biting nails

Specialists working to help a patient stop biting nails use a technique called “habit reversal,” which requires increasing awareness of the offending behavior.

It is precisely this lack of clarity about what differentiates similar mental-health conditions that prompted the TLC Foundation for Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors to launch the largest patient study to date of people with BFRBs, with the goal of identifying the neurological and genetic conditions that predispose people to engage in these specific behaviors of pulling hair, picking skin or biting nails.

Who knows, after almost two years of biting nails, maybe those supporters can start to concern themselves with a team name, club colours, crests and players?

These are behaviors that involve compulsively damaging one's physical appearance – picking at skin, pulling hair, biting nails and even chewing one's lips or the inside of the cheeks.

Photograph: Stu Forster/Getty Images While all others were biting nails in another tight affair and rolling eyes at yet another penalty, one man remained furiously focused at the heart of it all.