Are you more likely to bite your nails or chew on your hair when you get nervous, or neither?
My answer:
I definitely am a nail-biter. And not only when I’m nervous, but also when I’m bored or thinking about something intensively, focusing on something a lot or experiencing some strong emotions whether positive or negative, or things like these. Not even getting paronychia was enough to stop me, even though I thought it would because getting any kind of finger-related condition can affect your daily life a fair bit when you are blind, and when I had it I was massively frustrated and then managed not to bite my nails for an impressive time of two weeks. My Mum used to put that bitter stuff on my and Olek’s nails because he also used to bite them, but it didn’t really work for either of us at all, we’d bite them anyway. Eventually Olek grew out of it naturally. Then later on I had braces so couldn’t bite my nails but started picking them, and after I had braces removed I didn’t even realise when I got back to biting and picking also stayed. Then I tried using nail polish as a sort of motivation not to bite my nails but at some point, usually sooner rather than later, I’d end up biting them anyway and realising what I was doing when some visible damage was already done, and obviously with nail polish bitten nails look absolutely gross and dreadful, way more than normal, so I no longer polish them. When I was self-harming particularly intensely as a teenager, I would often also do things like I would bite my nails so that they would be bleeding a lot and then put them in something like chilli or alcohol or other skin irritating things to make it hurt more. But that’s not something I do anymore. I also bite and pick my cuticles and lips as well. But I’ve never had a habit of chewing on my hair.
How about you? 🙂
My Inner MishMash 