Nervous Habits

Nervous habits & bad habits for the body are behaviors that we pick up or are set off from the feeling of being nervous, stressed out and bored. Whether it’s nail-biting, teeth-grinding, over eating, or hair pulling, nervous habits plague many individuals, who just can’t seem to stop. But why do we engage in these behaviors and will they have damaging effects on the body? That’s what I’m going to converse about and explain in this paper. Nail biting is the most common type of nervous habits affecting about a “third of young children, 44 percent of teenagers and 19 percent to 29 percent of adults” (Current). Nail biting may occur for many different reasons. It’s usually seen as nervous or stress habit but this is not always found to be true. It may result from an outgrowth of things that were self-relaxing to one as a child. (Nervous). Psychologist Penny Donnenfeld stated that children are extremely mouth oriented, and thus the occurence of the behavior in toddlers as well as young children could be some leftover craving from infanthood (Current). Many young children pickup their habits young by watching older sibling or friends after observing one of them do it. Children tend to mimic them, and then eventually form a habit too. Though nail biting is diagnosed as a nervous habit, it’s not always their nerves causing the problem. It could also result from boredom, relaxation, or watching TV. For most, people take pride in clean finger nails. But some can’t seem to stop this habit of improving their nails. Therefore they end up trying to resolve the dilemma by improving the nails by means of gnawing either the nail or yanking at the cuticle to fix the problem (MSN Health Topics). This will possibly result in a raw and inflamed nail condition called paronychia. Nail biting may seem like a harmless action but it can have many adverse consequences. First off nail biting is not the least bit sanitary and will spread germs from the everyday items