My Finger Picking Compulsion Feels Just Like an Addiction
The emotional consequences of body-focused repetitive behaviors
I don’t want to minimize the gravity of drug, tobacco, or alcohol addiction, but finger picking strikes me as similar in some ways. In fact, I often think I know what it must be like to have a substance abuse problem.
I’ve been a finger picker for 37 years. I was in middle school when I began to notice and pull out flakes of skin around my fingernails.
I can’t remember how long it took for finger picking to become both habit and problem. What I do know is that I was hiding it by the time I was in high school.
Still, once in a while someone would notice a ravaged finger and ask, “What happened to your finger?” I’d come up with excuses like getting burned or having picked at it just once and then getting an infection.
I began putting on a bandaid when a finger looked noticeably damaged — a great solution since the bandaid both hid the injury and gave credibility to my explanation that I’d accidentally cut myself. I’d pick under the table or when my back was turned to others.
