“Welcome to Plathville” Star Moriah Plath Opens Up to Her Dad, Says Childhood Alopecia Made Her Feel ‘Ugly’

In a new episode of the reality show, Moriah Plath told her dad how getting childhood alopecia — a disease that causes hair loss — made her feel like ‘nobody will ever love you’

Moriah Plath is opening up about her struggle with childhood alopecia.

"I would look myself in the mirror and I would say, 'You are ugly. Nobody will ever love you,'" she recalls in a new episode of the TLC reality show Welcome to Plathville.

“When I was a little girl, when I was 3 years old, I lost all my hair for several years completely, not even eyebrows or eyelashes," explains Moriah, who at 20 is the second oldest daughter of Barry and Kim Plath's nine children.

"I was completely bald,” she says in a clip from the episode, shared by Today.

Continuing to share her struggle in a confessional, Moriah says, “The doctors said it was alopecia but it was like a rare kind of alopecia cause it just all fell out immediately and came back years later," she says. “Everywhere I went, I was made fun of by kids my age: [at] church, [by] my siblings. And that’s when I really started to see myself as different.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

According to the National Institute of Health, alopecia areata occurs when  “the immune system attacks hair follicles and causes hair loss.”

It usually affects the head and face, with the most common type being “patchy alopecia areata,” where a person develops coin-sized bald spots on the scalp or elsewhere. But more severe cases can cause hair loss all over the body.

The disease's cause in unknown. “Researchers do not fully understand what causes the immune attack on hair follicles, but they believe that both genetic and environmental (non-genetic) factors play a role, according to NIH.

Related: Jada Pinkett Smith Shares Photo of Her Hair's ‘Come Back’ as She Continues to Deal with Alopecia

While sharing a meal with her father Barry, the two discussed the mental and emotional impact of the disease on Moriah, who said in her confessional that she’d made sure “every single one of my family members knew never to show a picture of me when I was younger to anybody. And never to tell anybody.”

“I just wanted to completely block that as something that happened to me," she said.

And as she tells Barry, "Once I got my hair back, it was just like, 'Okay, that's not me anymore. Let's forget about that.' You know, I asked everybody to just not talk about it," she says.

"Right, but now it's okay to talk about it," he says.

While she says she felt different, Moriah tells her father that "I mean, I was different. You didn't treat me different.”

In fact, she adds, “I think you and mom were the only ones that actually told me I was beautiful. Her dad, clearly moved, says, “You remember that, right?”

Related: London Marathoner with Alopecia Responds to Social Media Troll Who Said She Looks Like a 'Sick, Ugly Man'

But Moriah also told her father she had some misplaced anger and struggled with bullies at school, which contributed to self-esteem issues.

"For a while I was angry because you guys couldn't fix it and you were my parents and you were supposed to fix it, but you couldn't," she says.

Barry Plath replies, "We were all helpless."

“The doctor said you couldn’t, and they didn’t know what to do,” she said. “That’s not your fault.”

“I’m just sorry that children sometimes being cruel children did what they did," he says.

"The words really affected me," she says.

Her father agrees, saying, “They cut like knives sometimes.”

Welcome to Plathville airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.