If you have ever made an effort to stop your nail biting habit, you realize just how hard is. Perhaps you have worn gloves or bandages over your fingers, or tried flavored nail polish. Perhaps they were successful temporarily, but ultimately you found yourself with chewed-up nails and torn cuticles again. 

The reason that a surface nail biting cure is not likely to be successful makes sense when the cause of the behavior is examined. The nail biting habit is chronic and very similar in nature to other stress-related manners, including skin picking and hair pulling. Essentially, these behaviors meet an inherent longing; thus if the urge is not satiated or eliminated, the behavior will start again. No amount of bitter nail polish will curb the need for nail biting or offer the sense of relaxation you have after gnawing on your nails.

In that vein, you cannot really cure nail biting, but do not despair: Fortunately, time-tested remedies that can help with recovery are available. There is a three-step plan that can effectively stop nail biting if you are committed to do so. The elemental step involves hypnosis. 

For the uninitiated, hypnosis brings to mind images of people watching swinging pendulums or barking on stage for others' enjoyment. Rest assured that at its root, hypnosis is merely deep relaxation in a trance-like state. A lot of people erroneously believe that hypnotic trances are like sleep, but you are awake and fully conscious, simply more relaxed and open to suggestion.

In fact, a lot of people go through some kind of self-hypnosis daily, during times when we tune out the majority of the disruptions around us to concentrate on a particular task while staying fully conscious. It takes place effortlessly while we daydream, read or watch television. 

Because nail biting is related to stress, the more effectively you can work through and release anxiety and tension, the more triumphant your move to stop nail biting will be. The primary target of hypnotherapy is to help you to maintain a relaxed state continuously. 

You are encouraged to research several different hypnosis approaches, such as traditional hypnosis, Ericksonian hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques, to add to both the relaxed state and to realize a better sense of happiness. A competent hypnotherapist can tell which type is ultimately best for you.

The following step to curbing a nail biting tendency is to become conscious of the behavior since nail biting is done unconsciously. Hypnotherapy is advantageous for this stage, as communing with the unconscious mind to produce the conscious mind's recognition that you are going to bite your nails can help greatly. This allows you to make the judgment to bite your nails. And given that hypnotherapy has previously helped lessen the main stress, the dominant need to bite your nails has been greatly reduced, or even removed.

The ultimate action for using hypnotherapy to discontinue biting nails is to completely get rid of the original desire to chew or bite. There are techniques that can effectively program you with a craving to eliminate biting your nails, because just as behaviors can be effectively broken because of hypnotherapy CD's, they can be initiated. 

Hypnosis CD's are successful for restricting behaviors like biting your nails because, even though the session will not miraculously make absolute strength of will, it can bolster your tenacity and ensure that choices you make during a stress-free state will still continue when you are stressed out. Further, hypnotherapy is able to help you commune with your unconscious mind to get it to align with your conscious mind so both entities adhere to your aspiration. It should be noted that some likely hypnosis clients hold a fear of having suggestions planted or of remembering "hidden" memories during a trance. Rest assured that hypnotherapists are officially educated and accredited and abide by the most stringent ethical and professional rules. The processes used by professionals to make helpful suggestions to your unconscious are entirely separate from the ones employed or used during memory recall or age regression. So the use of hypnotherapy for efficiently curbing the need to bite your nails will not result in unintended memories or behaviors.

CONCLUSION: Nail biting is an inherent impulse like any other, and strength of will by itself is typically not enough to abandon the behavior. Using hypnotherapy or hypnosis CDs and all other resources available will more likely result in a comfortable, successful end to your nail biting.

Alan B. Densky, CH has spent years helping thousands of clients with hypnosis for nail biting. His hypnotherapy website offers tons of Free help including Free hypnosis videos, a hypnosis research library, and a self hypnosis blog where you can ask questions.

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