Therapy for nail biting

Nail Biting Facts

Nail biting is a destructive habit which can cause numerous health problems to affect your nails. However, before you can do anything about it, you need to get to know it better. There are several underlying causes which may trigger nail biting. Read the reminder of this article in order to get acquainted with these and learn how to deal with them.

Causes of Nail Biting

There are several major causes of this negative habit. Firstly, you may be prone to biting your nails because you are nervous or under stress. Secondly, you may be hungry and channel this craving for food towards biting your nails. Finally, simple boredom may be enough to trigger this counter-productive phenomenon. Either way, anxiousness usually causes nail biting and may lead to series of other disorders similar to this one. Some of these are hair pulling, thumb sucking and nose picking.

However, there are more serious reasons behind your nail biting. For example, people who have obsessive compulsive disorder tend to bite their nails. Here, however, people are not even aware of their wrongdoings, even after there is no nail surface left to bite off. Some people bite their nails during their sleep or periods of unconsciousness.

Since this is a negative habit, a compulsive urge, it is rooted deeply into the subconsciousness we can hardly control or influence. Luckily, there are methods like hypnosis which may grant us the power to quit our nasty habits.

Therapy for Nail Biting

As it was mentioned above, hypnotherapy is one of the best approaches when it comes to dealing with this problem. It will make you more relaxed and, thus, less anxious, removing the need to bite your nails subsequently. You can either visit a hypnotherapist or purchase a CD with the hypnotherapy on it and heal yourself.

Again, since the reason behind nail biting is anxiety, medicine recommends antidepressants like fluoxetine, clomipramine and setraline, among others. Smaller doses of anti-psychotics are known to help too. Some of the best medications of this type, regarding this purpose are ziprasidone, nefazodone, quetiapine and aripripazole.

Alternatively, you may opt for nail polishes which have a disgustingly bitter taste, forcing you to quit the biting in the long run.

Behavioral therapy is yet another option, helping you to unlearn the habit of nail biting, swapping it with something positive.

Finally, if you think that you are strong enough to break this habit, use all your will power to quit today. This is the least effective way. Nevertheless, you might just succeed.