Trich and folliculitis

So glad I found an active support forum! I'm just coming to realize that my peculiar habits are causing health problems. For about 25 years I have had varying urges to pull out my beard and mustache hair. At first I wasn't even aware I was doing it; at the end of the day my desk at work would be covered with dozens of hairs and I'd have a bald spot on my lip.

Stressful job went away and with it the trich, but it resurfaced a few years later in an odd way. I had a sore spot on the side of my neck, an inch or two outside the normal range of my beard line, and I found that pulling out the lone hair in that spot relieved the tension. But that only lasted until the hair grew back. Over the past decade, the one isolated spot has become two, then three, and now there are four spots -- two on one cheek, one on the other cheek, and the original neck spot -- where I can't stand the feel of hairs growing out of those places so I'm constantly pulling with the tweezers.

In all of these spots, my skin is always infected; a doctor (unaware of the pulling) said it looked like pretty standard folliculitis. Both problems have gone on so long, I'm not really sure which came first... whether the trich caused the folliculitis, or the other way around.

Does anyone else pull at facial hair? And do you also have folliculitis in the spots where you pull?

Took the first step today and hid the tweezers and mirror. I guess if I can't get it under control myself I'll have to go see a shrink... but I'm tired of being in my mid-50s and looking like I still have acne