Biting my nails!

My habit was biting. I found it interesting to find a deeper meaning in the fact that I bite my nails. I mean to be honest I never really thought about it, I just did it. But it does make sense when thinking about the times when I bite my nails and the signs are there. When I’m anxious I bite my nails, when I’m kept waiting for anything I bite nails, when I’m bored I bite my nails, when I’m nervous I bite my nails. In reality I shouldn’t even have nails anymore. But in remembering the times when I bite my nails there was a pattern revealed. This patter revealed to me a sense of insecurity, I bite my nails because I lack the control of perfection, or perhaps any control on my life at all, and in reality it became second nature to bite my nails, and in that a sense of comfort was born. I mean to really think about it, why shouldn’t my nails be a source of comfort? I know my nails will always be located on my fingers; they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. So therefore I bight my nails, because in a time of insecurity, there is one secure thing I know. But, to move on, what is the comfort found in biting my nails? That is what I really thought about. What sense of security do my nails offer?

Or is it even security but really just force of habit? In an article published in The Los Angeles Times titled, “Habits can be broken, but not forgotten” by Karen Raven. The article states that we can break habits if we focus hard enough and put effort into quitting. But then the article focuses on the part of our brain (the striatum) that makes our habits a part of our lives by focusing on the function of rats, “But once the rats were in the habit of running the maze, just being placed in the maze was all it took to make them run it. Not much was going on in their striatums; they were running on automatic pilot.” This automatic pilot, is this what controls my biting my nails?

Or is it that they will always be on my fingers? Not necessarily. I think that there is comfort found in trying to make them as short as possible, which is why I let them grow long. If I put it in my mind that I can make them as short as possible without the need of nail cutters then there is one less thing I need to be dependent on. And that also in a sense offers a feeling independence. That need that forms from infantry to not have others do things for us. This also makes me think of the mirror complex and the need to identify with the image of ourselves in that mirror as stated by Jacques Lacan, “We have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes the image,” (442). And then the real reason I bite my nails is answered. The reason I bite my nails is for the control they provide in my identification. My nails not only offer sense of independence, a sense of comfort, but ultimately a sense of control. I can in the end control the length of the nails. I can ultimately make them as short or as long as I want. And there lies the true enjoyment reason for biting my nails.

Works Cited

“Raven, Karen.” Habits can be broken, but not forgotten. 2009. 4 April 2010.

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formation of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Maichael. Victoria, Aus.: Blackwell Publishing, 1998. 441-446. Print.