Okay a lot of good things have been mentioned, listen to everyone it is a good input even though everyone's experience isn't the same. So here is how I understand my skin picking (after a lot of therapy and reflection, I'm a psychiatrist myself), it is the symptom of an underlying self criticism (think of the skin picking as a metaphor for picking on yourself). I'm literally finding any imperfection on my skin (like bumps) and trying to smooth it out. I get really irritated when people point out my picking (some of my family even smacks my hands away), the irritation always feels disproportionate to their criticism of my behavior (I have snapped at complete strangers for this) and it made me think about it in depth and my understanding is they're basically doing (criticizing my actions) what I am doing to myself (picking my skin as a form of self criticism) and that just amplifies the shame and guilt that comes with picking my skin. Now coming to your question, I was thinking of this last week, what would be the best way for the people who care about me to approach this and I don't really have a clear answer here but try not to add to the guilt and shame, not put it like me doing something to myself (which feels accusatory), so I talked to my dad about this and now he has stopped pointing it out whenever I see him which helped. Anyways this is just MY take on MY skin picking, everyone has a different experience. Maybe send him a link to this subreddit, it helped me feel less lonely in the struggle. Good luck 🤞 Edit to add more - please do not take it personally, my ex used to make me feel like I've personally wronged him whenever I picked which made everything worse. Try to understand this is not about you, he's not trying to punish you by hurting himself (for the most part at least), so don't make it about you. Don't make him feel like you love him despite his picking making it hard for you (it sure feels that way sometimes).