Hyperhidrosis by starting a website about it. Here is how HyperhidrosisAndMe came to be:
Having hidden HH my whole life, I took a really drastic step in the summer of ’09: I made the decision to start up a website about Hyperhidrosis. I was learning about affiliate marketing to help launch a business I was trying to start with 3 partners, when we decided it would be a quicker learning curve if I started my own blog first. I will never forget looking at my sister (one of the partners), holding up my hands, and saying “I could blog about this.” My sister’s eyes got big and she said, “Oh my God! Yes! It would be so good for you! And you could help people!” And in the heat of that moment I was like, “Yeah! It would help people!” Etc, etc, etc. Then of course I rejected that thought because I didn’t think I could ever, ever “come out” in such a big–huge–way. But the idea followed me and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about my years of hiding and how much effort it had all been. For what? So that people would like me for who I wanted them to think I was, but indeed was not? Why not be honest, really honest, for once in my life? It was ironic, how I had painted a picture of myself that I hid behind: my friends praised me for being a genuine person, for being sincere and honest. Genuine and sincere, yet I couldn’t entrust any of them with the ugly, sweaty, embarrassing truth. I know, it sounds like I’m being pretty hard on myself (I’m very good at that!); but that really is the way I lived my life.
The idea of living in integrity started to take root. Some days I wanted to shake it off, though, because the reality of it scared me. Some days I asked myself if I really wanted to immerse myself in a subject that I had spent my life denying. Since my ETS surgery, I had tried so hard to put HH behind me despite the frequent episodes of CS. Perhaps not having my hands sweat as often helped me put enough distance between myself and HH that it allowed me to delve into it; who knows?
After a month or so of going back and forth, I was in Door County, Wisconsin with my family and while on a walk/run (gotta be honest, you can’t call what I do “jogging”), a song on my iPod came on, and that was “it”. I knooooowwwww how corny it sounds but it really happened this way! The song is “Unwritten”; sung and co-written by Natasha Bedingfield. I was on my usual route when I decided to hang a left and labor up a steep hill. The song came on and there I was overlooking the beautiful countryside with the words in my ears blaring:
“Feel the rain on your skin/ No one else can feel it for you/ Only you can let it in/ No one else/ No one else can speak the words on your lips/ Drench yourself in words unspoken/ Live your life with arms wide open/ Today is where your book begins/ The rest is still unwritten….”
The rest of the song– pretty much every word– spoke to me just as clearly. It really was a watershed moment in my life. I don’t remember “walking” back to our resort– just getting to our room, grabbing a notebook and writing down what I intended to be my first blog post. If you read my posts “Hiding In Plain Sight I & II”– indeed, the first posts on this site– except for a little editing, that is what I wrote on that July day.
Yes, I have had moments when I questioned the sanity of baring my soul to strangers. I have been overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information I have had to sift through and the volumes of writing I have had to do to get this right. Again, please forgive my “corny” moments here, but if you are reading this and you start to explore this site and it actually helps you, then I know I am doing exactly what I should be doing.
“Reaching for something in the distance/ So close you can almost taste it/ Release your inhibitions/ Feel the rain on your skin!”
Hyperhidrosis: Hiding in Plain Sight PART II
Posted by: · on March 27, 2010 | CommentsHave you felt like me, that you were the only one? Have fear of discovery and a deeply embedded shame shadowed you as it has me? Those who read this who do not suffer from Hyperhidrosis may have a hard time wrapping their head around the idea of a shame so deep it colors one’s perception of the world. For me, it began in childhood, as it slowly dawned on me that I was different. Other kids could hold hands during a game of Red Rover and actually have fun. Other adolescents could talk about “going steady” with someone and holding hands. Television commercials made sure you knew that sweating was disgusting and something to hide: “never let ‘em see you sweat” and “raise your hand if you’re Sure”. “M&M’s melt in your mouth, not in your hands”. Why did they melt in mine? Oh, I know… because I am a freak. What other explanation was offered to me? In a child’s world– where other children can be so cruel– the only way to survive was to hide it, at all costs. When it is part of your very existence, you get good at it.
Of course, there were occasions where I failed to hide it well enough. Times where out of the blue, a teacher or someone in charge would announce “let’s join hands”. What followed would be the other person’s surreptitious wiping of their hand on their pant leg– and my small death of shame inside with a muttered “…sorry”. Going to Mass every single week became an hourlong strategy session trying to avoid the Handshake of Peace, or God Forbid (!) the joining of hands for the entire “Our Father”. I felt like even God knew I was a freak; after all, wasn’t it He who made me this way? I’m telling you, every part of my life was colored by this!
Somehow, some way, I met someone who did not appear to notice my freakishness. Truth was, of course he noticed, but he did not care. The problem that controlled my life, that ultimately I could not hide from him, mattered not one single bit. He made me feel normal, safe, beautiful. We have been married nineteen years.
About eight years into our marriage, my husband was watching TV and I was fiddling around on our new computer… and I heard a sports announcer say something about a golfer whose hands would sweat because he had a disorder– my head snapped around and of course the name of that so-called disorder was long and unpronounceable… Immediately, I typed the words “sweaty hands” into the search engine, embarrassed, no, mortified, to just be typing those shame-filled words at all– and saw for the first time the word “Hyperhidrosis”. That word told me that I was not alone. I was not some random freak. Maybe, even, there was a cure for this, if it actually was a “disorder”!! So then began the second half of my journey, the part where I could look for answers and even for others out on the Internet who were like me.
Hyperhidrosis: Hiding in Plain Sight PART I
Posted by: · on March 26, 2010 | CommentsAll my life, I have been hiding. I have Hyperhidrosis. People who are like me know and live the meaning of the saying “hiding in plain sight”. I am so good at this. So very good, in fact, that almost no one who knows me– and this includes siblings I am close with– is aware that I have always struggled with this problem. For every single person close to me, I know there have been instances when I have suffered from an all-out episode and managed to conceal from them not only the sweating but also the anxiety, frustration and sadness brought on by the episode. Hyperhidrosis has been an unwelcome, secret guest and has tainted every important moment of my life. And in those moments, I shared with no one the fact that I was struggling. I have always pretended it away; tried to tell myself it didn’t matter. Accepted as inevitable that if something “big” was happening in my life, I would be dealing with sweaty hands, underarms… all of it. With a smile on my face. Can you relate?
I have been able to hide like this because Hyperhidrosis has made me an expert at it. I know what fabric to wear, what clothing colors to stay away from, what products to use. How to sit and how to hold my body. Until I took the drastic step of undergoing ETS surgery nearly 5 years ago, it was my life every day. It was exhausting. Now, it is somewhat easier… but the secrecy and deep shame have remained until now. I have decided that living in fear has got to stop, and if I have been living a secret hell, then there must be others out there (are you out there?) who have been too.
