Nail biting is considered an impulse control disorder and classified under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders in the DSM-5.
Nail biting makes your hands look unsightly, and if you bite them badly enough, you can permanently damage your nails, teeth, even your gums. It can also cause health problems, as when you’re biting your nails, you’re constantly transferring bacteria from your hands to your mouth.
While many feel ashamed of the habit some people don’t even realise that they’re biting their nails until it’s pointed out to them, indicating that it is unconscious. In other words, it’s a habit and that is good news for the hypnotherapist, because
Nail biting is both a habit and a response to anxiety, stress, boredom and other emotional triggers like frustration and loneliness. So, there are two parts of how to stop biting nails. The first part is breaking the habit. The second part is making sure to manage the underlying anxiety or stress.
There are various methods to break the habit usually using NLP to interrupt the pattern and hypnosis to embed the new programming or behaviour. Hypnotherapy is also the treatment of choice for anxiety, stress and the other trigger emotions so that will also be taken care of during your session.
So, in answer to the question-
A resounding YES! Nail biting is an anxiety induced condition that can absolutely be helped by hypnosis and just to prove it, here are two cases in point-
I had loads of fun when Colin Armstrong of the Evening Express our local paper, called me up asking if I would do a session with him for a series of articles on facing fears!
I expected something like fear of flying, but he was frightened of hypnosis: “Too easy” I thought to myself. Honestly, I love it when clients are scared or cynical – it always seems to work deeply and strongly with them – go figure!!! Anyway I explained to Colin that: You cannot be hypnotised against your will, and its true, those people you see on the stage are highly suggestible and carefully selected by the stage hypnotist. So being the tease I am, I then asked Colin for the ‘real problem’ Here I was also starting to lay the groundwork – and there you have my first trade secret – the session doesn’t begin when I get my pocket watch out as you may have been led to believe from the telly, but from the moment you pick up the phone – yes, you WILL change and you don’t even need to look into my eyes!
It turned out Colin was a habitual nail biter, so we decided to go for putting an end to his biting his nails.
On the day of our session, he turned up with a photojournalist. We got that out of the way. The session flowed easily. Colin and I had already built up a natural rapport through discussion and pre-session chats. We zapped through the usual case history and pinpointed the why, when, where and most importantly – what, I’ll let Colin tell you the rest ….
Colin kept in touch, and he had still not had a nibble at my three-week check in. Well done, Colin!
The nails in the photo belong to a young client and was taken a few weeks after our single session. She had previously bitten her nails to the core and was delighted when they grew in enough to put polish on for the first time ever!
And her dad and I were so proud of her when she still hadn’t bitten 3 years later!
Learning how to stop biting nails, begins with awareness. First take a picture of your nails and examine them. See how bad they really are and how long you have been living with this problem. How long are you prepared to continue living with it? Is that what you want your nails to look like forever? Or would you like to find new and helpful ways to deal with anxiety and stress as well as being proud of manicured and neat nails?
I recommend booking the initial double session and then like my clients in the case study you cane be ‘done’ in one sitting. If there re deeper underlying problems that would of course change. Generally, I have found nail biting to be straight forward though.