72- Special edition 2 : Mental health awareness month (19) - Nail-mania recovery

Picking or biting one's nails, just like Trichotillomania ,  are Body-Focused Repetitive behavior, in short BFRB, an umbrella term regarding compulsive actions which damage one or several parts on one's body. 

Their cause isn't known, but have been found at least in two categories that I can talk about: 

1) Emotional variables which wiki article mentions , represents as far as I can assume from other articles I read online, various anxieties which can produce these compulsions - knowing that BFRB's aren't generally seen as OCD's. 

Out of tremendous anxieties, I have had myself picked at my toe nails with my fingers, sometimes damaging these nails (and sometimes the hand with which I'd picked as well) so badly that they'd bleed (and I'd faint due to my blood phobia), or damage the quick which would later get infected and take a very long time to heal. 

I actually recall one day visiting my doctor to ask about a treatment for my infected nail, and as he started picking at it with the ointment, it hurt and i fainted... 

With my anxieties, I also picked at my fingernails and even bit them off really far, at I have the impression that I damaged the quick as well slowing down their regrowth (although that can also relate to some circulation issues - that I shall research and that I wonder if they can be hereditary as my mother has really poor circulation herself). 

However, with my wife's pressing advice to stop, as well as my wish to stop and avoid aforementioned infections and fainting, I managed to restrain myself and instead, I learned to use the more proper way to cut one's nails : with a nail cutter (duh). And I'm glad to say that I no longer bite my nails (onychophagy or onychophagia) and have managed to almost never pick them (Onychotillomania), and I stop myself as soon as I notice that i started. 

As a result of this recovery and my wish to break social gender taboos and to express my uniqueness, I've asked my wife and a friend to paint my nails and do nail art on them - it's time to accept that guys, even heterosexual ones can wish to have pretty artistic nails!

2) from one of those articles I read, it appears that at least some of BFRB's may be related to negative body image, instances where people will pick as a form of destruction of what they perceive as undesirable or not meeting their beauty standards, instead of anxious causes. 

Back to wiki, researchers are  investigating possible genetic components. Such approaches may explain some causes, but I see a lot of possible dangers from results announcing such a connection, outside of hereditary links which can explain patterns in families and not lock the person into a ''no choice'' situation. 

That wiki article also lists other forms of BFRB's, about which I won't talk in this entry, to remain in focus.

Lastly, as you can see, it's possible to recover and heal, but it takes time, patience and acceptance, as usual in health issues. 

Healing is possible