My preferred definition of a habit is: a thought, feeling and action combination, that we’ve done so many times it has become unconscious and effortless.

Nail biting can simply be a habit we’ve had, in many instances since childhood, and can be relatively straight forward to stop.

But nail biting can also be a way we deal with life. It is a learned response to uncomfortable feelings and has become a ‘coping’ mechanism. It is a distraction, a reaction to, or a way of avoiding discomfort. It has become a way of getting a dopamine hit to feel better, anytime we feel intense or negative emotions that we’d rather not be experiencing.

There are similarities with other habits. For example there are people who are overweight because they have never been shown or learned about nutrition, how to plan meals or cook. When they acquire that knowledge they are able to eat healthily, in accordance with what their body needs and loose the extra pounds. There are also people who are overweight, despite knowing what it requires to eat healthily and loose weight, but they eat in response to life. They are emotional eaters.

The way to find out, if you don’t already know which type of nail biter you are, is stop biting your nails and see what happens.

There are clues, such as blaming external things for ‘causing’ you to bite. Or knowing you nibble when you feel stressed, bored, restless or anxious.

The external ‘thing’ - be it work, your partner, money troubles, your mother-in-law, or anxiety etc does NOT actually ‘cause’ you to bite your nails. It is your response or reaction TO anxiety or any other 'trigger' emotion for you that results in bitten nails.

You are NOT at the effect of external or unknown forces. But we often think we are……

You are, however, at the effect of your thinking (be it conscious or unconscious thoughts).

This habit is perpetuated by having a thought, which creates a feeling, then you act on that feeling.
You create the desire to bite your nails in your brain. Not exactly what you want to hear, but don't beat yourself up about it, just try and open up to this idea. Thoughts and Feelings are often on a bit of a loop and recycled again and again, it's largely unconscious. We have patterns of thinking, patterns of feeling and patterns of behaviour. All this has been automated and delegated to a less conscious part of our brain.

The good news is that you are both the cause AND the solution to any habit you have. The solution lies within our brain, the problem is internal not external. If it were external then our options would be limited. As it is internal there is so much we can do about our habit. Understanding the root causes of any habit is key.

We tend to think that the circumstances of our lives 'cause' our problems. If the circumstances of life caused nail biting, then every human who has ever lived would be a nail biter! As 70% of the population of humans do not bite their nails or have stopped biting their nails, we know it cannot be the circumstances of life ‘causing’ nail biting. It’s a sneaky STORY that the lizard bit of our brain offers us, as a way of keeping us in a familiar loop. This developed back in childhood, delivering little boosts of dopamine whenever we respond to an urge.

A habit is: a thought, feeling and action combination, that we’ve done so many times it has become unconscious and effortless.

You have thoughts ABOUT the circumstances of your life, which creates the feelings you experience in your body. When the feeling is intense or negative, one of your actions may well be to have have additional thoughts about those feelings along with a wish to not feel the discomfort those feelings are generating. There is now a desire for comfort / soothing. This desire creates an urge. In response to the urge (an urge is simply a feeling) the ‘go to’ response is to chew your fingers in the same way an emotional eater turns to food to make them feel better. We get a hit of dopamine in our brain by responding to the urge. It is such an established pattern and pathway in the brain, you will likely not be conscious of the actual thought, or any of this process. This is an unconscious process, because it has been repeated so many times, it has simply been automated in our brain. Our brain may have physical groove in it, that relates to this pathway, it is that well established. But our brain remains adaptable throughout the whole of our life, so this is not a problem and is not a barrier to ending this habit. I stopped a life long nail biting habit in my 50's.

I’ll give you an example (from years ago):

A life circumstance: Neighbour parks car on my drive 6pm to 7am without asking, for the 4th time in 2 weeks.
I think ‘oh no now I’ll have to go and talk to him about this'
This creates a feeling of anxiety in me.
My actions are to delay talking to my neighbour, I make a cup of tea and think about it more, talk to my friend about it, we speculate about why he is doing this. And I don’t actually talk to my neighbour.
The result of thinking ‘oh no now I’ll have to go and talk to him about this’, is that I create anxiety in my body with that thought. My neighbour did not create the anxiety in my body - I did it with my thought. This thought does not motivate me to go and talk to the neighbour. But it adds further to my anxiety, because I'm resisting the anxiety rather than taking the action that may well resolve the issue.

Half an hour on, having had so many additional thoughts about my neighbour repeatedly parking on my drive, I’m feeling more anxious not less. I dislike the feeling of anxiety I’m experiencing, I don't want to be feeling this way and want to get rid of this feeling. This now leads into:

New circumstance is - I am in a state of anxiety
My thought is - not actually that detectable to me - along the lines of ‘I don’t want to be anxious and I want comfort’.
This creates a feeling of desire for comfort i.e an urge
My action is to closely examine my nails for any defects that needs my attention, to create a defect by picking and worrying at them and then have an excuse to start biting my nails. My nails were my 'go to' method of dealing with uncomfortable feelings. By the way if I am an emotional eater my action would be, looking for food and eating, even though I’m not actually hungry.
The results are - that I soothe and comfort myself with a hit of dopamine I got by answering the urge to bite my nails. - have 3 badly bitten, bleeding nails.
- I reinforce my nail biting habit, strengthen the pathway in my brain and intensify the urge mechanism.
- I perpetuate my nail biting habit.

Want to get a look at how your thinking and feeling fuels the action of nail biting for you?

Simply decide to stop answering the desire and urge to bite and pick for a few days.
Create a strong and compelling reason as to WHY you want to stop.
Raise your awareness of when your fingers are in your mouth.
See what thoughts and feelings come up - when you do not act upon the urge.
Be curious about the urges - they will not kill you. They come and go in waves.
Write it all down - all the thoughts, anything that appears to be a fact, all of the story and all your feelings. This is the work required to deal with the root cause of the habit.

It is easier to continue and blame life - that is what is familiar. Actually stopping nail biting requires us to unlearn this established pathway. Of course this will not be comfortable for a while. But there is a point where we come out on the other side and this happens relatively quickly when you don't react in the old familiar way.

It is simple but not necessarily easy to end this habit, which is why you could benefit from the help of a Coach. I hand hold you step by step through the process. Help you get to the point where you have zero desire to ever bite your nails again. Walk you through the urge phase efficiently and expose all the beliefs you currently have that are keeping you stuck. Nail biting is ended by addressing the thinking and feeling part of the habit. Just changing the product you use, only altering your actions or trying to resist urges by using willpower - as you know - does not work long term.

I ended this habit with ease, developed stronger self-confidence AND reduced my anxiety. 

 What are you waiting for?