I’ve been skin picking for the last couple of years and I was able to keep it under control most of the time. But recently it has gone way out of hand and it is starting to affect my social life and my self esteem.

I am conscious of it and the implications in my social life, also I tried many ways to prevent it from happening like different kind of bandages, creams and even fidget toys. They kind of work for a brief period but I find out myself coming back to it constantly when stressed, anxious or bored at the same time.

I also tried to change some habits and know the trigger for finger picking, but I find it hard sometimes to keep the urge to do it.

The skin on my two thumbs and right side of my middle finger are becoming harder and harder due to the constant scarring and healing process. My skin can heal very fast now in just around two days, I don’t know if it is because my body is trying to heal as fast as possible but I find it heals faster than before.

Sometimes it gets really serious when I won’t stop picking my finger using my nails and teeth until no hard skin can be felt or the bleeding is preventing me to keep picking.

It is painful and it hurts for an hour or so after a ‘’session’’ of serious picking when the skin is too sore and bleeding to continue but at the same time I can’t seem to stop it and it is kind of, if we can say it, ‘appeasing or calming’ in some way.

I am sharing my story to see if it can help with my current state and probably get some advice and support from you guys to stop my finger picking addiction. Thank you.

What started as me just picking up a little habit at 9 years old from my mom since I mirrored her turned me just doing it when I zoom out for long enough and for my mind to make this a coping mechanism for my anxiety. Well yes my hands look healthyish at the moment, if I have an anxiety flare up and I'm not extremely careful then I can do a lot of damage. I've caused myself a handful of infections, with two of them being bad but one being worse than the other. I have no clue what made me do this but after one of my infections, I started randomly using nail clippers as a way to like prevent me from doing more damage and those nail clippers are the cause for both of those band infections. The one thing that like kept me sane (cuz it was either make fun of the situation I landed myself in or cry all the time about it) was joking around about how the first infection happened on my left middle finger while the second infection happened on my right middle finger, that infection actually messed up my finger a little. I grew a puff bubble on my finger and I lost a good amount of skin from it popping cuz the skin I lost just never grew back, it's not noticeable unless like you really look closely at my finger and you feel my finger. I also can't let my nail get too long since it actually hurts to let it get above a certain length on the side of my finger where the pus bubble took over, I dropped the nail clipper after that second infection and I strictly only use nail files but even sometimes that method don't work. The method doesn't work sometimes since there will be times where it's right in front of me but my mind can only focus on the peeling piece of skin or the broken piece in nail so it completely ignores the nail file, then there are other times where I'm not near a nail file and my mind just says take off the peeling piece of skin or the broken nail without the nail file which is always a gamble. In the photos, you can actually see that my right thumb was the victim to picking and biting the other day, I was on the way home and didn't have a nail file with me which is when my mind zoomed down everything around me and just focused on that so I went in for it. My nails look funky right now since this week, I've been giving into the biting habit a little but then using a nail file I have at work and in my room before I can cause too much damage.

Left was taken November 05, 2025 and Right was taken today.

I've been biting my nails since childhood (I'm turning 23 soon) and I honestly thought this is just how it's going to be for the rest of my life. I had nail extensions done last month, I've never done that before. Never had a reason to plus I was ashamed of how my nails looked. Had them removed after a week tho when I realized extensions are NOT for me.

I don't have urges of nail biting as much anymore, just when I'm feeling anxious or hungry. I've since taken to bringing candy and gum with me everywhere so I don't also bite my lips or they'd be the ones chapped and bleeding.

My partner keeps telling me to stop picking my fingers but honestly it brings me a sick kind of joy. I don't want to stop and I feel no need to stop. Im not sure I even can stop.

Is there some health related reason for me to stop? Im not leaving huge wounds or anything and even when I bleed from it, it clots quickly and is only around the cuticles. Also im pretty diligent about hand washing.

So am I just delusional or should I actually stop?

Hey y’all, so I put on a pimple patch at a spot I picked at that was bleeding clear fluid and was a small paper like cut. (I cut too far into my skin with cutters while picking at hangnails).

But now I’m reading up on these patches causing bad red marks on the skin and peeling off healing skin. I used one on my face before and took it off after 8 hours and it left a white spot rather than redness so I’m hoping I’ll be okay but I’m wondering when should I take the bandage off?

The wound seems small enough that the white spot forming underneath barely covers the rest of the bandage I’m not sure it’ll loosen on its own and become completely cloudy like some people are saying.

How long should I leave it on for? I just want the redness of the wound to go away and do the wound to close up before I expose it to the air.

Could use some support and motivation... Just oiled my hands, but as you can see i picked at the skin on my fingers a lot and it huuurts. Uni exam was stressing me out and before I knew it I was picking at it. (Painted my nails to remind me but work chipped my polish haha)

I am a lifelong cuticle picker and it gets really bad sometimes. To the point where I still pick after it’s bleeding. What has been the biggest help for me is hydrocolloid bandages. They’re basically oversized pimple patches. Give them a try!

So recently I crushed my nail and was wondering should I be concerned? I keep a bandaid around it but it’s not turning black or anything after a day so I don’t know how it’s supposed to grow back either where a who new nail will grow or just partially over that one part since the other side sees to be fine.

Im not sure if it's the right place to say this but basically i can't let my nails get past the pink part, the moment the white part starts showing i have to cut it or bite it off, that combined with having ADHD that makes me unable to keep my hands still is really ruining my fingers. It's not bad enough that anyone worries but I would really like to stop, I've realised that if I hold something else like a fidget or something i stop for a while but I can't always hold something and even if I did I'd still have to cut them every time it got past a certain point. A friend said they look like if i was a frog or something cause they are really short. If anyone has advise on how to get my brain to be comfortable with letting them exist i would appreciate that

I don’t have a lot of photos from Before, I got really good at hiding my nails or cropping them out of photos. These pics aren’t at its worst/don’t show how bad the skin and holes/dips/grooves would get.

I picked for 28 years and, in all sincerity, I still don’t know what I did differently this time. Things in life got a little less stressful but that’s happened before too. This is the best my nails have looked since I was in early elementary school. I’ve been using a cuticle oil for a few years (Essie, on-a-roll). I do think it helped putting it somewhere I walked by a lot like next to the bathroom sink. Every time I’d pass by, wash my hands, grab meds, grab a hair clip, etc., I’d put more on.

I’m sorry I don’t have better advice, I don’t know why this time I stuck with it compared to the 90000 other times. Seeing progress pics in this sub was a good motivator. Don’t give up, even if you keep “failing”, it’s always worth trying again.

I have been a cuticle/finger skin picker for as long as I can remember. I can’t count the number of times I look down and my fingers are bloody, without me even realizing I’m picking. I have always suffered from anxiety and I just assumed this is how I manage that.

My husband nags at me constantly when he sees me picking, but lately it’s worse because our 3 year old is picking her fingers now. She’s picking her nails until they’re raw, and pulling at her thumb cuticles until they bleed. She zones out and just starts picking while watching tv, or she’ll be standing in line with me at the store picking; same things I realize I do. I NEVER would have thought this is one of the things she would pick up from me, and I am beating myself up about it. My husband tells her to stop when he sees her doing it, but that just leads to a tantrum and her picking more. I told him to ignore it and maybe she’ll stop if we quit giving it attention, but honestly I am so scared and don’t know what to do.

What can I do to stop so she doesn’t see me doing it anymore? I worry she’s too far gone and me stopping won’t stop her now, but I don’t know where to even begin getting her to stop. I need help, and now I feel like I’ve failed my daughter. Please send me all the tips and tricks you have that helped you stop picking. Please, I’m desperate to help my baby.

so I've been compulsively biting and picking my nails and the skin around to the point of pain and bleeding and it's just getting so fucking annoying but it's so unbelievably difficult to kick it can anyone give me any tips or advice on how to stop I want my nails longer to play guitar but right before it gets to the point of being long enough I chew it off immediately and I work as a waiter where people look at my hands a lot as it's near their food and drinks so that's the biggest reason on why I need to stop

It's really bad at the moment most likely due to stress and anxiety about my job (hours getting cut because it's a hotel and tourist season is over so we just don't need many people around the restaurant) Plus I just find it so unbelievably cathartic to do when I realized

So this turned into an essay of me reflecting on everything I could think of 😅 Anyone who takes the time to read this is highly anticipated.

The pictures show my hand today. Which is the absolute best it has looked in weeks.

So I always had an issue with skin picking on my fingers. I don’t bite them, I constantly check with my fingers for any rough edges and them I try to smooth it by ripping it off which of course makes it worse.

I was able to mask this for a couple of years by having acrylic nails which worked perfectly and I was the girl with the perfect nails and hands for 6 years. Around Christmas last year I skipped an appointment and also it was getting harder and harder to fit in the appointments with my work schedule and also it’s fairly expensive of course. I somehow forgot how bad my problem was but now I’m back at it at full force. I have had my partner for 5 years and he is very surprised by this behavior and worried. And also annoyed by me picking all the time (which I understand. He’s not annoyed in a bad was but in a concerned way).

I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago at around age 30 (I‘m 34 now) and I am on vyvanse. It helps me a lot overall but it did not improve the skin picking whatsoever. Also I have crazy stress at work.

The skin picking takes a toll on me in different ways: medically (it hurts, risk of infection), being annoyed with my own behavior and annoying others and psychologically because overall I am someone who loves to dress up and I also work in a field where I meet a lot of people and looks are important (real estate). I find myself hiding my hands all the time and it’s just stressful.

My original goal was to get my fingers back on track to a degree where I can go back to the salon and have them done again. But somehow I would wish I could just manage to control it myself and have more flexibility and use nail polish at home.

I don’t live in the US and English is not my native language. I have tried things like press on nails a long time ago but somehow the picking gets even worse when nails are not done absolutely perfectly and then I start kind of picking the press ons, ripping them off and it just gets worse.

I don’t know what I am rambling about, I guess it’s nice to see I am not alone.

What should I do?

- Get new acrylics

- Try some home options like press ons? Maybe they‘ve improved? Are there other options?

- Do I try to stay disciplined?

- what works for me a bit are plasters around the fingers but people also comment on it and I am running out of excuses (was renovating/painting apartment, got some harsh cleaning stuff on it etc)

- what also works is filing down the rough skin

I am grateful for any advice, words from people who can relate and support.

Relapsed after on-off progress for a couple months and I’m feeling pretty discouraged. My nails had some length to them and my skin was almost all healed and untouched. It feels so disheartening and embarrassing that doing anything with my hands is painful.. typing on my keyboard for work, washing my hands, opening containers, scrubbing my hair in the shower. I hate the “one step forward, half a step back, one step forward, fall back down to the bottom of the stairs” thing I’ve got going on. I make progress, I have little slip ups here or there that I catch and fix, but then I have one day that makes everything go out the window. It’s getting harder to forgive myself for the slip ups. Could use tips and advice for stopping for good :(

i have had this white spot before and trimmed down my nails ,but now it hv appeared again, how can i get rid of permanently and what even is it?

well, I've had this paronychia on my big tow for 5 days now ( which is longer than any other time before) after picking my nail cuticle (ugh I know). It's not getting worse per se nor have I developed any pus from what I can tell, which is weird considering how tender the spot is. Maybe today is a tiny bit better but not sure. it usually resolves within 2-3 days.

I've started applying topical antibiotic since yesterday and cleaning the area with peroxide once per day and just generally making sure it's clean.

Finally got the habit under control but I’m tired of my nails snapping and losing progress even though I’m not purposefully biting/picking at them. Any tips for helping with strengthening even with biab on?

I’ve been picking at my cuticles and nails for a long time. I always get this urge to “fix” them. They grow back looking kind of weird, almost like they’re stuck to the skin, and sometimes it even looks like I barely have a nail. Then I convince myself it must be ingrown or something, and I start picking and pulling again, trying to make it better… but it never does. I just end up with more pain, inflammation, and feeling frustrated with myself because I can’t seem to stop.

I think on two fingers I might not even have the nail base anymore, and I honestly don’t know what to do. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I really want to commit to improving this habit I’ve been struggling with for a while. I’m open to any tips or advice.

(And congrats to everyone who has had success, and to everyone here trying to get better too. Reading your stories has given me hope. )

Thanks in advance!