Bitten

Nail biting is quite common in adults – both female and male - and really it’s just a tail-end habit from childhood that just hasn’t been left behind.  Hypnotherapy is very effective in stopping nail biting and this is how it works broken down into the 4 steps illustrated in the diagram below.

1. The habit is unconscious which means that it’s a behaviour people are usually not aware of doing at the time.  Sometimes it’s only the pain that makes someone realise they’ve been biting a nail for half an hour.   It is a behaviour that is hard wired in the unconscious part of the mind and hypnosis is the way to make it conscious.  However, the nail-biting behaviour does serve a purpose – it reduces stress.  So the hypnotherapy needs to do two things (i) stop the nail-biting and (ii) replace it with a healthier way of reducing stress.   

2. So we intervene with hypnotherapy to first bring the behaviour to conscious awareness.  Now as soon as the person lifts their hand to their mouth to bite a nail they become aware of what they’re about to do and have a choice whether to carry out the behaviour or not.  It’s simple - they choose not to bite.  Under hypnosis the person has also been given a healthier method for reducing stress to replace the nail-biting behaviour that’s been taken away.   The nail-biting habit has been replaced with self hypnosis, so that the need to reduce stress is still being met.

3. After hypnotherapy the person now becomes aware that they are about to bite a nail just before they do so – and chooses not to - it’s no longer an unconscious behaviour.  Gradually the behaviour diminishes so that the hand is no longer lifting to the mouth.   The behaviour is now extinct.    

4. The former nail-biter now uses self hypnosis instead to keep stress levels down.  

In a future blog I’ll explain how hypnotherapy can help to treat another common issue in today’s fast paced world – panic attacks - a syndrome that can be both frightening and debilitating.   Meantime if you'd like to know how hypnosis works for anything else please leave a comment below......