How did you stop biting your nails?

tl;dr: nail polish and nail care

It’s still very difficult sometimes, but I’ve kicked the habit in the past couple of months or so, after doing it my entire life.

Instead of biting my nails, I covered them in black nail polish. Instead of biting them, I’d pick the nail polish off. This can be a pain in the ass, and really ugly, but it was comforting in the same way biting my nails was. I wouldn’t wait until I picked everything off. Once a nail looked like it was about to have all of the nail polish picked off, I cleaned off the polish and applied a newer, cleaner coat. Rinse and repeat, for a month or more.

Once my nails got longer, I would still pick them, but less so. Instead, I’d clean the underside for dirt constantly. This can make the nails very weak. I went to the salon and got a thick, beautiful manicure—if it’s a good enough salon, that is pretty much nail-polish "indestructible", meaning I wasn’t really able to pick at the nail polish any more, and now could only obsessively clean the underside. This also has the added benefit of strengthening the weak nails.

Keep doing this until the manicure essentially kills itself off. I’m a perfectionist, so it didn’t take long—once it got one chip, I took it all off. Upon looking at just how /long/ my nails were now, I didn’t want to bite them. I used to bite the short lunulas, y’know? Seeing them so long just didn’t have the same effect. I grew them longer until they became very weak, and cut them back, and found I had lost the desire to bite them after so long not doing it.

I’m still working through some stuff with them, though. The obsessive under-cleaning is still an issue, but if you cut them back enough they start to grow back stronger and stronger, and you get used to having longer nails, so it becomes less and less of an issue.

Sorry for what’s essentially a blog post, but if it helped me it could help you.

/r/AskReddit Thread