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Ally_92 , 14 Nov 2013

Using nail clippers

I cannot stop using nail clippers! And it's not to clip my nails either, I clip away all the skin on the sides of my fingers. Sometimes I'll stop at 1 layer but most of the time after a picking episode I'm left with bright red raw fingers even though it's very painful I can't stop. And when I do stop I move onto the bottom/heal of my feet. I find it really embarrassing especially now that my boyfriends started to notice my little problem and tells me stop or makes me wear socks he's even had to hold my feet still at times just so I don't grab at them! :( How can I stop?
2 Answers
Dizzy
November 25, 2013
I'm afraid I can offer no advice to you. I've been doing this same thing since I was around 5 years old. I'm 63 now and am still using my nail clippers. I've never been able to stop. Nutrogena hand cream is about the only hand cream that will help soften my hands. They are so rough that they snag everything they touch and I'm really embarrassed to shake hands with anyone. It was only a few months ago that I even found out that I was not the only person in the world that did this, so at least you know you are not alone. From what I gather it is a distant relative of OCD and may be associated with ADHD at times. When I was younger it was only the tips and sides of my fingers but over the years it progressed to the palms of my hands and between my thumbs and forefingers always in search of that one little piece of skin that just didn't seem to belong there. I've been on many meds, all kinds of prescription creams, and lots of therapy, but I've never been able to stop this or to even control it. Wish I had better news for you.
Ernn
May 11, 2025

I can't believe I'm reading about people doing this! And I write that with the ! out of excitement that I'm not the only person struggling with this. I've been clipping the skin around my fingers and sometimes the palms of my hands for decades. But it's the bottom of my feet where it becomes a problem for me. I often end up clipping too much from the bottom of my feet and it will hurt to walk. Sometimes bleed. When I was maybe 4 or 5 I got 3rd degree burns on the bottom of my feet and due to that, they've peeled horribly year round. I used to pull the skin that was peeling, but somewhere in my teens I discovered clipping it with nail clippers was so much more effective. But at some point I ended up clipping even when there wasn't any skin peeling. I'm 43 now. I've always been so embarrassed of my feet that it was incredibly rare for ANYONE to get to see them, much less the bottom of them. I don't wear sandals of any type. I live in socks, even to bed. At the beach my feet stay buried in the sand, even if it's not comfortably done from whatever sitting position in I'm. It's comforting to see that there are other people using nail clippers in this manner, as unhealthy as that sounds. 

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