Why Do I Bite My Nails? (Triggers)

The $1,000,000 question. Why do I bite my nails? It’s a gross, dirty habit and it makes my fingers and hands look terrible to the point where I avoid showing my fingers or hands to other people. The picking and biting sound of nail biting annoys other people and if I bite my nails too much, it hurts and sometimes my fingers bleed.

I already wrote about the reasons for biting my nails but the reasons can be different for different people. Add to that the face that research on nail biting is a relatively new thing, and it’s something that is hard to get to the bottom of it in a general sense. The reason(s) you bite your nails might be different for me.

Underlying Reasons

Nail biting tends to begin in childhood. It certainly did for me. I’ve been biting and picking my nails as long as I can remember. It became – and continues to be – a coping mechanism for me when I’m bored, or anxious or just need something to do with my hands. It is just natural for me to do so to the point where I honestly can’t remember the last time I had to cut my nails.

The most common reasons for a person biting their nails are:

• Stress
• Anxiety
• Boredom
• Impatience
• Hunger
• Insecurity
• Concentration
• Something to do with your hands to keep them occupied
• Psychological problems (obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder)

Does this hold true for you? Which trigger(s) mostly affects you?

Triggers

Figuring out how to stop nail biting might first be solved by taking a step back and finding out why you are biting your nails to begin with. In other words, what triggers the nail biting and how can you avoid or least manage the triggers?

Common triggers for nail biting are basically the reasons mentioned above along with others that you might add to the list for yourself. You bite your nails for a specific reason(s) and it’s incumbent upon each of us to determine what triggers it and how we either avoid some triggers (boredom, hunger), manage others (stress, anxiety) and perhaps get professional help for others still (psychological problems like ADHD or OCD).

Trigger Avoidance

For me, I’ve noticed that when I’m occupied with something that particularly involves my hands, I don’t bite my nails. If I’m working on my laptop, carrying my cellphone and things like that I don’t bite them, perhaps not surprisingly.

If I’m interested in something and are otherwise relaxed I don’t bite my nails either. The truth is I could list dozens of cases where I don’t bite my nails. The real question is when do I bite and pick them?

I’ve gotten so used to biting them that it’s difficult to separate out exact instances where I do bit them because the incidences of biting often occur one after the other continuously.

If I’m being honest with myself, my main nail biting triggers in order of prevalence are:

• It keeps me busy
• Boredom
• Stress
• Anxiety

Conclusion

For, me nail biting and nail picking is just something I use to keep my hands busy more often than not. I subconsciously do it often while doing something else (watching tv) or in between doing something (working on my laptop). While I can’t avoid these activities – or least I’m not going to avoid these activities – what I’m going to do is become more aware of my nail biting to cut down on the number of times I do it, as I notice more triggers at the time they occur.

I’ve actually noticed that I’m about to start picking my nails even as I’m working on this website, when I stop typing for a few seconds and read what I just wrote and immediately want to start picking my nails. I’ve noticed this several times already and can now (hopefully) begin to avoid doing this now that I’ve recognized it’s a problem for me.