grow my fingernails

After biting my nails my whole life, they are pretty ruined. They are ridged and bumpy and the sides are bitten right back. In the past I have worn acrylic nails over the top and temporarily I stopped biting because I couldn’t get to them. But then I bit through the acrylics! Almost broke my teeth I think. Have tried rubber band technique and bad tasting nail polish but that didn’t work. Recently I have been working as a nanny/housekeeper instead of the office jobs I did before. In the last 3/4 weeks I have managed to grow my nails out. I attribute this to wearing gloves more often (for washing dishes etc), less time on the computer and also less stress. I have been making sure to wear nail polish and keep them filed and smooth and also moisturise a LOT. This has made such a big difference. My nails are long on the ends but the sides are still taking a while to grow out as they are so badly deformed after years of abuse. I think it will take months to have them grow out and I am not sure my nails will ever look normal. I find I have started to pick at my nails if my nail polish becomes chipped so I have to make sure I change it reguarly.

I stopped about 2 yrs ago but now i accidently started again
lol xD

Yey, I’ve been trying to do this for years & now I’m glad I managed to drag the willpower from somewhere! I had an accident last night & my thumb nail broke, now I realise why people make such a fuss over this! & now my thumb looks really stumpy & wrong now I’m used to long nails! & I get to wear pretty nail varnish, yey!!

Hmmm after 15 years this is going to be tough. I’ve done it a few times before, but then I have a rough week / get bored and all my hard work is ruined a few minutes. Still, nothing that’s easy is ever worth achieving, and if I’m ever going to paint my nails with all the lovely nail varnish I have I’m going to have to stop. Does anyone out there have any tips??

I had grown them for years until about 6 months ago! Stress from my first year of residency has packed on some fat, shortened my nails (as well as my temper,lol) and made me not as thankful for things as I’d like to be. Actually, it’s not the stress that did it – it’s my inability to deal with the stress. So….at the root of the problems is my (lack of) coping skills. Gotta develop those, too :)

While I was growing out my fingernails, it occupied way too much of my time. It seemed like I was constantly picking at my nails and trying to get all the dirt out from beneath them. It is a hassle to make sure they look good and once one is gone, it’s probably best to cut them all off and start over.

The hassle is just not worth it.
Short trimmed nails are just fine for me.

I guess I have a skosh more will power than I thought.

When I added this to my list I was already partway along toward my goal. But now a quick calculation shows I’m already 80% of the way there! Whoa, how did that happen?

It’s all the more amazing when I consider that I’ve been stressed out over the past week, and under such circumstances I’d normally be biting my nails like crazy. (I have caught myself a couple of times and stopped short.)

The goal of growing out my nails is closely related to fighting my old bad habit of biting them. But I also tend to clip my nails extremely short with clippers. Thus my goal is pro-nail-growth, not strictly anti-nail-biting.

My definition of this goal is to grow out my nails to at least 1/16 inch (1.6 mm), all at the same time. This probably seems ridiculously simple to many people, yet it is something I can never ever remember doing. (At this writing, only one of my fingernails even comes close to this measure.)