How Much Tearing is too Much?

So the way I put my baby dreads in was by grabbing random tufts of hair and backcombing or twisting and ripping them followed by two months of thorough neglect. It was a bad idea. This week I've been spending at least two hours a day tearing at the roots because either:

A) One huge dread's root began to subtly suck in about four dreads worth of roots
B) Multiple dreads have been merging over these two months, or
C) Dreads have matted together completely causing root problems all over the place.

Seriously, this shit is a mess at the moment and I've been ripping a lot. Is there a limit I should place? How detrimental can ripping be? I lose a few hairs every now and then, but never more then seven or eight individual hairs at once. Like, the reason that I knew I had to start ripping was that I could not see my scalp on the top of my head because of all the haywire matting. So, thoughts?

 

Also, I thought I might add, tons of new loose hair comes out of each rip/tear and looks they will form into additional locks-is this normal? I read all of the FAQ's and did searches and I didn't find any clear answers. Thanks in advance.

 

when you start bleeding, you've gone to far

 

Paragraph prz. It's unreadable.

 

It is around six sentences. If you cannot read six consecutive sentences, I do not want your advice.

 

Actually, I don't want to give advice to someone who can't be bothered to paragraph. Good luck.

 

Eye for an eye the world is blind.

 

There might be an app for that!

 

There is no grammatical need to separate this into paragraphs.

 

new lines between a,b, and c would be nice.

 

There you go, whiners. Just kidding.

 

after two months you should seriously not have that much knotting where the degree to which you have to rip on a daily basis is questionable...especially with neglect/natural dreads.....unless you have super bionic cave man hair and do nothing but roll around in bed all day.

 

am i the only one who thought the OP did paragraph??

 

....I don't think that's true about neglect... your hair doesn't happen all at once, it happens one dread at a time, and if you wait, you'll get several dreads behind and end up with some prertty big dreads.. I mean, big dreads are cool, but if thats not your thing, then rip more often while you're neglecting so you keep up.

 

Yeah, it wasn't purely neglect was the thing. I twist and ripped and backcombed for the first week and a half but didn't section or anything. I finished tearing just not too long ago and I'm proud of how they look. Also, it's not that I don't like large ones, it's just that if I pulled upwards on this behemoth one, about eight others in a radius moved as well. I looked at the way the roots were and I realized that if I did not rip, this would just turn into a... I don't even know what.

As for how it knotted so fast, I was equally as surprised. I did not expect something like this to happen until around five or so months which is why I sort of panicked. It's crazy, when I was ripping and pulling out little bits of loose hair I realized how far I've already come because my "dreaded" hair is, on average, about only half of the length.

One more quick thing, in a few sections, the amount of loose hair that was produced from said ripping was enough to have been a whole dread on its own. So, I backcombed three new ones in the most random of places where the product of the rip was a shit-load of hair that was just being unnecessarily eaten up. It wasn't that I didn't want to look at the loose hair, I've got mounds of that, it's just that it was right there in front of me doing nothing but being straight, sitting in a perfect, backcomb-able section.

P.S. I believe the reason for the quick matting and knotting is the fact that I wear a beanie cap probably 50% of the time that I am awake. I don't wax or do anything else except for the occasional tip rolling even though I know it's pointless and I wash my hair once every three or so days usually with only water but sometimes, on occasion when my hair just feels nasty, this green shampoo called Prell that claims to have "no unwanted residue" (makes me wonder if there is a such thing as 'wanted residue').

Anyway, thanks.

 

A beanie will do it. watch out, it can also give you flat/painful roots...

 

well then rip as needed...it wont hurt your progress or anything.

 

Dude, I thought your non-paragraphical communication was sufficent.

 

Sounds like it's knotting up well in any case. Any pictures?

 

Since we're reviving old threads I guess I'll add that normal (read:non-dreaded) people lose 40-120 hairs a day.