“You won’t get a job or a boyfriend with those bitten nails,” was one of my mum’s attempts to get me to stop gnawing at my fingers when I was 14. It didn’t work. Boys were deeply unappealing to me, then, and I knew that when I finally wrote my best-selling novel, the public would be too compelled by my prose to mind about my chewed-up talons.

I don’t blame my mum for going down that route, though, because she’d tried everything else. That anti-nail-biting polish that was meant to taste so horrible? I’d simply got used to the taste. Bribery? It didn’t work. Seeing that my little brother was starting to imitate me? I felt bad, but I kept going.

She’d tried all the tricks, but I’d been doing this since childhood and I couldn’t stop, no matter what anyone said. The compulsion was too strong. Later, when I did get a job and a boyfriend, I could see that actually having my fingers in my mouth was a bad look, unhygienic and also annoying to others, so I picked at them covertly, or in private. There was always a way to get my nail-biting fix.

Now at 34, I’ve never had my nails grow to a length where I could even remotely paint them. They have consistently been bitten down to the quick, and sometimes it’s been painful and bit bloody. Sometimes one or two have grown a little. and I’ve admired them momentarily before tearing them off like I’m Godzilla on speed. I hate how my hands look, I keep them hidden, and I envy people’s manicures – but none of that can make me resist the urge.

Of course, nail-biting is a common experience. Officially called onychophagia, it tends to begin in childhood, and is what psychologists call a body focused repetitive behaviour (BFRB). There isn’t much data for BFRBs but the data that exists, suggests nail-biting occurs in 30 per cent to 60 per cent of children at the age of 10, some who will stop, others who will carry on into adulthood, and find it a distressing habit. In one study, up to 24 per cent of university students reported performing some body-focused repetitive behaviours at least five times a day.

But why do we bite our nails in the first place? Clare Mackay, professor of imaging neuroscience at the University of Oxford, has spent 30 years researching various neurological and psychiatric disorders. One of her particular interests is nail-biting, as well as hair pulling (trichotillomania), because she has suffered with both very badly since she was 12. “BFRBs are not at all well understood or evaluated,” she tells me. “They have been very much overlooked despite being common and causing significant distress.”

Mackay says that almost everyone engages in some nail-biting, skin picking and hair pulling, but that this becomes disordered when it is uncontrollable and causing distress. “One of the major reasons we don’t have better data is that these behaviours are often hidden. I know from internet support communities that many people suffer in silence; not even feeling able to tell their spouse or closest friends.”

Mackay believes that BFRBs are a consequence for most people of emotional or psychological distress – “it doesn’t have to be something obvious” – and that nail-biting can be self-soothing. It’s a different question about what keeps us performing BFRBs. “For me, the shame I felt kept me in a state of distress, and thus the need to self-soothe [by pulling and biting] was always there.”

I did not have a childhood of obvious emotional or psychological distress – quite the opposite – but research has found that people with BFRBs often struggle to cope with emotions such as anxiety, frustration, sadness, and boredom. Psychologist Imogen Rehm and Judith Stevenson, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Glasgow and UK ambassador for the TLC foundation for BFRB, have written about their findings in The Conversation. “They [people with BFRB] report that touching, rubbing or biting skin, nails, and hair prompts a relaxing, trance-like state, which distracts from negative emotions. When bored, body-focused repetitive behaviours can help people feel like they’re doing something active, especially those with perfectionistic personality traits.”

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This rings true for me, because I was a very worried, highly strung, young person, and have long battled with exhausting, debilitating perfectionism. I also pick at my nails whenever I am sedentary and my hands are idle, but also when I’m stressed, or anxious, and especially when I’ve not expressed those emotions. Perhaps my fingers are doing the talking for me.

However, Mackay argues that it’s a misconception that nail-biting is a form of self-harm. “Although there are similarities, there are important differences between self-harm and BFRBs,” she says. “With BFRBs there is no intention or desire to cause deliberate harm, that’s just an unfortunate consequence.” Other misconceptions about nail-biting include: “We are ‘choosing’ to do it and can ‘just stop’ if we want to. There is often no conscious control, so you can’t choose not to”, and “it’s because we’re nervous. Anxiety can exacerbate symptoms, but it’s just as often because of boredom or being not otherwise stimulated.” And perhaps the most useful one for me to hear, given how much I beat myself up about this: “There is this misconception that it’s just a ‘bad habit’. We suffer from uncontrollable urges, not habits.”

It’s good to understand a little more about this compulsion of mine that I have long dreamt of getting rid of, or at least temper, so I can stop hiding my hands, feeling embarrassed, and causing myself pain. I have set countless new years resolutions about this, so many goals, tried so many habit-forming hacks and tricks. None of it’s worked, and I’m increasingly sick of being a nail biter.

The only thing left I’ve not tried is something I’ve long been sceptical of – hypnotism. I’m not sure about all the swinging pendulum business, and I highly doubt I’m going to be susceptible to it because I went to see Derren Brown last year on stage and I wasn’t picked as one of the people to hypnotise, so I must give off a sense of being too-aware, right? Too cynical? Also, am I going to have to look deep into this stranger’s eyes?

The attempt to stop Nail Biting

In my first of five sessions with Jonathan Garside at The Hypnosis Clinic in central London, I say out loud for the first time how childlike and ashamed I feel of my nails, and my inability to stop doing something that’s bad for me. He is so kind, and calm, because of course, he’s seen it all, and has dealt with plenty of nail biters since he became a clinical hypnotherapist in 1996.

Rather than asking me to list the things I hate about nail-biting – shame is not a helpful emotion – he asks me to write a wish list of good things I’d experience if I didn’t do it. They include: “I would like to feel more relaxed than ashamed about showing my hands to people”, “I would love getting a manicure”, “I would welcome life without the compulsion to bite my nails”, “I’d feel proud if I could resist this compulsion”, “I’d feel more like an adult because biting my nails makes me feel like a child”.

Already I feel lighter, simply for saying it out loud to someone so compassionate. When I get into the (very comfortable) black recliner chair for the hypnotism, there are no swinging pendulums, or eye contact, but instead Jonathan’s soothing words from across the room, telling me to relax, focus on my breath and listen to the sound of his voice. I feel my body go heavy as he plays sounds of birds and the sea and talks to me, saying my wish list back to me, telling me that I am capable of having long, lovely nails, and that in the future I’m going to take care of them, and admire them, and enjoy them.

It’s all positive, hopeful, vivid stuff that he’s saying to me but at first I think, hang on a minute, this is comfortable and all, but do I have to lie here listening to him talk about my nails for an entire full half hour? Won’t I get bored? But how will I bite my nails to handle the boredom?

But then, when I think it’s been just five minutes, suddenly Jonathan is telling me to open my eyes, and I realise it’s actually been 35 minutes. I haven’t been asleep – I’ve heard every word – but I’ve been in some deep state of relaxation, where my sense of time has shifted, and I feel more receptive to suggestion. I really don’t want to get out of the chair. It’s how I imagine it might feel to be in a meditative state.

As it turns out, hypnosis has – surprisingly to me – a robust scientific framework. Clinical research has shown that it can help relieve pain and anxiety and aid smoking cessation, weight loss, and sleep. Some people can even use “self-hypnosis” to manage stress, cope with life’s challenges, and improve their physical and emotional health. It’s been used in various forms for centuries, but it wasn’t until 1843 that the Scottish surgeon Dr James Braid popularised the term “hypnosis”.

It’s not magic or a quick fix, and Jonathan doesn’t claim it is. He is clear that it will take motivation from me, to support the hypnosis by remembering our conversations every time I am compelled to bite, by sitting with the discomfort of my hands resting idly in my lap, or finding another way to handle any unexpressed anxiety. I am also given a tape he records for me, that I listen to before bed, to “top up” the hypnosis.

But at the end of our fourth session, much to my surprise, four of my nails have grown proper, white tips, and I have managed for the first time in my life to resist the urge to break them off. I am now watching the others grow, slowly but surely, like a primary school kid lovingly watching their cress begin to sprout. The compulsion hasn’t gone away, and sometimes I begin picking at them automatically, as I have done for 27 years. But so far I have stopped each time before it goes too far, before I get down to the quick. I notice myself being more mindful.

What’s also been helpful is Jonathan encouraging me to think of myself as a former nail biter, and that it is not my fixed identity. It is, actually, just something I used to do. But I am separate from that, and have the ability and desire to no longer do it. Throughout our sessions, Jonathan has kept things positive, discouraging any negative thoughts, and that has been the biggest difference. As Mackay says of herself, she kept her habits up to self-soothe the shame she felt from the habit itself. Going to see Jonathan is the first time I’ve discussed nail-biting without embarrassment, or been ok to show someone my hands without pulling them away quickly.

Of course, not everyone can afford hypnosis (an initial 30-minute free consultation, then £250 per session, or a package of four sessions for £225) and there is no one size fits all for any BFRBs. “There are various therapies available, which have various rates of success,” says Mackay, “but my opinion is that it is possible to manage (not necessarily completely stop) BFRBs. I don’t find it helpful to have a goal of completely stopping. It’s difficult because the mechanisms are complicated and not well understood, but with greater understanding I think management should be possible. I have had decent-ish nails and eyelashes for about a year now – longer than ever before – but I still pull and bite sometimes.”

In my hypnosis sessions, which I am hugely glad to have done, I have learnt that finding someone to talk to openly about nail-biting who isn’t going to shame you, or be annoyed with you, is key. You need compassion, rather than judgement, or someone to suggest you merely have a lack of willpower. I have found lying in that recliner in a state of altered consciousness hearing kind things, to be only helpful. So, I can now for the first time envisage a future of waving my hands around enthusiastically. I’m thinking of (hopefully, soon) asking the manicurist for either the sort of thrillingly red nails that my grandmother believed “only loose women” wore, or some beautiful gold leaf I admired on a friend at a wedding last week. Or, perhaps, some festive snowflakes to mark that my growing nails are my very own Christmas miracle.