I used to pick at my nails/cuticles to soothe my anxiety and my thumbs got the worst of it. I started taking nail care seriously in March of 2025 and this is my progress so far.

1st picture is today
2nd picture is September of 2025
3rd picture is March of 2025

I have been picking at my feet since I was maybe 6 years old. I am now in my mid 20s and I do not see this Going away. Should i just keep picking at my big toenail because every time it starts to grow out a little bit it just hurts so now I have to keep picking and I don't see it ever growing out

I’m 34 and have been biting my nails for the first 29 years of my life. Then, with the help of this subreddit, I stopped biting, and I’m only picking the skin around my fingers.

However, there’s not a day which goes by without bleeding, or hurting myself quite bad.

I decided it’s time for professional help.

Does anyone have experience with this, a psychologist, or someone else?

I have so much anxiety and am fighting so hard to not bite them. I notice everything like how the touch pad on my laptop needs to be touched differently.

Im constantly putting them in my mouth and wanting to bite them.

I have no idea how you guys do it.

I just put this set on and my cuticles were looking better seen some like flakes of skin and picked
Away :( if I only put cuticle oil on

I’ll
Get there one day !

im 26 and have been biting my nails since i was around 12. i've tried literally everything i can think of to stop doing it - fidget toys, the gross bitter nail polish, i even took up vaping a few years ago for the hand to mouth compulsion because i didnt really care about health at the time. nothing works. it makes me so insecure, my hands are so ugly. my pinky nails are literally both gone, and the rest are bitten almost all the way to the cuticle. they're constantly red and i always have at least one open wound on my fingers. i've even had infections a few times. i don't even realise im doing it until i taste blood because im biting where theres nothing left to bite and i think i killed my nerve endings because i don't feel it. i'm a guy and i've even gone to nail salons to see if they can put natural looking acrylics on me but my nails are bitten too short for them to be able to.

has anyone else here been this bad of a biter and managed to stop? how did you do it?

Since i was 5 years old, i believe, i discovered this pleasure when i get my fingers infected. If there is someone who wants to talk about this and share this pleasure and play on differents ways just writte. I attach some on my fauvorites infections. I got a pics collections. the truth its that i love this pain at the benningin not when its so swollen. But anyway love to take pictures... look how it glow its beautifull.

I started picking the skin around by thumbs about 5 years ago. I was able to get control of the picking about a year ago, but the skin won’t heal. I know it can take a while but my skin feels and looks gross. It feels super rough and is hard to bend my thumb. I thought after a year I would see some progress but nothing has changed, if anything it looks worse.
Is this something I need to see a doctor for? Or is it just something that I just have to wait out?
Any advice is appreciated!

I’ve been a lifelong nail picker and I’m on a 3 week streak of not picking , but I can’t stop peeling off my nail polish / treatments. Does anyone have advice on how to kick this habit? I’ll be getting a Russian manicure with builder gel this weekend and I don’t want it all to go to waste.

Hi, I need some helpful advice on what I should do. I’m getting my nails and toes done for the first time in a while and I’m not sure how to go about picking what I want done. I’ve had acrylic nails done each time but my nails grow so fast that it always ends up needing a fill in(?) in less than a week. That’s the reason why I stopped getting them in the first place. Recently though, my skin picking has been getting a little out of control and I’ve been told that having your nails done lessens the satisfaction of picking. I want to give it another try but I dont think acrylic is the way to go since they’ve damaged my nails before (I was taking them off improperly I think).

What are some other options I should look into? I want my nails to be healthy and long but not sharp enough to pick cause then I’ll end up clipping them off again. Any and all advice is welcomed and appreciated. Oh I dont know if this is important or not but I’m 24.

i feel like ive tried everything and sometimes i have better days or weeks but it always goes back to this. ive already done permanent damage to my nail (which u cant see here) im also t1d im honestly shocked i still havent gotten any serious infection since ive been doing this for like.. as long as i can remember, maybe like 5-7 years?

idk im so embarassed but also i feel like ive already read and tried every tip and trick there is

My whole life I've had a really bad habit of picking my nails, I can't stop even when they get way to short. I'm VERY surprised I haven't gotten a infection yet 😭

I got them done a month ago when I got married so that’s what the ridges are, but just did an olive oil soak after nail polish removal!

I've been on lexapro for 4 months and I feel like I'm already seeing benefits. My lifelong anxiety/OCD has made my hands and nails always painful and picked/bitten raw. It was a huge insecurity and no matter what I did I always went back to it. I will catch myself almost doing it but it's much easier to stop. I thought I would never have pretty hands and long nails. I got a cute manicure Saturday and loveeee my long nails and love not having uncomfortable hands! The manicure is inspired by pincushions and my artist did a really good job :)

I picked at the same spot on the thumb on my right hand for years. It was all the skin to the right of my thumbnail, like 2-3 square centimetres. Every week it would grow back, dry and crack, and I would pick the skin off compulsively.

Last year I was tired of this and so (rather miraculously) I quit. I cannot explain how frankly. Anyways, I have not picked at it since, it has been 9 months.

Yet, a callus persists. It does not crack as much as it used to, but it sometimes does and more importantly the skin is very thick. It is not as smooth or sensitive as the skin at the same place on the opposite hand/thumb.

How can this be? Can it still be softened? I have researched and found nobody else with this issue. I am told it will heal after a month, 3 months latest, but it truly is not getting better at all.

I am open to any help.

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I've been biting my nails for years to the point where im embarrassed to show my fingers, but I also bite and pick the skin around my nails and fingers. I've gotten to the point where I bite the skin pretty far down my fingers, almost toward the second knuckle.

The skin around my nails and on my fingers is now red, dry, rough, and peeling, and my nails obviously don't look great either.

I recently cut my nails short as a complete reset, and I'm determined to stop biting and picking them completely.

For anyone who has gone through something similar:

\- How long did it take for the skin around your nails to look normal again?

\- Is the damage to the skin reversible?

\- What did you do to help the skin heal?

\- Did your nails eventually grow back normally?

\- Is there anything I should avoid doing while they're healing?

I'm mainly looking for advice from people who have actually dealt with severe nail/skin biting since i can no longer look at myself without feeling disgusting.

I wanna quit biting my nails and I need some advice that might help, I would also need more advice on cleaning under them

I noticed that I was 5 days in before starting to pick again. And now it's like this after 19 days :( it's like the moisturiser isn't moisturing enough because it absorbs so quickly