Nail Biting Consequences (Does Punishment Help?)

Nail biting is a difficult habit to break. If it wasn’t we’d have all quit by now and been done with it once and for all. One of the difficulties with quitting nail biting is that it’s a bad habit that doesn’t cost anything in terms of money like other habits such as smoking so there is no cost incentive to quit. We also feel like we’re not really doing any damage since we bite our nails and in a few days they’ve grown back.

Of course, we have spoken on this website about the health problems that can arise from chronic nail biting including to the teeth and the associated costs that may come with it, even if we don’t realize it.

So how do we stop doing it? Research has shown that punishment (especially to children who bite their nails) doesn’t work. Bitter nail polish might work but if you stop using it or simply pick your nails and don’t actually bite them, it won’t help. Plus, bitter nail polish is really just masking the symptom rather than getting to the root of the problem. Instead, a better way would be to target the root of the problem – your nail biting triggers – and learn about why you bite your nails, when you bite them and determine how to avoid doing it moving forward.

Here are some thoughts on getting to the root of the problem of nail biting.

Psychotherapy

Can we teach ourselves to not bite our nails? The limited research on the issue of psychotherapy seems to suggest that we can. While children can be taught at a young age about how to combat nail biting, it may take longer for adults to kick the habit since many of us have been biting our nails for as long as we can remember. Nail biting is more ingrained and has become a natural and frequent part of our regular daily life.

But other research has also shown that while nail biting is common among children and young adults, the frequency of nail biting often decreases around the age of 18. Do some nail biters outgrow the habit? Do they simply get tired of being embarrassed by their nails? Or is it another reason? Nail biters often say that they are powerless to stop nail biting. I can certainly say that I feel that way and in fact don’t even notice sometimes when I do it. How can we stop doing something when we do it subconsciously without thought?

Nail Biting Behavior

For many nail biters, there is a trigger(s) that causes them to bite their nails. These commonly include stress, anxiety, boredom, anger, and others. However modern research has suggested that anxiety isn’t a major cause of nail biting but several other mentioned reasons are:

Nail biting in young adults occurs as a result of boredom or working on difficult problems, which may reflect a particular emotional state. It occurs least often when people are engaged in social interaction or when they are reprimanded for the behavior.

PubMed

When nail biters are bored or frustrated, we may bite our nails. But when we are engaged and busy or have been reprimanded for nail biting, we don’t.

Punishment

Research has shown that punishment (especially to children) doesn’t work when used to combat nail biting. And whether or not you’d even think about punishing yourself to stop your own nail biting habit is another story. Punishment has been shown to not work to combat nail biting it and might actually help to increase it. Which is interesting because as stated above, what does often work to dissuade nail biting is the support of others around us who tell us off when we do bite our nails. In my case, it’s my wife and younger daughter who comment on my nail biting and tell me to stop doing it when they notice it happening.

A Learned Habit?

Modern research refers to nail biting as a habit and as we know many habits can be hard to break. Smokers can tell you how difficult it is to stop the use of cigarettes and those who overeat will attest to the difficulty of cutting down on foods that they like to lose weight.

If we think of nail biting as a habit we should therefore focus on learning about the reasons behind the habit and how to prevent it rather than attempting to mask the problem with something like bitter nail polish or through threats, punishment or ridicule.

Mental Health

Recent research suggests that nail biting is prevalent in young people who are referred for mental healthcare treatment. This isn’t to say that nail biting is a mental health issue per se but rather than people that are receiving mental health treatment often do bite their nails, too. The research also suggests that medical professionals should ask about nail biting habits since it’s a relatively unobtrusive question to ask a person, nail biting is easy to spot and might also lead to discussion of other more serious self-harm concerns that the patient might also have.

Conclusion

Research has shown that punishment particularly to children who bite their nails doesn’t work when used as a method to stop it. Having said that, research has also shown that being reprimanded by nail biting does help. Studies also show that people often bite nails while bored and conversely don’t bite their nails when actively engaged in an activity. More recent studies have thus concluded that boredom and lack of activity is more likely to be a reason for nail biting than anxiety.