I bite and pick my nails and the skin around them for a long time. I think I started back around kindergarten age.
This looks like a nice alternative in theory with the stim toys. But unfortunately there are some problems about them for me personally.
Thanks for the suggestion! I went on the site and the spinner rings, lanyards and eni puzzles really interested me. Sadly, my school doesn't allow jewelry, and yeah, since it's mainstream, chewing on something would be socially unacceptable. But thanks for the website! It's really cool.
Like
@Nemo mentioned, I think it's not that socially acceptable to use chewable toys at work, for example. I don't want to draw other's attention to that and I guess people would ask questions about it and I don't want to have to deal with this.
Furthermore, I don't like wearing rings and I usually don't wear any jewelry in general, so that option is ruled out for me although it would be more subtle than a chewable necklace.
While at uni or at work I've learned to replace my former fidgeting behaviour (rubbing my face, scratching my head and pulling my hear) with fidgeting with pens. It still annoys me that I feel compelled to fidget, but at least this is less obvious behaviour. I don't do the incessant clicking with pens (drives me nuts when people do that) but just sort of roll it in and over my fingers. I also tend to drop my pens quite a lot
I also do that if there's a pen to fidget with. But that's not always the case obviously. It's the same with other items I fidget with. I do it if it's right there, but if it's not directly available, I'll continue with nail/skin picking.
My biggest issue with stopping it probably has to do with this:
Though issue could be that I do it when focused and don't notice it.
It's like this for me as well. I do it without even noticing unless it's too late. So I cannot stop it right from the beginning because it already takes a while until I notice my behaviour in the first place.
Maybe you could buy fidget jewellery and just keep it in your pocket?
I tried things like this before, but due to the fact I don't notice it, it's kind of difficult to replace it. Plus, if I have it in my pocket, it'll likely just stay there, at least that's my experience that far.
The problem is that my fingers are just always there, so the picking/biting always works automatically. To avoid it, I would have to keep the jewelry in my hand constantly just to make sure I use it instead of picking my skin. But as soon as I do something else with my hands, I put the fidget toy somewhere and start with my old behaviour again later.
I use other fidget methods occasionally if available (works subconsciously just like the nail biting). For example, I had this shirt with shiny pieces glued on. Well, the pieces didn't stay there for long... Eventually I had removed all of them by picking them. But taking care of a general alternative is difficult because I usually forget it and only do it when it's there anyway (like the shirt).
I used to gnaw... so hard to stop.
Starting small helped. One finger at a time.
It was rewarding yet very hard.
Hmm, that sounds like it could work unless I forget not to pick that one finger. I guess I need to cover it then. But I know I would pick the patch instead then until it's gone.
How did you deal with that,
@orphan? Did you cover the fingers you were working on not to gnaw or were you able to just stop with that specific finger?
