Need Help!!!!

[Red2111]

okay, so i have a crisis ... or rahter my boyfriend Bubba does

 

he needs to stop an addiction of nail biting; his employer is riding him rather hard on the issue because of how extensively he bites his nails and they are starting to write him up for this.  aside from researching ideas on the net, i decided to use this great resource the DM provides.  which is ya'll with lots of varied experience :)

 

okay when i say he bites his nails extensively, i mean he litteraly bites them down to the quick and takes off the first layer of nail or two.  he's also a smoker (an addiction to be takled once we plan to have kids), and this is his first desk job, as well as the first job that he cant relaly take a smoke break whenever he wants to.

 

he's also been biting his nails for a little over 30 years, and has tried several things when he was younger.  he was also in the Army, they tried to break him of this habit and there obviously wasn't any success.

 

any and all advice, especailly from men who have quit biting their nails, is appreciated.

 

 

 

Thing he has tried before

- hot sauce on findernails

- pepper on nails

- "no bite spray" on nails

- fingernail polish

- gloves (when he was younger, he would just take them off)

- manicures

- gum

- self discipline

[Torrie]

That's a hard one. Right now I am trying to get my daughter to stop putting stuff in her mouth.

 

Besides what he has tried already, I don't have any ideas.

 

 

 

You could pop him up-side the head when he does it.  :o

[Red2111]

if i could fit in his side pocket and go to work with him i would lol

[Torrie]

Why would they write him up? That does not seem right.

[Red2111]

i know, i think its a kind of discrimination.  but his work place is really weird so theres nothing that can be done.  i dont think they will fire him over it, but they may use that as a reason to look for reasons to try and fire him for a legit reason ya know.  and with jobs now a days, we'd rather not go through the process of trying to get a new one.

 

 

he works in an open office situation, no enclosed cubicles.  kinda similar to the way public school rooms are set up.  they also exchange lots of papers physically.  the fact that he often bites them until they bleed doesnt help. so i'm guessing its a combonation of these factors

 

- peolpe find it distracting and disgusting

- the fear of germs, since his fingers are in his mouth and then he touches the paper.

- the fear of other diseases.  though he's clean of all blood type diseases, other people dont know that.  so if blod gets on the paper via his bitten fingernails ...  well woudl you touch a peice of paper with blood from an unkown person on it.

[Torrie]

Ok I can see the point now. If someone were bleeding on my paperwork I would not be that happy.

 

Try the gloves again. Now that he is older he may be able to stop taking them off.

[Mirshann Uuranor]

Co-worker accountability maybe? 

Maybe if he has a friend at work that he can trust to help keep an eye on him and pop him upside the head when they see him going for his fingernails, perhaps that would deter him from biting them. 

[Wayward_fool]

Mmmm... I don't really have great ideas on how to stop him from biting his nails, but I was thinking maybe he could get fake nails at work or spend a ton on manicures.

 

I personally would be quite grossed out if I found blood on the paper work. Have you tried figuring out if it's a habit or something psychological? Sometimes external factors like stress can make people bite their nails... or something.

 

Sorry I can't be much help. Upside is, he's probably got a good calcium intake from all the nail bits.

[Daruya]

I used to bite my nails up until my early 20's.  Then I read somewhere of all the nasty little critters that lived under my fingernails and quit, cold-turkey!

[Millon]

I would imagine that he is not biting his nails every minute and every hour of the day right? Look at it as an experiment. Ask him to keep a log or try to keep one yourself to see if you can find the control. What is/was/will he be doing when he has the urge or simply starts gnawing away. If you can find a control time to pair against the chewing time, see if you can find ways to integrate the two and start to ween off. If you can find a single cause, if it is one of many, most like this will lead to a chain of other triggers after the first.

 

That may work for a long time plan. For the short term, can he just hype out on sugar-free hard candy and or one of the hand exercise tools? It sounds a lot like the habit addiction in his smoking. It's not a chemical dependance but a manual type. Keeping his hands occupied and tired, i.e. the hand tool, will help taper the need to use the hand. I went through three packages of clicky pens in a day and a half when I quti smokin' to stem the need to have my hands occupied. Cheap ass pens kept breakin'. Being the other option to keep my hand occupied would have gotten me fired I opted for pens. Hope this helps.

[dapianoplay3r]

keep his hand busy  ;)

No honestly i only bite my nails when im bored

School always makes me start again  :-\

[Red2111]

:)  thanks all for the responses :)

 

we've figured out the root causes.  its mostly boredom(sp) but it has gotten worse from not being able to go out and smoke as much.  i mentioned the stress ball last night, so we are all on the same brain wave here which is awesome.  with his jobs, he needs his hands to type and write with constantly, so he wasn't even interested in that idea.

 

i also think, because of the enviroment he works in, it being an open office; the constant clicking of the pens would annoy the crap out of everyone around him.  that would also annoy him as well, he can't even stand the sound of people chewing ice lol

 

thinking back on what him and i were talking about, i thik it's also a trigger to help him keep focus.  some people when they are concrentrating hard and trying to puzzle somethign out; they do unconcious motions like triwl their hair.  i think his is chewing on his fingernails.

 

i say this becaus of what he told me.  when he bites his nails, he kinda zones out, gets tunnel vision ya know.  and he doesn't really realize it until it's too late.

 

he's trying something right now, putting tape on the end of his fingers.  he's not open to the gloves right now, but he likes the idea of manicures and maybe male accrylics(sp) but we have to get his nails up to the point where he can get a manicure

[Vanion]

Tape over the finger nails. I used to have a guy working for me who did the same thing as your boyfriend.

 

I asked the guy why he'd always bite at his nails until they bled, and he said it was just a bad habit. So, I wrapped the tips of his fingers in strips of duct tape.

[Red2111]

did it work??

[Loranflame]

Hmmmmm... tell him to try and feel exactl where the urge to bite his nails come from. He should do this everytime he tries to bite his nails. Once he can feel where the urge comes from it's just a matter or practicing turning it off.  ;D

[Minuet]

Just so you all know their is no urge to bite your nails usually. You do it subconsciously. You don't even realize it at the time.