Nail Biting Alternatives

Nail biters tend to bite our nails for a number of reasons often related to dealing with stress and anxiety. Quitting can be made more difficult depending on those reasons, our recognition of the reasons, and how long we’ve been biting our nails. Another aspect of quitting nail biting is how we can occupy our time and keep our hands busy without biting our nails. What do we do instead of biting our nails? The last thing we want to do is quit nail biting and then relapse and start up again.

There are a number of nail biting alternatives and strategies that we can use to quit nail biting once and for all. We need strategies that not only deal with our triggers and reasons for biting our nails but that also enables us to start new routines that make us forget about using nail biting as a coping strategy in the first place.

Nail Biting Alternatives

As with other habits, the best way to quit nail biting is to use alternatives that make sense for you personally and that may incorporate several or more strategies rather than just one.

Keep Your Hands Busy

It took me awhile to figure out that one of my main reasons for nail biting is to keep my hands busy. I bite and pick nails out of boredom but often just to do something with my hands. It’s just a habit and something that keeps me busy to pass the time.

I find that if I’m busy with something that prevents me from biting my nails – an activity, with work, driving my car to name a few – I don’t even think about biting my nails let alone have an opportunity to do it. Perhaps you find the same: When you are occupied and are engaged, you don’t even think about biting your nails.

Some people will find a way to bite their nails even when they are occupied. If you are one of those people, try keeping yourself busy with something such as a stress ball, silly putty, a fidget spinner or something else that keeps your hands full. Even carrying your cellphone in your hand might help.

Keep Your Mouth Busy

So you have some ideas to keep your hands busy as we just discussed above but what about your mouth? While your first thought might be to eat food to keep your mouth busy, that can create another problem leading to overeating.

Some nail biters find that chewing gum, mints or other hard candy can help to keep you occupied and will cause you to keep your fingers out of your mouth. Something sugar-free is desirable so you also don’t create a new problem with excessive sugar consumption and then damage your teeth.

Another thing to consider trying: Chewing sunflower seeds or something similar that is not only nutritious but crunchy. By mimicking the chewing feeling of your fingernails, something like cracking unshelled sunflower in your mouth is not only a healthy snack to eat but the breaking of the sunflower seeds may help to replace the satisfaction we get from biting our nails. It’s also time-consuming too so it helps to pass the time. Don’t like sunflower seeds? Try roasted pumpkin seeds. Unshelled peanuts or pistachios are great too but they may be higher in calories depending on how they’re prepared.

Self Manicure

Taking care of your nails by trimming them and keeping them short may help to quit nail biting. You can’t bite your nails nearly as well if you deliberately keep them cut short. And we both know how awesome it is to bite off a big nail, don’t we? Can’t do that when your nails are already short though, right?

Use a nail file to shape them so you don’t feel the need to bite off sharp or hanging edges of your nails. By trimming your nails daily you may replace the biting of them with the work you do each day to manicure them. And if you like the result that you see with your “new” look nails, you may be more likely to let them grow and avoid biting or picking them again.

Anti Nail Biting Products

There are a few commercial products that you might consider trying to help dissuade you from biting your nails:

Bitter Nail Polish: Can be used by both males and females. It’s a clear nail polish that gets applied to your fingernails and has a bitter but harmless taste. If you try to bite your nails you won’t get farther than sticking your finger in your mouth before you taste the bitterness. If you tend to pick your nails rather than biting them like I do, it probably won’t help though.

Gloves: Sometimes wearing gloves or special finger covers specifically for nail biters can help you stop yourself from biting your nails as it’s a reminder every time you have to take gloves off to bite your nails that you really shouldn’t have to. If you wear gloves for your job (latex gloves, gloves for warmth or protection, etc) the longer you can leave them on, the more likely you won’t bite your nails and start developing the strength to stop biting them when you aren’t wearing them.

Stress Balls: I first found the benefits of a stress ball at a conference I attended many years ago. If not a stress ball, maybe a golf ball or a fidget spinner or some other object to keep your hands busy and distract you from thinking about biting your nails.

Mouth Guard: Wearing a mouth guard won’t necessarily stop you from biting your nails unless you’re planning on wearing one during the day, which you could, job and lifestyle permitting. A mouth guard is also useful at night in the instance where you grind your teeth which nail biters often do. And if you are in the process of quitting nail biting, you might find that you subconsciously start grinding your teeth as your brain is trying to make up for the lack of nail biting.

Nail Biting Catalysts

We have discussed nail biting triggers already on this website but it’s worth reviewing again and again if you already haven’t done so. Triggers – reasons for biting nails – might be different depending on the person and thus the way you deal with your nail biting may differ too.

My main triggers are boredom and something to do with my hands. At times, it’s also to deal with stress but I’ve been biting and picking my nails so long, that it is pretty much an automatic activity that I barely notice I’m even doing. I think I’m at the point where it’s just a habit and part of my everyday life and the stress and anxiety excuses are just that: Excuses.

Conclusion

It took me a long while to realize that I actually don’t really care about biting my nails. It’s just something to do. The actual nail biting part is just a thing for me to do to tackle boredom, stress, and anxiety but has turned into a habit that is hard to break. I’ve started to figure out that for me, not thinking about biting my nails is the big part. When I don’t think about doing it, I don’t do it. It’s easy for me to bite my nails but I’m finding out that not biting them is not as hard as I thought. Having said that, the hard part is to stop biting them completely and not start again.

You might need to try a few different strategies to stop biting your nails 100%. Some of the popular ones are listed above. You can also learn more about triggers that cause you to bite your nails in the first place to get to the root of the problem.