Nail biting horror: Kevin`s story

Are you tired of being self-conscious about your hands and nails? I know exactly what you're going through because I've been there. Did you notice I said, "I've been there". That's right, I have finally quit biting my nails. I never thought it was possible, but after years of trying to figure it out, I did it.

As I mentioned, it took me years to "nail" down how to quit this habit. I had several failed attempts, too many to count. I found myself always hiding my nails and truly embarrassed about them. I was even envious of people with nice nails because I was so uncomfortable with my own.

Being uncomfortable about my nails forced me to really think about the problem. I tried all the cover-ups and distractions such as bad tasting nail crŠme and chewing gum. However, nothing seemed to work on a permanent basis.

I would kick the habit for a couple weeks to a month, but I would relapse and be back to square one in no time.

In order to stop this habit on a permanent basis, you have to get to the root of the problem. All the cover-ups and distractions help alleviate the desire to bite and make quitting the habit somewhat easier, but they are not a permanent solution. For a permanent solution, you must ask yourself the following question:

In what situations do I sub-consciously start to bite my nails?

All you nail-biters out there know what I mean! You bring your fingers to your mouth without even thinking about it. For me, as it is for most people, it was stress situations causing me to do this. I was also guilty when I was thinking, panicked, nervous and worried. As you can tell, this covers a lot of situations and feelings, so I was biting my nails a lot.

Even with all these feelings causing me to bite my nails, I have quit this habit. I did it by being conscious of these causes and therefore my emotions. In other words, when I was getting nervous, or panicked, I would be mindful of the situation and somewhat control my emotions. I would realize that I was in this emotional state. With the thought in the back of my mind not to bite my nails, I wouldn't do it. This is the key to quitting this habit. This is the only permanent solution. Try this and you will be pleasantly surprised with the results. A spin-off of this method is being generally more relaxed and in control.

I found myself being able to handle pressure situations better because I was more in control, not only of my nail biting, but of my entire emotional state.