You cannot expect to stop biting your nails overnight.
I recently read this statement on a medical website. The funny thing is that after starting the End Nail Biting website and spending more and more time researching and thinking about my nail biting habit, I pretty much did quit overnight. Quite literally. And I’m 50 years old and have been a nail biter for as long as I can remember.
So while I challenge the statement that you can’t expect to stop biting your nails overnight I admit that if it were that easy for all of us, presumably I’d have quit years (decades?) ago, right? And let’s face it: Nail biting is an easy habit to start, quit and pick up again. And to then quit and pick up the habit again a few more times.
While older school methods to quit nail biting like applying bitter nail polish are still used, newer methods tend to focus on behavioral treatments: Getting to the root cause of your nail biting and focusing on learning how to deal with various triggers and either avoiding them or minimizing their ability to cause you to bite or pick your nails. And while you might be able to finally quit nail biting literally overnight like I did, it could take weeks of consistent non-nail biting or longer for you to finally kick the habit for the long term ie. for good. And rather than focusing on a time frame to quit nail biting which you may not attain and then feel like you’ve failed, a better strategy is to begin to decrease your nail biting and picking over time ultimately leading to quitting for good.
In that regard, quitting nail biting for good is something that you will need to keep working at since it’s such an easy habit to start again. Here’s how you can start to quit once and for all.
Determine Your Triggers
We’ve talked about trigger(s) – the reason(s) you bite your nails – numerous time on this website but it is worth repeating. Common triggers for nail biting include stress, anxiety, boredom, anger, frustration or just something to do with your hands.
I have bitten my nails for so long I really didn’t think too much about the why part to be frank. It wasn’t until I really started thinking about it that I realized that my main reason for biting and picking my nails was that it’s just something to do. So when I identified that, I became aware that I personally don’t really have a real reason to bite them. I wasn’t trying to deal with something like stress or anxiety or even boredom for the most part. I caught myself picking my nails when I was watching tv and even while I was working on this website (!) so it wasn’t boredom. It was just opportunity.
So when I started catching myself picking my nails, I stopped doing it. And one day of no picking and biting nails became two, which became a week and now I’m up to over three weeks and counting. Which is not something I’ve managed to do for decades. In the past week I’ve trimmed my nails twice. Last time I cut my nails? Probably 30 years ago.
Be Persistent
As I realized a long time ago, quitting nail biting often (always?) requires persistence. It’s such an easy habit to start but a difficult one to break. Smoking is a habit that requires you to buy cigarettes. When you run out you have to buy more. Drinking alcohol also involves purchasing your vice repeatedly.
But nail biting is something that requires no purchase and doesn’t appear to immediately have a long-lasting side effect. It’s not like we experience side effects like smelly clothing with cigarettes or a hangover with excessive drinking. Nail biting does have side effects – some serious – but we tend not to see these side effects immediately if at all so the impetus to quit often isn’t there. So persistence is required to quit and stay quit.
Set Goals
This sounds cheesy especially as a guy but I have to admit I look at my nails now that I’m no longer biting or picking them and feel like it’s an achievement. I found that when I first stopped biting my nails for a few days it felt like an accomplishment. I liked the look of having normal looking nails and couldn’t believe how easy it was for me to stop. Of course I’ve quit nail biting before and then started biting them again so this time, I didn’t let myself get too cocky in case I fell off the wagon yet again.
Before I knew it, I was one week in and had almost forgotten to pick or bit my nails. And when I got the urge, I noticed I was doing it and stopped. I started to feel good about the fact that I wasn’t picking or biting my nails and in the rare case when I started to pick them (I’m more a nail picker than biter) I felt bad and stopped.
Which leads to the next point.
Monitor Your Nail Biting
Something I also learned awhile ago is that my nail biting and picking was almost subconscious. I would sometimes look at my nails at the end of the day and think I don’t even remember biting or picking them today. How and when did they get so short? I couldn’t actually recall when I had last bit my nails although clearly I had. But when I started paying attention to my nail biting and picking habit, I became more aware of when I was doing it and could focus on stopping.
Quit Slowly If Needed
I went close to cold turkey with quitting nail biting and picking and just stopped completely. Perhaps it will work for you too. If not, stop biting one nail at a time and work your way up until you aren’t biting any nails.
I found that I have always picked and bitten my right hand far more frequently and to a greater degree than my left hand. My left hand always had longer nails. So if the cold turkey thing didn’t work, I could have tried to completely stop biting nails on my left hand since I wasn’t really doing it that much anyways and then work on quitting the left hand too. The same strategy may work for you.
Trim Your Nails
Once you start letting them grow for a few days or longer and they start to grow over the tip of your finger, consider clipping your nails or filing them to keep them short and manicured. It will help to avoid the urge to bite them. And by filing them and keeping them tidy, you won’t have a need to start picking or biting the edges to straighten them out.
If they’re already short and trimmed, you don’t really have an excuse to bite or pick them, right? Regular trimming and filing may help you trick yourself into replacing the picking and biting with this instead.
Look For Help
One thing that I never even considered to help quit nail biting was seeking help from a medical professional. In my case my nail biting has never been due to emotional issues or anxiety that I’m aware of, but your situation might be different. In my case it was just a habit I’d developed over time and hadn’t put a great deal of effort into stopping. I also never bit my nails so bad that it caused a bad infection or damage that required medical attention so I never really thought that I needed help per se. I just needed – as it turned out – to clearly think about why I bite my nails and consciously try to stop doing it.
So while you could try bitter nail polish or another option to quit, try wearing gloves or another hand covering, or even consider hypnosis, you could alternatively head straight to your doctor to get a referral to another medical professional who may offer a better solution rather than a band-aid.
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