How can a person who has bitten or picked their nails (or both) for years or even decades suddenly quit cold turkey?
That’s what I did.
I bit and mostly picked my nails from as early as I can remember until the age of 50 when starting this website End Nail Biting spurred me to quit once and for all.
I literally went from consciously and subconsciously biting and picking my nails every single day without fail to completely stopping in the span of about 10 days.
In the 11 months since I started this website, it has almost been around that time that I quit biting and picking my nails. I started this website to discuss the nail biting and picking habit and figured that perhaps I could learn more about the habit, why I do it and how to stop.
And about 10 days after starting this website and writing multiple articles in that short period of time, I found myself no longer wanting to bite and pick my nails. While I continued to pick my nails albeit not as frequently, I started to immediately catch myself and stop doing it. Within days of this, I stopped completely.
11 months later I haven’t started again. In fact, I don’t even think about biting or picking my nails at all, at any time or for any reason whatsoever.
Nail biting and picking is no longer something I even consider anymore.
What happened?
I think there were a few steps involved that helped quit. Perhaps they can help you too.
Starting the End Nail Biting website
While I’m not suggesting you need to start up a website like I did, I think there is a bigger picture here. I realized very quickly that even though I had been a nail biter for decades, I didn’t really know my own habits.
It wasn’t until I actually began writing articles on this site that I realized that I’m actually more of a nail picker than biter. While I would bite my nails, I tended to pick at them more often.
I also noticed – I was actually aware of this already – that I tended to always have shorter nails on my right hand. In other words, I tended to pick and bite my nails on my right hand more so than the left hand. My left hand fingernails were actually fairly decent in terms of length at any given time. It was the right hand fingernails that were always much shorter.
I am right-handed but am somewhat ambidextrous and actually use my left hand for precision things like throwing, using tools and things of that nature. I guess that’s why I used my left hand to pick nails on my right hand more than the other way around.
Learning point: Pay attention to specifics about your habit. Do you mostly bite and/or pick nails? Which hand or both? When? What triggers you to bite/pick your nails? How difficult is it to stop? Does it occur at certain times of the day? And so on.
The more I paid attention to my specific habit of picking my nails, the more I noticed every time it happened and I was able to put a stop to it once and for all.
Reading about the side effects
Once you start learning about all the potential health side effects of nail biting whether to your nails, mouth, jaw, teeth and stomach, the sooner you’ll probably want to quit.
Increased chance of mouth and fingernail infection. Jaw pain. Cracked or broken teeth. Stomach problems and viruses entering your body.
If you wear braces, you might be unaware – as I was during the 4+ years I wore full train track style braces – how much biting your nails places stress upon your teeth down to the roots. You can do tremendous long term damage to your teeth by continuing to bite your nails while wearing braces.
Learning point: Once you realize the list of potential side effects that exist, it might scare you straight and you’ll quit sticking your fingers in your mouth for that reason alone. And we’re not even talking about COVID although that’s a great reason to quit too. Even just picking your nails is a dirty habit that cause you health trouble for your fingers and finger nails, mouth, jaw and more.
Becoming aware of how prevalent it was
Once I realized how prevalent my nail picking was, I was able to put more of an effort into quitting. I suddenly discovered how subconscious it was. I did it and barely noticed.
Some days I’d look at my nails in the evening and could see they were shorter than at the beginning of the day but I couldn’t remember actually biting or picking them. It was that bad.
Learning point: Pay attention to how prevalent your nail biting and/picking is. Write it down every time you do it and keep a diary for a few days if you have to. The more you learn about your habit, the better you’ll be prepared to quit.
Realizing that quitting takes effort
Biting or picking your nails is a hard habit to quit. While other habits often involve buying something – excess alcohol consumption or smoking cigarettes to name but two – nail biting is one that requires no cost, nothing to buy and you can literally quit and start doing it again without even knowing about it.
The interesting thing I found though is that once I had quit for a short period of time – several weeks when I think about it – I literally put no further effort after that time to continue not biting my nails.
At this point in time I no longer even think about biting or picking my nails. It’s just not something I even think about doing anymore.
Learning point: You really do need to put forth an effort to quit. If you don’t, you run the risk of continually going through a cycle of quitting and starting the habit again and then giving up quitting completely.
Becoming motivated to quit and not start again
It was my time to quit. That’s why I ultimately quit nail biting and picking and why I haven’t started doing it again. If I wasn’t motivated to quit I wouldn’t have done so. I finally decided I had had enough and no longer wanted to bite or pick my nails any more.
If my motivation level dropped enough, I’d have started nail biting and picking again after I quit. But as mentioned, I have found that I effectively eliminated nail biting and picking from my life completely. Once I put the initial effort into quitting, it really wasn’t that hard.
And this was a habit I had been taking part in for over 40 years.
Learning point: Figure out what will motivate you to quit. Perhaps it’s the embarrassment of your chewed up nails. Maybe it’s the bleeding fingers and pain caused when your nails get so short they hurt (I’ve been there). Perhaps it’s something else.
Maybe like me, you simply decide it’s your time to quit.
Final thoughts
If you haven’t already done so, check out the most detailed article on this website which I called Personal Nail Biting Case Study. It chronicles my entire nail biting and nail picking experience from start to finish to help you quit once and for all just like I did.
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