Body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) are intense urges like biting, picking, and pulling that can cause damage. 

While BFRBs share some symptoms with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety disorders or impulse control disorders, they’re not the same! 

They can be dismissed as “bad habits” and they are also different from “self-harming rituals”.

If someone in your family has a BFRB, you’re more likely to have one, too. Other things that might play a role include your personality, the amount of stress in your life, your childhood, and even the age you first started showing signs of a BFRB.