Pulling your hair out

The phrase "that just makes me want to pull my hair out" has origins that go back to Egypt and Greece and the Christian Bible, but probably has most connection to an obsessive/compulsive syndrome disorder.

In ancient Egypt, hair pulling was a customary part of a funeral ritual. A sculpture relief in Gizah clearly shows a man holding his arms up and pulling his hair in two opposite directions. Other reliefs and paintings show women in funeral processions plucking hairs from the top of their heads.

In some countries, that practice has carried into modern times. A 2017 news report in "International Business Times" began, "Crying one's heart out, pulling one's hair and beating one's head during funerals are all considered as signs of love and respect for the deceased in several parts of Tajikistan." Ironically, the substance of the article was about a government ban on such practices in favor of less showy methods of mourning.

Hair pulling was not solely associated with funerals. Sometimes it was motivated by anger and frustration in the same way that we use the phrase today. Ezra describes such an incident in the Bible book of that name. Ezra 9:3 describes Ezra's reaction to finding that the Chosen People had intermarried with neighboring people: "And when I heard this thing, I rent my garment and my mantle, and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard, and sat down astonied."

Aristotle mentioned hair pulling in his Nicomachean Ethics (Bk VII, Chapter 5) in a section attempting to explain why a person can know a thing is wrong, and yet do it anyway. He concedes that sometimes the wrong action can "arise as a result of disease," while others simply are the result of "custom" or repeated exposure to the repetition of a wrong action. Two examples he gives are "the habit of plucking out the hair or of gnawing the nails."

In more modern times psychologists put extreme hair pulling in the disease category, naming the condition trichotillomania, from the Greek word "thrix" meaning "hair," "tillein" meaning "to pull," and "mania" meaning "madness." It is a mental disorder within the obsessive/compulsive syndrome that manifests as the uncontrollable need to continuously pull out strands of one's own hair. Severe cases result in bald patches on the head or eyebrows. Episodes are triggered by anxiety.

In fact, anxiety and distress seems to be at the base of all hair pulling, whether it be because of the loss of a loved one, exasperation at seeing one's plans fall apart or frustration at restrictions associated with COVID-19. Best, however, to stick with the metaphorical version, unless you want to look like the fellow in the picture above.