Nail Biting And Anxiety

Nail biting can occur for a number of reasons and one that is often mentioned is anxiety. Having said that, it’s not necessarily a unanimous opinion and people have differing views on the subject.

Some medical professionals suggest that anxiety has a relationship with nail biting:

Nail biting is associated with anxiety, because the act of chewing on nails reportedly relieves stress, tension, or boredom.

Psychology Today

They do however couch their language with the word reportedly as if to suggest that people say they bite their nails to combat anxiety without any proof.

Other medical professional come right out and suggest that the anxiety reason for nail biting is overblown.

Nail biting usually occurs as a result of boredom or working on difficult problems rather than anxiety. 

NCBI

Who is correct?

Nail Biting Causes

Over the years, research on nail biting has been relatively scant although more recently an increasing number of studies have been done attempting to get to the bottom of why people bite their nails. Numerous triggers have been suggested and studied that theorize why we bite and pick our nails:

Oral fixation: In the early 1900s, German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud posited that nail biting was an oral fixation that fulfilled a nail biter’s need for oral stimulation. This theory has been debunked and is no longer one that is discussed.

Anxiety and Nervousness: Anxiety has long been suspected of being a trigger for nail biting. We get anxious or nervous and start biting or picking nails or perhaps chewing on a pen or pencil as a coping mechanism. Maybe we’re waiting for a test result and expect bad news. Perhaps it’s done while watching a scary movie. Or perhaps it’s a fear due to a decision we’ve made recently and now we worry we made the wrong choice. Anxiety can run in families and can be inherited from one or both parents.

Stress: Perhaps we could lump this in with anxiety and nervousness. When we’re under stress – maybe on a work deadline or before a big test at school – stress can cause people to engage in activity to deal with it such as nail biting or hair pulling.

Boredom and Frustration: Nail biting, hair twirling, foot tapping and other repetitive activities have long been associated with being bored or frustrated. We respond accordingly by picking or biting fingernails.

Oral aggression: A Turkish study from 1988 concluded that nail biting was more related to oral aggression than anxiety. It studied Turkish students and determined that it’s a form of aggression against ourselves. Other studies have gone further and referred to nail biting as thus a form of self-hatred or mutilation although this would have to be pretty severe to be diagnosed this way and may not apply for even chronic nail biters who have other reasons for doing it.

Something to keep our hands busy: Personally, this is the reason that I have determined was most at play for me. I found myself just biting and picking nails for no real reason and just for something to do. It became such a self-conscious habit that I often found it hard to even recall when during a particular day I had bitten my nails. I just knew I was doing it since I hadn’t had a reason to cut or trim my nails in decades. I didn’t even own my own pair of nail clippers because I never needed to.

Learned behavior: There is debate on this subject but some medical professionals suggest that children are more likely to bite their nails if a member(s) of their family does, too. Children see a relative like a parent(s) biting or picking their nails and they do it too. Again, this is a debatable subject and no definitive research appears to exist but it is promoted by some people.

Heredity: Similar to being a learned behavior, there are some who believe that genetics may play a role in nail biting. In this case, frequent nail biting is believed to have a genetic association but the research was also clear that nail biting in general terms doesn’t necessarily fall into this category and is more a case of one or more of the above-mentioned triggers such as boredom or stress.

Perfectionism: 2015 Research from the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry suggests that nail biting may be a result of perfectionism and that people bite their nails to combat when they are unable to complete a task or goals that they set for themselves. Researchers suggested that the side effects of this perfectionism – frustration, impatience and dissatisfaction when they can’t complete a task – is manifested through nail biting.

Summary

Does this look like a complete list of reasons that a person could bite their nails? Over time, certain reasons such as the oral fixation trigger listed first have been debunked and dropped. But the others are certainly open for discussion.

Personally, I have bitten and picked my nails due to anxiety, stress, boredom, nervousness and just for something to do. Perhaps your list of reasons is different.

So overall and in summary, why do we bite and pick our nails?

It Depends

I think the correct answer when considering the reason(s) people bite the nails is….

…it depends.

It depends on the:

Person: People bite their nails for different reasons. We can’t lump all of us in the same boat because we all have different personalities, different lives and different stresses. We also deal with things differently from one person to another.

Situation: We may also deal with things differently depending on the situation. In some situations we may deal with it by biting our nails and some we won’t. Not all situations merit us biting our nails and in some cases we may simply be unable to bite our nails due to the circumstances at the time.

Degree: A person who bites their nails once in awhile can’t be compared to someone who bites their nails down to the cuticle and damages their fingers and causes themselves pain. Similarly a person who consistently bites their nails but just does it so that the nails are short enough that they never need to cut their nails isn’t necessarily the same as someone who is constantly getting finger infections and may require medical attention for their nail biting.

The bottom line? Until we’re convinced otherwise, people bite their nails for many reasons including the ones listed above. So we need to concentrate on determining our own personal triggers, changing our behavior and looking for ways to quit the habit once and for all.