The Desire - Urge - Reward Pathway

This is one of several Pathways that drives the nail biting habit.

We think that it is Urge that drives the habit.

It is not.

It is Desire that creates the Urge in the first place.

We have a Desire to: Feel Better

We have a Desire to: Not Feel So Bad

Or

We have a Desire to: Not Feel What We Are Actually Feeling in This Moment.

Desire is what leads to every Urge. Here are some examples of Desire Thoughts. They often start with:

I want ….

I need ….

I have to …..

I’ve got to ….

I must …

I don’t want….

These Thoughts are instructions to our brain.

Desire Thoughts are often not apparent to us. We are largely unaware of what these Thoughts actually are. We can be more aware of our Feelings (an Urge has also a Feeling) because they hang around in our body for longer, whereas our Thoughts flash through our brain in a nano second.

By the time we are examining our finger nails and skin for flaws, the Pathway is already active and has reached the middle section - Urge, of the Desire - Urge - Reward Pathway. We are looking at our fingers because we want to ‘fix’ how we are feeling. We Desire to feel differently to how we are actually feeling.

If we take a step back - it is not logical to repair a damaged, bitten nail by biting it some more - is it? The best way to heal and repair a damaged nail is to leave the nail alone. In the same way it is best to leave a scab on a healing wound, alone.

Nail Biting is something the majority of us learned as infants, before we had the cognitive skills we now have as adults. We learned how to distract ourselves from how we were feeling with our nails. We figured out how to avoid any intense or uncomfortable Emotion / Feeling. No-one taught us how to deal with our Feelings, as infants. So we developed a coping mechanism - nail biting.

Our brain learned that by nibbling, fussing and focussing on our fingers we changed how we felt.

We got a reward of dopamine when we did this.

We created a Pathway in our brain, that led to a reward. And we've repeated it 1000's of times. It is hard wired in our brain, but not impossible to change.

We learned that focusing, picking and nibbling our nails helped us to feel better instantly. The more we nibbled the better we felt.

We created both the desire to feel differently and the desire for a reward.

The shortcut we unwittingly created / learned is urge = reward.

We’ve lost sight of what came before the Urge - the Pathway is now so effortless and unconscious. Urge is what we are aware of - if we delay or don’t comply with it. The Desire piece is less obvious to us, that is, unless we start to look for it.

We reinforce the Desire - Urge - Reward Pathway, keep it alive and strong by complying with the Urge. Every time we bite and pick at our nails and cuticles, have our fingers in our mouth, become finger focussed, we strengthen this Pathway.

But not complying with the urge feels rubbish. How do we solve for feeling rubbish? We bite our nails! Catch 22.

The worst thing we can do is flip flop between sometimes answering the urge and sometimes not.

This is like taking a toddler around a supermarket and sometimes giving them sweets and sometimes not. There will be a temper tantrum to deal with.

Our automatic brain will have a hissy fit - regardless of whether we are 2 years old or 62. It will tell us something has gone very wrong, when it is denied what it wants. Nothing has gone wrong. We are simply choosing not to agree with our automatic brain.

So often don’t even think to question what our own brain is telling us.

The automatic part of our brain is only interested in the immediate moment, not our long term best interests. This peanut sized area of our brain is lightening fast. Much faster than our pre-frontal cortex - which is more advanced and thinks about the future. When our emotions are high our intelligence is often low.

The whole learned Pathway of nail biting has become effortless and unconscious.

It takes awareness, effort and practice to unlearn and change this Pathway.

The fastest way to extinguish this pathway is to:

1, Decide we are not going to comply with the urge to nibble EVER.
2, Figure out what drives our Desire.

This becomes more apparent when you stop answering the urge. Thoughts and Feelings come to the surface and are so much more accessible. Our Feelings are for Feeling, not suppressing. But we have not been taught how to do this.

Most of the story and chatter our automatic brain is telling us isn’t even true. We let this peanut sized clump of cells go unchecked in our life, let it determine all our behaviour. Reacting to our Feelings is being at the mercy of what we Feel. Our Feelings come from our Thoughts, many of which are a story our brain made up. Ever feel like you live an inauthentic life? This is why!

The urge will get louder and louder in an attempt by our automatic brain to get us to comply and do what we always do. Our automatic brain believes that our very survival is threatened if we do not comply with the Urge. It will intensify the urge for a while, in an attempt to get us to do its bidding. There is no malice intended - it’s just how our brain works.

We also have a feeling of deprivation to contend with. We will no longer get instant gratification from the dopamine reward. This is a natural fix we have relied on for decades to feel better.

The Urge is what we respond to, act on, react to. An Urge actually has no power over us at all. It is simply a feeling. The part of our brain that generates the feeling of urge has no control over over the muscles of our arms and jaw.

Complying with the Urge is actually a choice - even if it seems like it isn’t. We choose to move our muscles to get our fingers in our mouth and to close our teeth on our nails. It is a different part of the brain we use to move our muscles. 

It is always a choice whether you respond to an Urge or not. Because we have automated our regular response of moving the required muscles in our jaw, fingers and arms, we don’t think this is a choice - it is. It now takes consciousness and effort to choose a different response and NOT comply with the Urge.

The best way to end nail biting permanently is to address both the Desire that initiates the Pathway and choose to NEVER comply with the Urge.

Everything we do as humans comes down to Desire. Desire is our motivation - to do or not do.

I want to……

I don’t want to…..

Tackling the nail biting habit at Urge level alone is not effective long term because Desire is the start of the Pathway.

Resisting Urges is definitely not the way to go. Ever heard the phrase 'What you resist - Persists'? 

If you are ready to finally stop nail biting then I can help you. Sign up for my pdf Guide to learn more.