stop eating my fingers

I kinda stopped for two days. It was extremely difficult and I still picked at the skin with my fingernails, I just wouldn’t let myself bite. My only strategy was lots of hand cream. Perhaps I’ll try some of the stuff you guys have suggested. Since I found this site I have been paying close attention to other people’s hands and have seen quite a few people who are closet finger eaters as well. Two days did make a difference though. From a distance you can barely tell that my fingers were once torn up. It was when I started to get really nervous about somewhere I had to go that I started biting again. How is everyone else doing?

I have been doing this for about five years. This is something that i wrote around the time that it started, long before I had any idea that other people struggled with this as well.

I bite the skin on my fingers. Not the entire thing, just the cuticles. Sometimes it hurts and I can feel my heartbeat in my hands. Sometimes they bleed so I press my tongue against the cut and it tastes like liquid metal. Maybe it’s a nervous twitch that I cannot help but I don’t feel nervous. All I know is that I started when he left. I remember the first bite. It was when I knew I’d lost him forever. The skin was so fresh and smooth. I was sitting nervously in the crowded cafeteria wondering when he’d walk in. I tore the piece of skin off my cuticle. I didn’t know how to be alone and I was scared. Every time my teeth touched my fingers I realized I was remembering him, fearing him, waiting for him. They got worse. Some scabs were a deep burgundy, others bright and freshly cut. Once I looked down and I was bleeding without a bite. Scars can still bleed. I hide my hands. I don’t want anyone to see the red cuts around my fingernails. I bend my fingers into fists in front of my family. And when I see him on the street, I stick my hands into my pockets and say hello. I’m not ready for band-aids or Neosporin; maybe one day. For now I can’t help but bite. But that’s the great thing about fingers. Some of the skin dies and comes off, but for the most part it is alive and it naturally repairs itself. Skin grows back.