I am Kyle's self-indulgence

I don’t really know how it started, or when. I assume there was sometime in my childhood that I didn’t do it, but I can’t really recall. As far as I’m concerned I’ve always been a nail-biter, and not just the kind that bites off the ends of his fingernails when they get too long. I’ve bitten my nails even when there was nothing there to bite. I’ve bitten my cuticles and the skin around my nails. I’ve bitten them until they’ve bled and gotten infected. I’ve bitten them until all that was left was the barest remnant of a nail, warped and misshapen. I’ve bitten them until they turned black.

Gross, I know.

I tried to many times over many years. At first it was in response to the nagging and bribing of my mom. And while I did want to quit, I just didn’t have the will to stop. The problem with nail-biting is that once your nails are already bitten down and ugly and jagged, there’s a constant temptation to bite them more. There’s always one more little piece or edge or thread sticking out, and you think that if you can just bite that part off, it will be better. But then that just leaves another jagged edge.

Plus, the nails are always there. I would never claim that nail-biting is a harder habit to break than drinking or smoking (there are other, stronger forces at work with substance addiction), but at least with those you can throw away your cigarettes or pour your liquor down the drain. With nail-biting the things you want to avoid are perpetually at the ends of your arms. So simply deciding to stop never worked for me.

Over the years, I tried many solutions. I tried the foul-tasting fingernail polish, but I just bit them anyway. I tried clear, shiny polish, but I scraped it off with my teeth. I tried chewing gum, but I bit my nails even with gum in my mouth. I tried designating one nail that I would not bite, with the idea that I would gradually progress to two, three, on up to ten. I never got past one.

After each attempt inevitably failed, I would always go back to biting my nails without restraint, accepting that it’s always going to be a part of who I am.

Until last year.

Around the beginning of the school year I decided it was time to quit for good. I think a combination of factors led up to this. My kids are getting older, and I don’t want them to see me biting my nails for fear of them copying my bad habit. I’ve been trying to look and act more professional at work lately. It also occurred to me how unsanitary it is to be constantly putting my fingers in my mouth, especially when I work somewhere as germ-infested as a public school.

So there’s the why. As for the how, I was assisted with a bit more self-awareness than I had in the past. I decided that, despite what I’ve always been told about nail-biting, I do not have an oral fixation: even when I have forced myself to not bite my nails I have just gone to picking at them instead. So I decided it has nothing to do with my mouth, and everything to do with my hands. The way I calm myself when I am nervous, anxious, or just bored is to do things with my hands. So I started carrying around a British pound coin left over from a trip to London several years ago, and whenever my hands weren’t occupied with something else I started flipping the coin around between my fingers. This gave me just the nervous outlet I needed.

The other thing I’ve learned about myself recently is that if I’m going to change my habits, I have to do it all the way, and not by increments or compromise. I learned this when I was trying to lose weight. It really doesn’t work for me to say I’m only going to have dessert one or two nights a week. If I allow myself any at all, then it quickly turns into allowing myself to have it every night. I figured it would be the same way with my nails: if I allowed myself to bite even one nail, or only trim the edges (as I told myself in a previous attempt), then pretty soon I’m back to the same behavior I started with. No, I would have to go cold turkey, and I would need a way to both hold myself accountable for every time I slipped up, and motivate me to get back on track. I created an item on my Google calendar called, “Last Day,” and I challenged myself to see how long I could maintain a perfect streak. If I so much as nibbled at a single nail, I moved “Last Day” up to the current day and started over.

When I approached my habit this way, I was surprised at how easy it was to quit. I had an occasional lapse, but for the most part I left my hands alone. The coin very quickly took over as my default behavior. On days that I left it at home I would get anxious and actually crave the coin, not my fingernails.

After a few weeks my nails had grown out enough that I could file the rough edges down. This was a major turning point. I found that once my fingernails had a nice, smooth edge on them, I didn’t want to bite them anymore, for fear of ruining them. Soon, I didn’t even need the coin anymore.

Several months have passed since then and my nails have been gradually growing back to a normal appearance. Some of them had been bitten down for so long and so brutally that even the roots were misshapen, and it’s taken a long time to grow out the ugly parts. But probably in the next several weeks the last evidence of my former habit will be gone. It feels great. By beating my nastiest and longest-running habit I feel like I really am the master of my own behavior, and I have a new boldness to start improving myself in other ways.