my own receding hairline experience

I don’t know that this is the best place to spout about this situation of mine. I’ve never written here and have heard there’s a lot of continuity of mindset here with using the FDA stuff only, and contentiousness from arguments made here and there, but I reckon we’re all united by this strange, unsettling and really quite difficult experience of hairloss, and all with our own peculiarities as all are different. Well here’s mine, and if anyone strangely relates, feel free to message me or comment here.

I had kind of a traumatic thing with my hair when I was 9 - I had a nervous compulsion to pluck them out without thinking. I was more or less bald for a year, which was horrible. I’m almost 30 now, but when I was 24 and in a real nervous rut, I thought I saw I was thinning in the back. I wasn’t; I was paranoid as heck. But my paranoia continued for many months - I would check it multiple times a day. My crown was full, my hairline completely full. It went on till I was 25, when I checked with a doctor who said it was all fine, and I trusted that. Then one night, I woke up on a dime at 2:00am or so, and my hairline was just on my mind. I went downstairs and it was significantly lifted on one side, temple thinning. So I really freaked out then. And since then, my hairline has receded tremendously. So, it’s just very peculiar. I know people here post their stories for relatability, and it’s almost like I mentally induced mine or unleashed it. Maybe not. I just still find that timing absolutely baffling and very troubling. Everywhere else still is full, but my hairline and temples have just really gone to hell the last four years. I also do have that gunky yellowish oily dandruff stuff along my hairline. Maybe that sebum stuff is an aggravator and I should try something with that to slow it, I don’t know. But I’ve done minoxidil which maybe slowed it, but I had puffy eyes. And finasteride there’s no way I can see myself doing for so many reasons. That’s just me and my body. So I don’t know. But like anyone who doesn’t know their specific make-up and reasons, I feel that. And am confused and troubled by it too. I will say having been through so much mental hell with it, even over a year before it started, there are better phases to come with it for anyone in the grip of obsessive hell with it. And I hope you try and go outside, enjoy things, because there is real access to that too - the silent acquisition of beauty and self-love that is completely your own is as personal and particular as your journey with this stuff. And I want to communicate that that too is to be found, and that I think we’re all on this journey for some reason to be discovered, all our own, and that there really is relief in a real way to be found in simple moments or epiphanic along the way - to each their own.

You’re right hair loss is such a personal struggle. Mental, physical. The timing of your hairline change could be tied to genetics, hormones, or even scalp issues like the oily dandruff you mentioned. Treat yourself for seb derm. But you’re so right—there’s more to life than obsessing over this…