Mindlessness and Fingernail Biting

I bite my fingernails. It’s something I’ve done my entire life. I’ve been able to quit for periods of time, and at other times it seemed like I always had a finger in my mouth, biting my nails to the point of bleeding. I find myself biting my fingernails more during moments of stress, but it’s not like when I’m not stressed out I don’t bite them.

A Physical Manifestation of Anxiety

Fingernail biting is a physical manifestation of anxiety, and even though I’m aware of it and understand it and am even capable of writing a chapter in a book about it, I haven’t been able to quit doing it. There are more specific approaches we can use to explore and change activities like fingernail biting, hair pulling, skin picking, or other physical manifestations of anxiety, but in this post I want to examine the more general idea of mindlessness.

It doesn’t seem like I ever consciously make a decision to start biting my fingernails. It’s just something I realize I’m doing in the moment, as if it’s an activity I participate in during my normal, resting state. When I realize I’m doing it, I usually stop, put my hands down, look at them, and think about not doing it again. But then, as soon as my mind moves on to other thoughts, I lose track of my hands, and, invariably, moments later, I find myself biting my fingernails again without even thinking about it. And the pattern repeats.

Sometimes I’m aware of the pattern, and sometimes I’m not. But, most of the time, it’s a combination of the two; I’m aware of the pattern at moments, but, as soon as my mind wanders away, I become unaware again.

A Wandering Mind

This fingernail biting is the physical manifestation of anxiety. It’s what happens when my mind wanders to anxious thoughts. What are these thoughts exactly? In general, I’m worrying about the future, thinking about possible worst-case scenarios and how I might handle them.

Specifically, I’m thinking about how that bump in the road could have given me a flat tire, and what a drag it would be if I got one, and how I would have to pull over on the side of the highway, and, yes, I do have a spare, but do I have a jack? And would I be able to change the tire by myself? And there would be a good chance I could get hit by a car on the side of the road by some crazy driver not looking where they're going, so what would be a better way to handle the flat tire? And then I realize I’ve spent five minutes worrying about something that will probably not happen, and the whole time I’ve been biting my fingernails.

This is mindlessness. Instead of being in the moment, thinking about where I am, who I’m with, and what I’m doing, my mind is busy conjuring up possible disappointing or worrisome events that could happen in the future, leaving my fingers without guidance, free to move up to my mouth where nails are bitten in a robotic fashion. My mind is busy worrying about possible negative future outcomes, while my mouth and fingernails are acting to create very real negative outcomes in the present.

Not everyone who suffers from anxiety bites their fingernails, but everyone who suffers from anxiety focuses on unknown future possibilities to the detriment of the appreciation of their presence in the present. If you find yourself worrying constantly about events out of your control, with a feeling of doom regarding what might happen in the future pervading your everyday life, you’re not focusing on the moment at hand.

Sometimes if I feel like I’m biting my fingernails too much I’ll literally sit on my hands. There’s a version of this approach we can do emotionally, sitting on our figurative hands, which serves to keep us focused on the moment at hand, and not picking at our fingers.