New DU Group for people with chronic skin diseases. Please support us!

I would like to start a DU Group for people with chronic skin diseases. Like people with weight problems, people with serious skin diseases are often hiders. They, like overweight people, are ashamed of the way they look, are ridiculed, vigorously shunned, and pitied. Most of us have looked like accidents, or an accident about to happen more than once in our lives, and the pain and suffering of erupting skin is a hell that we experience in a way people with normal skin never visit.

People with skin diseases need to come out of the closet. That's one of the first ways to start healing. But usually we're too afraid to come out in public, too ashamed of how we look. But if we could talk to each other, share, and know that we're not alone, and support each other, it would help us to not feel so ashamed, and maybe to take the first toddling steps towards community with others just like ourselves.

Also, there needs to be some kind of movement for people with skin diseases to get Disability, Workers Compensation, etc., none of which are available to us, and we need it desperately. Some people break out so bad that they become incapacitated and cannot work, or shouldn't until they start to recover. The recovery process is long, painful, extremely stressful, and is when we feel the most alone. Some of us suffer from anxiety attacks, severe depression, the list is endless.

But we are the group you never hear about, because although some of us are overweight,etc., most people would rather be anything than disfigured. But I think its time people knew about us. I think its time that we stopped hiding. At some point we must start accepting ourselves, stop thinking of ourselves as Lepers so we can heal,and start taking part in this world we live in.

But we really need the support of others who understand what it means to be shunned because of their appearance, and the difficulty they have in stopping doing the things which make it worse. In the case of people with skin diseases, etc., the biggest compulsion is to just scratch. In time, this becomes something you even when you are not itching. We become preoccupied with our skin, worrying it, bothering it, so that it does not heal. And, we often eat things that make our skin worse like wheat, citrus fruits chocolate, and other things.

I'm appealing to the weight-loss maintenance group for obvious reasons. I think our experience is such that we will feel a great deal of empathy for those suffering with chronic and acute skin diseases. I've had eczema all my life, and though I'm much better now, it caused me so much suffering and tears. I hid from everyone. I was so ashamed, and it would have made me feel so much better to have someone who was going through the same thing to talk to. We could have helped each other.

Anyway, if you see the need for this, please sign on so that people with eczema can have a forum where they can talk. We might be surprised at how much they can bring to the Democratic Underground Forum. I know when I was young and suffering with eczema, my pain made me connect with others in pain, and I wanted to change things. I bet a lot of other people with skin diseases feel exactly the same way.

let me know how I can help...