Is Nail Biting A Sign Of Mental Illness?

I started biting my nails when I was very young. I know I was a nail biter from an early age but I can’t recall exactly what year I started. The earliest specific memory I have was at around age 10 when I had clearly been biting my nails for some time when my mum offered to pay me $10 – the sum of $1 per nail – if I stopped biting them. So I stopped biting them.

But then I started biting them again and when I didn’t stop, my mum got her $10 back and that was the end of that. That was 40 years ago give or take and I’ve been biting and picking my nails ever since. I mostly pick nails rather than bite them.

Mental Illness? OCD?

Some people wonder if nail biting is a sign of mental illness, which sounds pretty harsh especially as a long time nail biter and picker myself. Others suggest that it’s a bad but learned habit. Or a sign of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). In 2012 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM 5) classified nail biting as just that: OCD. This was much to the chagrin of many detractors who suggested that this was painting too general a picture of what nail biting really is.

Up until this time, the most well-known OCD tendencies were things like repeated hand washing, checking door locks and things of that nature. As the name suggests, it’s an obsessive and compulsive need to do this activity. So it’s an urge to do it over and over again rather than a genuine desire to do so.

I don’t know about you but not once do I ever recall saying to myself I really need to bite my nails right now. I never even thought about it. I just did it. There really wasn’t much planning that went on. And I never felt I had an urge to do it. If I think about it, I just liked doing it. There’s a satisfaction of biting off a big nail quite frankly. That doesn’t sound compulsive to me. I like doing it and I certainly don’t obsess about it either.

Other research suggests that nail biters might be perfectionists. That we bite and pick nails out of frustration when we can’t finish a task that we want to get done or are otherwise exasperated by our inability to achieve something. That might explain things for some nail biters but I personally don’t see any correlation.

Triggers

Before I started this website, I honestly never gave it much thought over the years as to why I bite and pick my nails. I just did it. I guess from time to time I would think about why I did it but I never felt it was compulsive. I pick and bite my nails because I want to. The triggers that other people report as the reason for this habit didn’t really apply to me, I realize with hindsight.

Nail biting certainly didn’t appear to hurt me. I never bit my nails so that they bled or anything that severe. Of course, I now realize all the damage nail biting can do to teeth, jaw, and overall health in general but at the time it seemed like I could bite my nails, they’d grow back, I’d bite them again and the cycle would keep repeating. No harm done, I thought. In fact I never even considered possible side effects. I didn’t put any time into thinking about what I was doing when biting and picking nails. I just did it.

Reflection

Then an interesting thing happened. The more time I spent on this website – wiring about my thoughts about nail biting and picking, reading research, putting together thoughts as to what I’ve tried to help me quit – the more I realized that the typical reasons for nail biting really don’t apply to me, at least not anymore.

While in the past, I bit and picked my nails on occasion if I was stressed or anxious or even bored, once I started working on this website and began to monitor my own nail biting activity, I realized I was actually biting my nails for one specific reason.

Because I felt like it.

That was it. I was picking (mostly) and biting (not as much) my nails because I chose to do so. I chose to do it although it had become so natural I sometimes couldn’t recall actually picking or biting my nails when I reflected about when I remembered last doing it. Given that I hadn’t cut or clipped my fingernails in decades I was clearly doing it enough that I didn’t need a nail clipper. Never owned one actually.

But the more I monitored my activity, the more I realized that I’m actually a nail picker and not so much a nail biter. I also realized that I tend to pick and bite my nails just for something to do. As I’ve mentioned before, I found myself picking nails while watching tv, working on my laptop, sitting at a table at someone else’s house. I even picked my nails while working on this website, End Nail Biting. It wasn’t until I really started looking at my behavior that I realized that nail picking and biting for me is just something I did to keep my hands busy.

Cold Turkey

So I stopped doing it. I basically just quit, cold turkey.

As of writing this, it has been around one month since I stopped picking and biting my nails. I don’t even know the exact date. Not that I’m comparing it to other vices but I often hear people stating the exact date they gave up drinking, drugs, gambling or whatever. I didn’t even bother noting the date even though I’ve had this habit for maybe 40 years! You’d think I would have marked the occasion.

For me, I had been working on this website for about 2 weeks and I started picking and biting my nails less. Then one day I basically decided to stop completely. For a few days, I’d catch myself picking my nails – while working on this website – but that was the key for me: I started paying attention to every time I went to pick my nails. And this time, I immediately stopped when I noticed I was doing it.

This to me was the key to quitting. And now about one month later, I feel confident to say that I have about 95% kicked the nail biting and picking habit. I very rarely start to pick one nail but I quickly stop. In the past 2 weeks, I’ve clipped my fingernails twice with nail clippers. In the past 30+ years, I cut my fingernails precisely never. So that’s a good sign I’d say.

Nail Biting As Mental Illness Or OCD

I’m self-diagnosing myself here but I don’t see it. I don’t agree that for me personally, either designation applies now or in the past. While earlier in life I may have picked and bit my nails to combat stress, anxiety or boredom, I recently made the discovery that the main and consistent reason was a choice. I just did it for something to do the same way I sometimes tap my foot while I’m working away.

I think too often these days, people feel the need to stick a label on things and put everything into a box that can easily be labeled just for the sake of putting a name on it. People bite and pick nails for different reasons. And sometimes – as in my case I believe – the reason is for no reason at all. We just do it. Until we quit just like I did.

Learning Points

If you’ve tried other methods to quit nail biting with no luck – bitter nail polish, gloves, etc – try what I did. I really noticed a difference when I started thinking about what I was doing. I mentally noted every time I was picking my nails. I thought in the past that every time my wife or younger daughter would make a comment about me picking my nails that I was thinking about it, but I wasn’t.

Really think about every time you catch yourself biting or picking your nails.

Keep a written journal or open your cellphone Notepad and make a note each time you do it. Then look back at the end of each day and look at when and where you were when you started picking and biting nails. Ask yourself if there was a reason you did so each time.

In my case, I found that the triggers for nail biting wasn’t (for me) as important as simply identifying the fact that personally, I really don’t need to bite my nails anymore. That’s why I was able to stop. It may be the same for you. It might be different.

But it may work for you just like it worked for me. Trust me, I’ve been biting my nails so long – at least 40 years – that I guess I assumed that it was just something I couldn’t quit. I was wrong. I quit because I realized I don’t actually need to do it. And quite frankly it was easier than I thought. All I needed to do – other than start this website it seems – was to really focus on every time I bit and picked my nails and come to the realization that the key to quitting was actually quitting.

If you’d still like to learn more about strategies for quitting nail biting and picking, check out my pages on How To Quit Biting Your Nails and How To Quit Picking Your Nails.