How To Get My Girlfriend To Stop Biting Nails

In my heed, there's a clear image of when I started biting my nails: I'1000 young, maybe 9 or ten, seated on top of a staircase while a gathering of some sort goes on without me in the living room below. I notice my nails are long plenty to get me into problem at school only my mother guards access to the clippers. As well nervous to ask for help, I nibble a little. Then I bite harder and I get into it, and I don't stop. It all goes downhill from at that place.

At present all of this is bullshit. I've never lived in a business firm with stairs in them, and my female parent would not capeesh the characterisation of her as a careless caregiver. (She was the exact opposite.) I may have picked up the habit somewhere around that historic period, but at 23 I tin longer explain it away as the product of a child's weak will and bizarre rationality. Still, this persistent paradigm of myself as an anxious, isolated child probably speaks volumes about how deeply rooted nail biting is as a habit in my life.

G-d bless stock photography for allowing me to illustrate this in a way that doesn't betray how grotesque nail biting really is. via Shutterstock

G-d bless stock photography for assuasive me to illustrate this in a way that doesn't betray how grotesque nail bitter actually is.
via Shutterstock

Which is all just to say that I get that information technology tin be really, really hard to stop biting your nails. I don't want to be ripping off and consuming bits of my flesh in the middle of an test or a meeting, and neither, I suspect, do you lot. I'chiliad well enlightened that it's gross and may lead to well-documented horrors (you know where that link leads, click at your ain risk). But even — maybe specially — as a grown-donkey adult, blast biting can be an impossibly difficult addiction to kick.

My last "relapse" happened when I was cached a couple of feet under the pressures of grad school. I resolved to terminate (again) when the pain was making it difficult for me to do things. Here are some tips that I've establish make the process a lilliputian easier.

1. Take A Plan

You're gonna exercise this affair! I believe in you. Now how are you gonna practise it? Are you working towards something, like getting a manicure done before a wedding, or just by and large looking to improve yourself as a human person? What will you lot need to help you along? When do you desire to start? If you lot've been waiting for a sign that it'southward time to stop, this mail service is it.

Think of your nails as a potential canvas. Now STOP EATING THE CANVAS. via iwanttobeher.com

Retrieve of your nails as a potential canvas. Now STOP EATING THE CANVAS.
via iwanttobeher.com

What's worked best for me is stopping gradually — offset leaving the nails on my right (dominant) hand alone, and then cutting back 1 past one till I'm just down to one maligned finger, and so stopping entirely — and not putting a time limit on it, because I know from experience that I rarely make straightforward, linear progress on this. Think virtually what might work best for yous, but quite chiefly, exist prepared for your plans to fail. Chances are trying to stop nail bitter is going to make you more stressed and broken-hearted for a bit, making you want to bite your nails even more, and then don't give yourself a hard fourth dimension if information technology takes multiple tries for you to figure out an arroyo that works.

2. Identify Triggers

Near people bite their nails when they're anxious or bored. Have the fourth dimension to actually pay attention to what you exercise and you might be able to narrow it downwards to more than specific triggers. For example, I frequently find myself bitter my nails when I'g writing or typing (i.eastward. procrastination) or when I'm waiting for webpages or games to load because I'm a spoilt-ass millennial. I'm also way more likely to seize with teeth my nails if they're already rough or broken, exacerbating the problem.

3. Change Your Behaviour

Knowing when and why yous bite your nails isn't necessarily gonna be enough to stop you from doing it. I've definitely found myself fully conscious of my fingers between my teeth and withal found myself either unwilling or unable to stop. Sometimes yous demand a physical reminder to snap you out of it, like a rubber ring around your wrist yous can snap whenever you catch yourself bitter your nails. Alternatively (or additionally), you can:

3a. Make Nail Bitter More Difficult Or Unpleasant

Putting stuff on my nails that makes it harder to really physically bite them, whether I'one thousand witting of doing it or not, is by far the well-nigh constructive quitting method I've establish peculiarly when you're merely getting started. Things I've tried with varying levels of success include:

Regular scotch tape: Don't do it.

Unfortunately I did it, circa 2008.

Unfortunately I did information technology, circa 2008.

Newspaper surgical tape: Far more durable than scotch tape (though it's even so non gonna last more than than a mean solar day or and so) and a cheap solution. Information technology's gonna exist really obvious you lot have tape on your fingernails, which is good for reminding you lot to Non Do The Affair but bad if yous'll feel self-conscious near it.

Cotton gloves: I found these particularly useful at nighttime when I've slathered on moisturiser and didn't desire to find myself absentmindedly chewing on my nails earlier I went to sleep. You can still practice most things in them, including operate touchscreens. (Besides, your regular gloves, the ones yous clothing out when it's cold? They're probably the filthiest thing in your wardrobe. Think of that the next time you put your fingers near your oral fissure.)

Nail polish: Look at how groovy Contributing Editor KaeLyn'due south doing!

I haven't had the aforementioned success — I pick at even the slightest unevenness in a manicure, and yous can bet my even so-healing nails were plenty uneven — only colour polish tin be a great visual reminder to stop yourself from biting, while a potent transparent elevation coat tin go far tougher for yous to do so.

Blast bitter treatment solution: This is a clear, bitter liquid that you employ onto your nails. The bitterness lingers a fiddling fifty-fifty after you try to bite them and is thus a pretty effective deterrent, but I'll admit I had to change brands a couple of times considering I got used to the gustatory modality/just stopped caring near it.

Acrylic imitation nails: Probably the most expensive and time-consuming solution, but it works for me without fail every time. I put on fake nails fifty-fifty when I've (mostly) stopped bitter my nails if I know a especially stressful menses is coming up, like essay season. But again I gotta confess that in one case I chewed through even the acrylic when I was working on my thesis.

3b. Develop Culling Habits

Call up of something else you could do with your hands/mouth instead of bitter your nails. Now fleck that idea, and think of something you could actually do in polite company.

Some of the culling habits I've cultivated accept been productive or at to the lowest degree harmless, like playing with my necklace, while others considerably less so, similar compulsively checking my phone or that in one case I started finishing a pack a twenty-four hour period… of orangish Mentos. Accept better care of your nails! Whenever I observe myself wanting to bite my nails in public, I rub Burt's Bees lemon butter cuticle cream on them instead, and at home I take gotten cuticle trimming down to a therapeutic art. (Trimming your cuticles is bad for yous, but I can say with a off-white corporeality of certainty that eating them is probably worse.)

This stuff smells good enough to eat... but we're not doing that anymore, no.

This stuff smells expert enough to eat… merely nosotros're non doing that anymore, no.

Going back to triggers, information technology helps not but to observe alternatives to nail biting merely to tackle the trouble at its root: await for ways to reduce your stress, anxiety, or boredom. I've recently taken up cross-stitching, because few things occupy my easily and restless brain better than sewing "MACHO" in a pinkish flowery font. You do you, whether it'southward yoga or Netflix marathons.

4. Agree Yourself Accountable

Print out a small agenda, pivot it somewhere you'll come across it ofttimes, and mark each day you manage to become without biting your nails. I savour being able to physically chart my progress but of course at that place are plenty of apps that'll do the same; I similar Adept Habits for its uncomplicated, straightforward interface. If you're a bit more hardcore, you lot can endeavour something like Beeminder or 21 Addiction that'll charge y'all if you lot go off track. What's currently working for me is Habitica (formerly HabitRPG), recommended by Autostraddle's Tech/Geekery Editor Ali, in which I've listed "finish biting nails" every bit a habit so every time I exercise it my pixelly avatar takes a striking. I really don't want the little guy to die.

Get people around you lot on board, too! Ask your friends to signal it out or smack your hands when y'all're virtually to put them to your mouth; inquire your girlfriend to yell "those fingers aren't going anywhere virtually me!" every fourth dimension you practise the same. Visit a professional manicurist, if you would like to be reprimanded past a stranger most how you're treating your body.

Full disclosure: I hate when people do this, because I am That Person who will do more than of what she is told not to. And so if you're similar me, brand articulate to those around you lot that it hurts more than helps if they law your nail biting.

5. Seek Professional person Help (If Necessary)

If you've tried everything and it doesn't piece of work, or if you're simply too overwhelmed to even try, consider seeking professional help. Smash biting can be a symptom of something more than serious, and it'due south okay if y'all don't have information technology in y'all to deal with information technology yourself! I know it feels like a trivial matter to get to a therapist or psychiatrist for only you guys, there is a globe in which your nails do not bleed onto newspaper and you don't desire to cry from how much it hurts to do anything with your hands (which is a lot of things), and information technology is a world you could most definitely come to live in in time. You deserve all the care and assist you demand to become in that location.

Any other tips? Share them in the comments!