Sometimes habits are difficult to break. You may bite your nails when you’re nervous. You may bite them when you’re bored. Or maybe you don’t notice you’ve bitten them until you go to get a manicure and they’re gnawed too short. Whatever the case may be, there are some methods you can try at home that can help you to stop biting your nails.
Nail biting
1. Commit
This is the hardest part, even though it sounds so deceptively easy: You have to commit to STOP BITING.
Say it out loud to your partner, parents or friends. Write it down and stick it over your desk so you can see it every day. Put it on Twitter. Hold it silently in the still part of your soul. Whatever.
Your word is your bond, and this is a promise you’re making to yourself. Take it as seriously as if you were making a solemn vow to your very best friend. No half-measures here—you’re in or you’re out.
2. Identify Triggers
You may already know what these are; you might bite out of boredom or when you’re not paying attention, when you’re especially stressed, when you’re unhappy, to vent your anxiety, etc. If you don’t have these identified, that’s okay! Pay attention and see if you can find a relationship between events or emotional states and how much you want to bite.
In most cases, this will become clear really quickly. Once you know what gets you started wanting to bite, you can more easily head it off at the pass.
3. Cultivate Mindfulness
A lot of bad habits happen when we are zoned out—nail polish gets pulled off, dry skin on lips gets picked, and yes, nails get bitten. You need to fight against this. Be present and aware of what you’re doing all the time, or as much of the time as you can, so that you aren’t unconsciously engaging in nail-biting.
4. STOP
You have to stop putting your fingers in your mouth, or idly picking at loose skin, or scratching the surfaces, or messing with your cuticles, or whatever your particular habit is. Seriously. JUST STOP.
5. Start to Fix Underlying Causes
Remember those triggers? Yeah, you gotta deal with that, otherwise another bad habit is just gonna replace the one you’re trying to get rid of. Whether this is therapy, medication, yoga, meditation, competitive paper airplane folding, whatever—get into it and root it out.
6. Manicures
The best thing you can do for yourself if you’re a nail-biter is to get really meticulous about at-home manicures. It sounds weird, but do not judge my ways until you have tried them! I found that if I spent one or two hours getting my nails to look really amazing, I was way less likely to want to bite at them and ruin all my hard work.
Start by shaping and filing your nails so that they’re all the same length and shape. I’d recommend a short oval shape to begin with, because it’s easy to maintain. It also gives more strength to damaged nails—no corners to catch on as with a square shape. Take your time with this. Enjoy it. Be nice to your nails and yourself.
7. Patience
Your nails will take a long time to get nice. Skin heals slowly, damage done to the nail bed take a long time to repair, quicks are not quick to get better. But that’s okay because you’re playing the long game here. You want your nails and hands to look and feel good for your entire life, so keep caring for them, and don’t get discouraged.
It’s going to be hard, but it’s also going to be okay. If you only take away one thing from this, have it be this. It’s going to be okay.