![]() Nonetheless, nail biting does happen as an OCD ritual since nearly anything can happen as a ritual. People with health anxiety OCD may fear that the bacteria underneath nails could lead to chronic health conditions down the road. People with relationship OCD may be unlikely as well, believing damaged nails could make them unattractive to their partners. ![]() But there are certain rituals more common than others and nail biting doesn’t fit into this category.įor one thing, those with contamination OCD, a prevalent subtype of OCD, are highly unlikely to engage in nail biting because fingernails tend to be full of very real germs. Many people with OCD keep their rituals secret, so it’s impossible to know everyone’s routines. Regardless of the above, ritualistic nail biting is probably not overly common in OCD sufferers. This results in an increasingly debilitating illness. Engaging in the ritual, just like any ritual, only validates the OCD and makes the intrusive thoughts more powerful and harder to ignore. When nail biting is used in a ritualistic manner as a way to decrease the anxiety intrusive thoughts cause, it will always make OCD more potent. These acts are examples of true compulsions and are no different from other compulsions, such as handwashing, counting, asking for reassurance, checking, and avoiding. If a nail biter is biting their nails as a way to negate intrusive thoughts, because they believe that something bad will happen if they don’t bite their nails, as a way to cancel out disturbing images, or as a way to keep themselves and loved ones safe, then nail biting would certainly be indicative of OCD. Still, that doesn’t mean none of them do. In fact, the vast majority of nail biters do not. With these stats, it’s easy to conclude that not every person who bites their nails has OCD. ![]() By comparison, nail biting is very, very common almost a third of the population engages in this habit. ![]() OCD is, fortunately, rather rare it’s believed to affect only about 1 in 100 people. The OCD cycle works the following way: 1) The OCD sufferer experiences an intrusive thought (e.g., they touch a doorknob and fear they’ve been exposed to a deadly virus, they hit a bump while driving down the road and fear they’ve hit a pedestrian, they see a number they deem “unlucky” and fear a plane will crash because of it, they hear their partner talking on the phone and assume they’re cheating on them, they fear shouting out vulgarities in public spaces, etc.) 2) The OCD sufferer engages in a compulsion as a way to regulate their anxiety and either stop the thought from coming true or make sure it isn’t already true (e.g., they scour their hands over and over again with soap and hot water, they turn their car around to check for bodies on the road, they think of a “lucky” number to make air travel safer, they ask their partner for reassurance in their relationship, they hold their hands over their mouth when walking through a mall or sitting in a church) 3) The OCD sufferer experiences a temporary surge of relief as a result of their compulsion 4) The anxiety returns and the cycle starts up again 5) The OCD sufferer re-engages in their ritual, making the OCD worse with each compulsion.
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