How to quit a bad habit?

[kcurioistyk]

I have a really bad habit of picking the skin around my fingernails so badly that they bleed in multiple places. Every day I'm wearing at least three band aids and the skin around my nails looks disgusting. I've tried the bad tasting nail stuff but that didn't work. They look horrible and its so inconvenient to always have to wear bandaids. Please help!

[Rodismus]

I'll elaborate on the 21 days to break a habit. When you do something repetitively making it routine you're brain will the movement or action into long term storage so to say. So even after those 21 days you'll still have the habit, there is no getting rid of it. What you're really doing is replacing the habit with something else. For example you could start carrying around a coin and playing with that and after 21 days that would more or less be your new habit. This is a very crude way of thinking about it but for most people it should work. Add in activity, just making yourself busy can help reduce on bad habits like this.

[akadatank44]

Gloves. It takes 21 days to break a habit. Good luck

[Shmoopsie]

Even if we hate a habit we're doing, like smoking or biting our nails, we tend to continue doing them because they provide us with some sort of satisfaction or psychological reward.

Catch yourself thinking any positive thoughts or feelings about your bad habits and reframe them to remind you of the negative aspects. In other words, in this case it's good to think like a hater.

We all have a bad habit or two we could stand to lose, but habits are hard to break.

Wishing you the best of luck.

[Anonymous]

Try keeping a small notebook to chart when you pick, and what you were feeling when you started picking at your skin. You may find out a pattern. Maybe you feel anxious, nervous, bored, or scared in certain situations and so you do it reflexively because it comforts or calms you down. If you can establish a pattern, you may see that you're doing it in response to something or someone. If you can see that, you can start to work on other ways to cope that aren't so destructive.

[Anonymous]

Tape oven mits to your hands so you can't pick at them. Or just put hot sauce on your finger nails so you won't bite the skin off.