Biting our nails is a surprisingly common habit, and there are many reasons behind it, the main one being stress. People who have the habit of biting their nails usually try to stop without much success, and the habit tends to emerge at particularly a stressful times. For the past couple of months, anxiety and uncertainty have become an inseparable part of our lives, which is bad news for people biting their nails.

Acknowledge the problem

As with any other addiction (yes, biting your nails is an addiction), the first step to kicking the habit is acknowledging it as a problem and making a conscious decision to stop. The next step would be finding the source of the problem – what might be the reason behind biting your nails? What triggers it? As we’ve said, while most of the time stress is the cause to biting our nails, it could also be something we do when distracted, when we’re focused on something or simply because we’re bored. Next time you find yourself biting your nails, try and ask yourself why and identify the source of the problem.

Replace it with a different habit

Whether you bite your nails when stressed, bored or any other reason, there’s another habit you can adopt whenever you need a distraction. A popular option in this case is a stress ball – you can order one online, it comes in different shapes and sizes, and it’s quite affordable. Another option is chewing gum, although it’s not recommended; it’s bad for our health for different reasons.

Cut them down

Biting your nails means you never have long nails anyway, so cutting them down isn’t much of a loss. That way, you simply won’t have anything to bite on. That’s a pretty straight-forward way of dealing with the problem. There’s another plus side to this: hopefully, after cutting them regularly for a couple of weeks, you might naturally get over your addiction, and then you can let them grow.

Paint your nails

Even if you’re not the type of person that normally paints their nails, this is a common solution for biting your nails, and it really works. You won’t bite them down when they’re painted for several reasons: they look too good; you paid a fortune to get them done and it would be a shame to waste it; the nail polish tastes horrible. Plus, going around with meticulously painted nails always looks attractive and impressive.