TIARNE MENZIES’ long lustrous hair was her pride and joy.

    The 19-year-old lovingly maintained her brunette mane, which she called her “crowning glory.”

    But to her horror, the Australian teen awoke one night in October last year to discover clumps of her hair on her pillow.

    “It was the middle of the night when I woke suddenly,” Menzies, from Sydney’s Narraweena, said. “A burning sensation prickled my scalp. And there, coiled around my fingers, were long strands of my thick, dark hair.”

    Menzies initially thought her hair was shedding, but after a few weeks of waking to more and more hair on her pillow, she realized she was pulling it out herself.

    After discounting alopecia, her GP diagnosed Menzies with trichotillomania.

    Sometimes associated to depression or anxiety, trichotillomania is an incurable impulse disorder where sufferers have the compulsive urge to pull out their hair.

    Eventually, Menzies took control back by shaving her hair off completely in February, and said she felt a sense of relief.

    (SD-Agencies)