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Why do we bite our nails?
What do ex-British prime minster Gordon Brown, Jackie Onassis, Britney
Spears and I all have in common? We all are (or were) nail biters.
It's not a habit I'm proud of. It's pretty disgusting for other people to
watch, ruins the appearance of my hands, is probably unhygienic and sometimes
hurts if I take it too far. I've tried to quit many times, but have never
managed to keep it up.
Lately I've been wondering what makes someone an inveterate nail-biter like
me. Are we weaker willed? More neurotic? Hungrier? Perhaps, somewhere in the
annals of psychological research there could be an answer to my question, and
maybe even hints about how to cure myself of this unsavoury habit.
My first dip into the literature shows up the medical name for excessive
nail biting: 'onychophagia'. Psychiatrists classify it as an impulse control
problem, alongside things like obsessive compulsive disorder. But this is for
extreme cases, where psychiatric help is beneficial, as with other excessive
grooming habits like skin picking or hair pulling. I'm not at that stage,
falling instead among the majority of nail biters who carry on the habit without
serious side effects. Up to 45% of teenagers bite their nails, for example;
teenagers may be a handful but you wouldn't argue that nearly half of them need
medical intervention. I want to understand the 'subclinical' side of the
phenomenon – nail biting that isn't a major problem, but still enough of an
issue for me to want to be rid of it.
It’s mother’s fault
Psychotherapists have had some theories about nail biting, of course.
Sigmund Freud blamed it on arrested psycho-sexual development, at the oral stage
(of course). Typical to Freudian theories, oral fixation is linked to myriad
causes, such as under-feeding or over-feeding, breast-feeding too long, or
problematic relationship with your mother. It also has a grab-bag of resulting
symptoms: nail biting, of course, but also a sarcastic personality, smoking,
alcoholism and love of oral sex. Other therapists have suggested nail-biting may
be due to inward hostility – it is a form of self-mutilation after all – or
nervous anxiety.
Like most psychodynamic theories these explanations could be true, but
there's no particular reason to believe they should be true. Most importantly
for me, they don't have any strong suggestions on how to cure myself of the
habit. I've kind of missed the boat as far as extent of breast-feeding goes, and
I bite my nails even when I'm at my most relaxed, so there doesn't seem to be an
easy fix there either. Needless to say, there's no evidence that treatments
based on these theories have any special success.
Unfortunately, after these speculations, the trail goes cold. A search of a
scientific literature reveals only a handful of studies on treatment of
nail-biting. One reports that any treatment which made people more aware of the
habit seemed to help, but beyond that there is little evidence to report on the
habit. Indeed, several of the few articles on nail-biting open by commenting on
the surprising lack of literature on the topic.
Creature of habit
Given this lack of prior scientific treatment, I feel free to speculate for
myself. So, here is my theory on why people bite their nails, and how to treat
it.
Let's call it the ‘anti-theory’ theory. I propose that there is no special
cause of nail biting – not breastfeeding, chronic anxiety or a lack of motherly
love. The advantage of this move is that we don't need to find a particular
connection between me, Gordon, Jackie and Britney. Rather, I suggest, nail
biting is just the result of a number of factors which – due to random variation
– combine in some people to create a bad habit.
First off, there is the fact that putting your fingers in your mouth is an
easy thing to do. It is one of the basic functions for feeding and grooming, and
so it is controlled by some pretty fundamental brain circuitry, meaning it can
quickly develop into an automatic reaction. Added to this, there is a ‘tidying
up’ element to nail biting – keeping them short – which means in the short term
at least it can be pleasurable, even if the bigger picture is that you end up
tearing your fingers to shreds. This reward element, combined with the ease with
which the behaviour can be carried out, means that it is easy for a habit to
develop; apart from touching yourself in the genitals it is hard to think of a
more immediate way to give yourself a small moment of pleasure, and biting your
nails has the advantage of being OK at school. Once established, the habit can
become routine – there are many situations in everyone's daily life where you
have both your hands and your mouth available to use.
Understanding nail-biting as a habit has a bleak message for a cure,
unfortunately, since we know how hard bad habits can be to break. Most people,
at least once per day, will lose concentration on not biting their nails.
Nail-biting, in my view, isn't some revealing personality characteristic,
nor a maladaptive echo of some useful evolutionary behaviour. It is the product
of the shape of our bodies, how hand-to-mouth behaviour is built into (and
rewarded in) our brains and the psychology of habit.
And, yes, I did bite my nails while writing this column. Sometimes even a
good theory doesn't help.
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发表于 2016-7-10 18:07:55