What does it mean when a person bites his nails? Why do people bite their nails? How to get rid of a bad habit

A disease characterized by an irresistible urge to bite nails and hangnails is called onychophagia. Often, nail biting also damages the nail socket and the skin on the fingertips. In extreme cases, a person bites his nails until blood appears on his fingers. Very often, children aged 4-5 years bite their nails; the problem worsens when they begin to attend school. Often this bad habit occurs in adolescents during puberty and persists throughout adult life.

Is it normal to bite your nails?

The habit of biting nails is a symptom of behavioral disorder. This may be due to a certain period in a person’s life and be temporary. This is a fairly common phenomenon that occurs in childhood. It is observed in 34% of younger children school age. Often their parents suffer from this habit, and their children simply imitate them. Very rarely, onychophagia occurs against the background of complete physical and psychological well-being. It is comparable to such painful habits as thumb sucking, hair pulling, and teeth grinding. Whether you need to pay attention to them depends on how much these habits prevent the child from leading a full life. However, the longer a teenager or adult continues such gnawing, the higher the likelihood that this is not only a bad habit, but a behavior disorder characteristic of a neurotic personality.

Reasons for the habit

The habit of biting nails is a symptom of increased anxiety in a child, a manifestation of the mechanisms of his psychological protection from some stress factors.

Overcoming Conflicts

In conflict situations, children whose parents are too strict or show excessive care most often begin to bite their nails, thereby limiting their freedom. Increased attention from parents and excessive emphasis on this painful habit can further aggravate the problem.

Auto aggression

Sometimes such gnawing expresses self-aggression. IN extreme cases When the tips of your fingers are bitten until they bleed, they speak of a peculiar manifestation of masochism.

Diffidence

Nail biting always indicates the presence of internal conflicts caused by difficulties in communicating with others. A person, trying to compensate for his insecurity and anxiety, begins to bite his nails.

The cause of child behavior disorders and nail biting may be the incorrect behavior of the parents (or one of them). Parents should monitor their behavior and create a warm, sincere atmosphere in the family. This is the only way they will help themselves and their child.

How to get rid of a bad habit?

Neither medical advances nor home remedies will help get rid of onychophagia. Covering the nail plates with bitter-tasting varnish, smearing the fingertips with special tinctures, and all kinds of threats and punishments is not a method of treating the disease, but an attempt to get rid of its symptoms. After all, the problems that caused this habit remain. Even if it is possible to get rid of this habit, a person finds a “replacement” for it, for example, he begins to pluck his beard, twirl his hair on his finger, or smoke.

It is impossible to treat only the symptom; it is also necessary to take into account the situation in which the person is located and the characteristics of his personality. If a child occasionally bites his nails, you need to ask if he is exposed to too much stress or if he has any serious problems. Most often, it is enough to eliminate the problem that provokes nail biting, and this habit disappears spontaneously.

Onychophagia in adults

If an adult begins to bite their nails, then it is necessary to consult a specialist. You can get rid of this unpleasant disorder with the help of various forms psychotherapy.

There are many theories that explain one way or another the habit of biting nails. But it is still not completely known what makes people do this. What does a person “gnaw”? ?

Several theories explaining the causes of onychophagia

1. Manifestation of childhood neurosis

Many doctors think so, explaining that the child,

Which in this way gets rid of discomfort and psychological stress. This habit provides an outlet for pent-up aggression while delivering pleasure. Fear of “adult” life also plays a significant role (the child, holding him, still feels small and has the right to be weak).

2. Household reasons

Another source is boredom and the inability to keep oneself busy. And often this also arises as a result of imitation by adults (if parents have the habit of biting their nails, then the child will do the same). By the way, it can also appear if the baby’s nails are poorly cared for. Dried hangnails force the child to get rid of them on his own.

3. Repressed desires

Followers of Freud consider this habit to be analogous to masturbation. But, unlike the latter, it is less calling method satisfaction, which obviously influences its prevalence.

So why does the need to bite your nails arise?

Onychophagia (the need to bite nails) most often occurs in people who are unable to express their negative emotions. This type of behavior is referred to as auto-aggression, that is, aggression that is directed at oneself. This is a peculiar way of self-deprecation, self-accusation, associated with a subconscious symbolic attitude towards nails as the claws of an animal, that is, as a means of protection and manifestation of strength. Thus, by biting his nails, a person seems to be trying to hide his aggression directed at others.

These features are typical, as a rule, for people who are insecure, timid, or vice versa, energetic, confident, but understand that the situation will not allow them to express the full strength of the feelings they experience, and suppress emotions consciously.

The saddest thing about the habit of biting your nails - the fact that their unkempt, depressing appearance makes a person even more disgusted with himself and, as a result, increases the desire to gnaw them. Like this vicious circle. How to break out of it?

What to do if you have onychophagia?

In order to help yourself cope with this habit, you need to want to get rid of it. Don't scold yourself for having your fingers in your mouth again and again. You need to create conditions that will force you to give up this.

Men get rid of this dubious pleasure more easily. It is enough for them to apply a special varnish to their nails, which has an unpleasant taste that discourages obsessive desire. In addition, this varnish contains a vitamin complex that helps nails take on their proper appearance. Doctors advise applying it every two days, after washing off the remnants of the old one.

And women should give themselves a beautiful manicure with false nails. Any representative of the fair sex will be pleased to look at her fingers, and this will significantly help her avoid a bad habit. In addition, acrylic is very inconvenient to chew on.

Those who experience increased irritability, insomnia, appetite disturbances, and impulsiveness should seek support from specialists. After all, a person who bites his nails is “biting” himself, which means that it is necessary to find out the cause of this condition and prescribe treatment.

Agree that it is quite unpleasant to see a person, especially if he is your interlocutor, who has a persistent habit of biting his nails, or onychophagia. This is not only not aesthetically pleasing, but, according to doctors, it is quite dangerous. In medicine, there is even such a term as onychophagia, which refers to this particular addiction.

ICD-10 code

F98 Other emotional and behavioral disorders, usually beginning in childhood and adolescence

Causes of nail biting habit

An involuntary desire to bite nail plates and hangnails is a symptom of behavioral deviations. Such “predilection” not only makes a person somewhat unattractive in communication to other people, but often these people continue this action until the skin is injured and blood appears. In this situation, the nail hole is often damaged.

Mostly, this pathology occurs in children four to five years old and, if measures are not taken, it only gets worse when the child goes to school. Statistics show that 34% of children attending primary school suffer from this habit. It is not uncommon for the pathology in question to occur in a teenager during puberty, which manifests itself in his adult life. You can also find families where adults bite their nails, and children simply begin to imitate them, not considering this as something harmful.

The reasons for the habit of biting nails can be quite different and can be both temporary and long-term.

A number of factors can provoke the appearance of this unaesthetic behavior:

• This may be an option for psychological protection from a stressful situation in which an adult or child finds themselves.
• Auto-aggression is a situation where biting nails until they bleed is one of the manifestations of self-mosachism.
• This behavior can appear in children whose parents, limiting their freedom, practice totalitarian control.
• Diffidence. Internal conflict, which may be caused by communication problems.
• A situation in the family can provoke this behavior. Inappropriate behavior of one or both parents.
• Doctors also admit that the habit is hereditary, transmitted genetically.
• This can be aggression towards oneself, when a person tries to punish himself for, as it seems to him, unworthy behavior.
• Increased fragility of the nail plate caused by medical problems. The nail breaks and, not finding anything better, the “owner” bites the nail.
• A person can begin to bite his nails out of boredom or idleness.

The habit of biting nails in adults

Many adults often ask the question why this pathological deviation occurs on a subconscious level and how to get rid of it quickly, easily and forever. After all, it can bring quite a lot of unpleasant moments into life and even destroy a career. Agree, who would have an employee who would allow himself to do something similar at an important meeting or meeting with a client.

The habit of biting nails in adults is not born out of nowhere. Wouldn't it be a bad idea to sit down and calmly analyze the current situation, try to understand at what stage of life it arose? Quite often, the roots of this problem go back to deep childhood, accompanying a person into adulthood.

Most often, these manifestations are a hidden emotional outburst, when a person cannot directly show his emotions.

Everyone knows from childhood that this should not be done. Bad habits make the nail plate unattractive, which worsens appearance hands If such pathology manifests itself sufficiently long time, then a person with such an addiction risks completely ruining not only the condition itself, but also the shape of the nails. Representatives of the fairer sex can sometimes correct this situation only through cosmetic extensions. This procedure is quite expensive, but it will only temporarily solve the aesthetic side of the problem, without in any way correcting the actual situation.

Therefore, it is better to decide this problem immediately and at the root, rather than subsequently finding methods and spending energy, time and money on eliminating shortcomings.

But this is the visual side of the problem. Now let's deal with the medical one. Everyone knows perfectly well that putting unwashed fingers in your mouth is unsafe. This is fraught with infectious infection and helminth infestation. In addition, with this unseemly process, injury to the skin on the fingertips often occurs. The resulting damage to the epidermis becomes, in fact, an open “gate” for invading pathogenic microorganisms.

Therefore, this habit definitely needs to be fought.

The habit of biting nails in children

Quite often, attentive parents are concerned about the habit of biting nails in children. And they can be understood. But in order to eliminate the problem, you should understand the situation and try to find the source that became the catalyst for such behavior in the child. Often, in this way the baby relieves nervous tension received from an external source. If you cannot install this yourself, it is advisable to seek help from a specialist. In this situation, a consultation with a child psychologist or local pediatrician would be useful.

This situation needs to be resolved as soon as possible. After all, the problem may be more of a psychological nature, and over time, bitten nails may not seem like a particularly big problem against the background of psychological disorder and conflict.

But in order to effectively resolve the situation, you should “grope” for the source and stop it. Only in this case will it be possible to talk about eliminating the problem as such.

If your child starts biting his nails, you should not turn a blind eye to it in the hope that everything will resolve on its own, and the child, having matured, will understand the harmfulness of the habit and give it up. This is not to be expected. Such indifference on the part of parents can lead to:

Therefore, if parents set out to rid their child of this harmful habit, it is necessary to find the true cause of its occurrence. Parents need to understand what worries the baby, in what situation does he pull his hands to his mouth? In this “struggle,” adults must show patience: do not pull the baby back with irritation in his voice, do not slap his hands or scold him. This behavior can significantly aggravate the situation. Only with patience and affection can you find the switch that triggers this pathological reaction of the baby. And this is exactly how it is possible to cut this “Gordean Knot”.

How to get rid of the habit of biting your nails?

As mentioned above, you can answer the question of how to get rid of the habit of biting your nails by determining the catalyst for the cause. But certain recommendations can already be given immediately.

It should immediately be noted that modern medicine and techniques traditional medicine Today they do not have a “classic pill” that would allow them to easily and quickly cope with the problem.

Some methods that parents use also do not bring 100% results.

• Apply mustard, various ointments or varnish to the nails.
• They resort to intimidation and threats.

Even if such events are given conditionally positive result, then it will be short-term, since the approach to treatment itself is not correct. Many people try to eliminate the symptom rather than influence the source of its occurrence. Even if it is possible to cope with this symptomatology using such methods, the suffering person will experience a substitution, and instead of biting the nail plate, he, for example, will begin to bite his lips, twirl his hair on his finger, try to pick off a wart, start smoking, and so on.

If this concerns the baby, then, first of all, the mother should try to bring him into a confidential conversation and find out the reason for his anxiety. In this situation, it is enough to caress the baby, tell him that he is loved and proud of him, and also, independently or together with the child, find a way out to solve his problem. If parents cannot do this, a child psychologist can help.

The approach to the problem should be more thorough. It is necessary to take into account as many factors as possible: the environment in which a person lives, his social status, his personal characteristics and so on. If you feel that you cannot cope with the problem on your own, you should call for help from a specialist by consulting a psychologist.

It is possible to alleviate the problem using various psychotherapeutic techniques. First of all, it is simply impossible to categorically prohibit nail biting. The person himself must be inspired and want to gain freedom from pathological addiction. Otherwise, the problem will not be solved.

Experts offer a number of ways, if desired, to stop the problem:

• If the source of pathological addiction is anxiety or a stressful situation, it is quite possible to use sedative medications. These can be light herbal tinctures based on lemon balm, valerian, motherwort, and so on. If the situation is particularly complex, pharmacological drugs may be prescribed: Persen, Life 600, Circulin, Dormiplant, Negrustin, Novopassit, Stressplant, Deprim (made from plant components) or Valocordin, Valoserdin, Dormiplant, Cardolol, Corvaldin, Corvalol, Nobrassite , sanason and others.

The combined drug novopassit is prescribed one teaspoon, which corresponds to 5 ml, three times throughout the day. If the clinical picture of the disease requires, the recommended amount medicine It is permissible to double it and take 10 ml three times a day.

But this pharmacological drug has its contraindications: individual intolerance to the components of the drug, the presence of a person’s history of muscle weakness (myasthenia gravis). The medicine should be administered with caution to patients with disorders affecting the digestive tract.

Also in this case, doctors can prescribe behavioral therapy, which involves confronting the patient with his fears and developing the ability to control his emotions.

• A person bites the nail plate due to its fragility, therefore, it is necessary to work on strengthening them. Therapeutic measures can include warm baths based on sea salt, vitamin complexes or a single preparation containing calcium and other microelements and vitamins. For example, calcium gluconate is taken 1–3 grams of the substance, two to three times a day.

Contraindications to the use of this drug may be hypercalcemia, hypersensitivity to the constituent components of the drug. Calcium gluconate is not prescribed for severe hypercalciuria, severe renal dysfunction, or if the patient’s body is prone to thrombosis.

• For a woman, one of the ways to get rid of a bad habit can be nail extensions and painting them with acrylic paints or gel. In this situation, the psychological switch works more. Well, what woman, having paid a considerable sum, would want to part with such beauty.
• If necessary, it is possible to introduce into the therapy the application of substances that have a repulsive taste to the nails. This will make it easier to control your involuntary desires.
• If a person really wants to get rid of the habit, then you can ask relatives or close friends to unobtrusively pull back the next time you try to put your finger in your mouth.
• Another way to distract yourself from the urge to bite your nails is to do an interesting activity and concentrate your filming on it.

How to quit the habit of biting your nails?

If the habit in question does not bring a person any discomfort, then it will not be possible to cope with the situation quickly, since the person lacks motivation to solve the problem.

And in situations when a person has “matured”, the first thing he has is a legitimate question: how to quit the habit of biting his nails? We can recommend some activities that will help find a replacement for the pathology and teach you to control your emotions.

• One of the points of therapy is the ability to relax. It will reduce the intensity of stress and bring peace, which simply does not need an emotional release, which is often manifested by biting the nail plate. In this situation, soothing herbal baths will help. You can try lighting a scented lamp that emits specialized soothing aroma oils. If you wish, you should try yoga, meditation, relaxation or positive auto-suggestion.
• Another way is to set a goal to get rid of pathology. To control the process, it is worth marking the “start of the journey” date on the wall calendar. Every evening the results of the day are summed up. If during this period you manage to never bring the phalanges to your teeth, you should reward yourself. This path is quite long, but the result is worth it. And the main thing is the result, as well as moral satisfaction from the work done and the difficulties overcome.
• You can “force” replace the need to bite your nails with the opportunity to chew nuts and dried fruits. Such a replacement is not only psychologically justified, but will also benefit the body.
• You should always have a manicure set with you, which, if necessary, can be used to treat a broken nail. And this applies not only to women, but also to men.
• Review your diet; it may be poor in vitamins and minerals (especially calcium), which is the cause of increased fragility and separation of the plates. To improve the situation, the following foods and dishes should be regularly present on the table: nuts, jellied pork legs, fermented milk products, bell pepper, all kinds of greens, pumpkin seeds and others.
• To strengthen and improve the condition of the nail plate, you must regularly use special nourishing creams. At least once a week, make hand baths based on sea salt or medicinal herbal tinctures. The high effectiveness of the result is shown by the use of drugs that contain vitamins D and A. It is best to apply cream, nourishing masks, and water procedures before bedtime. After the nutritional composition has been applied, you can put on cotton gloves and go to bed. This way, the bed linen will remain clean and the skin and nails will receive their nourishment.
• When working around the house or in the garden, you should use rubberized gloves - this will protect your hands from exposure to chemicals and the external environment.
• If you want to give up the habit of biting your nails, you should not forget about the psychological side of the problem; it is to this that you should first direct your attention. Perhaps the person has serious psychological problems. Then it would be right to seek help from a specialist. Treatment prescribed by the doctor may include hypnosis, acupuncture and numerous other techniques of traditional and non-traditional medicine.
• If the situation is associated with organic lesions, then more significant examination and treatment is necessary.
• There is a category of people who begin to bite their nails when they are overcome by hunger. Therefore, in such a situation you need to monitor your diet. The regimen should be frequent, but in small portions, so as not to subsequently treat obesity.

Experts believe that the most effective method getting rid of the problem is a set of measures that includes psychological exercises together with various, more applied tricks (smearing the nails with substances with an unpleasant taste).

For small children, you can try applying adhesive plaster to their fingers. For very young patients psychological techniques are not entirely suitable and are ineffective. To a small child It’s quite difficult to explain that biting your nails or putting dirty fingers in your mouth carries a certain danger. Naturally, this does not mean at all that you should not talk about this to your child. Over time, you can find more compelling arguments for your baby. For example, you can explain to a teenage girl how ugly the manicure will be, and subsequently the very appearance of the hands, which even the most elegant manicure will not save.

Another option that can help wean your child off the habit of biting his nails is to pay more attention to the little “why” and his problems. You should work more with your child so that he is interested and not bored, then he will have no reason to display harmful tendencies.

The habit of biting nails is an unpleasant reflex that is dangerous to human health. But it is not a death sentence for the rest of your life. This can and should be fought. But you won’t be able to get rid of it simply by taking a pill. It is necessary to tune in to carry out certain work, having found, first of all, the cause, which is the catalyst for the manifestation of this pathological reflex. If you can’t stop the problem on your own, you shouldn’t dismiss the help of specialists. But having gone through this path, such a person receives other dividends, becoming calmer, more confident and able to manage his emotions and his life!

Nail biting is not only a harmful, but also a dangerous habit, which is typical not only for children, but also for adults. More often, oddly enough, girls are susceptible to this habit at an early age, but among adults it is men. According to psychologists, nail biting begins to appear in conditions of excessive nervousness and irritability.

Firstly, the appearance of the nail plates deteriorates. If a person has been doing this since childhood or for several years, then his nails can be completely and hopelessly damaged: they become irregular shape- can be short and wide. For women, unlike men, this deficiency can be corrected with nail extensions.

Secondly, people who bite their nails can get sick from various diseases. infectious diseases, since most microbes and pathogens enter the body with dirty hands, and as you know, their largest accumulation is under the nails. In addition, when biting nails, the skin on the fingers is often injured, microcracks with wounds are formed, through which infections and microbes also enter.

Why do adults bite their nails?

Onychophagia (the habit of biting nails) is quite common. According to statistics, every 11th person is susceptible to this disease. Yes, yes, exactly the disease, since the latest research in this area suggests that onychophages are mentally ill people, but nail biting is not the cause of the disease, but its manifestation and consequence.

To be completely frank, it is impossible to say unambiguously about the causes of onychophagia. There are several hypotheses about its occurrence, but nothing more. Psychologists identify several main possible reasons:

• excessive nervousness;
• dissatisfaction with oneself (literally, “self-eating”), when the body switches a person from emotion to action;
• suppression of expression of emotions;
• increased anxiety.

When giving up such a habit, one should not forget about psychological reasons its occurrence. First you need to analyze yours. At this stage, it is very important to understand under what circumstances you want to bite your nails and try to fix this moment in your consciousness. Next, you can resort to a very popular and effective method. Every time you feel the urge to bite your nails, you need to snap your wrist with an elastic band that you previously put on it (an ordinary money eraser will do). The essence of this method is well known thanks to Pavlov's dog, that is, in this way we develop a conditioned reflex: the desire to gnaw - pain.

Another effective method is treating your nails with a special varnish, or a good option for men is a special manicure, which can be done in almost any salon. So your nails will be beautiful and you can get rid of the habit, as they will acquire a bitter taste.