If you can quit biting your nails, you can do anything…
How does someone go about quitting a nail-biting habit? Admittedly, some people seem to just miraculously stop, some people never really got started, some people need a Habit Reversal Training procedure. But nail-biting is still an accessible idea to most people and it’s a common enough and acceptable enough habit that it makes it comfortable to talk about in session.
Here’s how people think you’re supposed to stop biting your nails.
(1) You decide you’d like to stop biting your nails.
(2) You exercise your willpower and stop biting your nails.
(3) The end.
And that’s definitely NOT how it goes.
So, what are the real steps? Something like this…
(1) You decide you’d like to stop biting your nails.
(2) You bite your nails.
(3) You notice after the fact that you bit your nails, and feel a little irritated with yourself. Your therapist explains habit formation (normalizing and depathologizing) and helps you to develop self-compassion.
(4) You begin to notice you are biting your nails while you are biting your nails.
(5) You make an attempt to stop, but they’re a little jagged now so you go ahead and finish biting them.
(6) You begin to notice you are biting your nails when you start to bite your nails. You wish you had a nail file right near you. But you don’t.
(6a) You repeat step 5. Your therapist repeats step 3.
(6b) You get up and get a nail file.
(7) You begin to notice that you are about to bite your nails. You wish you had a nail file right near you. But you still don’t.
(7a) You repeat step 5. Your therapist repeats step 3.
(7b) You get up and get a nail file.
(8) You get annoyed with always having to get up to get a nail file.
(9) You accept that jagged nails are both bothersome and inevitable and now always carry a nail file or clippers in your purse/desk/car/etc.
(10) You rarely bite your nails because those tools are accessible and you are aware of the need to fix nails early. You occasionally still bite your nails, and you react with self-compassion and simply manage the situation.
Of course, this isn’t the only way change happens!
But this is one great way to talk about it because it emphasizes the importance of awareness, reduces emphasis on willpower (which is almost useless for meaningful, long term change), and makes central the importance of an incompatible behavior and addressing the reinforcer, which is really the foundation of change. It also addresses the impact of meta-emotion regarding the change process (e.g., how self anger, shame, etc. get in the way).
One of my favorite things about this model for explaining change is that when clients “fail” on their first homework attempt (or even later ones), I can tell them honestly that they’re making great progress. And they learn that it’s a process.
Comment below: How do you talk about the change process with clients?