Obsessive fingernail, cuticle, and nailbed cutting?

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I have been what I now believe is mutilating as you do since I stopped sucking my thumb at ten or eleven years of age. I have deep scar tissue on both of my thumbs and my fingernails represent trauma caused deep horizontal ripples in them. I continue to pick and cut my cuticles and fingernails despite the injury.

I'm always picking at the skin around my cuticles constantly all the time as far back as I can remember. It seems to calm me down as I have alot of anxiety. I can't stop doing it even if I wanted too, as sometimes the skin around my nails gets all red and swollen and starts to look infected. I have to put a band-aid over it to keep from picking at it some more and it can heal.

Constantly, constantly biting my nails. I started when I was three, after scratching my brother's face - I figured I'd never scratch him again if I had no nails.

Also, constantly cracking my finger, feet and toes when I can... And I'm ashamed to say that I chew my own toe nails... though now at least I do it when nobody is looking.

I've always chewed my fingernails or the skin around the nails. When my ex-girlfriend expressed concern in high school, I stopped biting my nails. A few years later, I started again, then managed to stop a few months after that. But I quit biting them in the middle of a really stressful period in my life, and couldn't quite manage to stop biting the skin around my nails.
So they're still a mess.

Glad to see that finger and nail biting is more common than I thought. My thumbs have been reduced to bloody shreds on more than one occasion but I find that i'm more of a knuckle biter. The knuckles of both my index fingers are now covered in scar tissue and are taunt instead of being wrinkly...

Yes. Yes. Yes. *feels better know that she's knows she's not the only one*

As a matter of fact, I'm doing that right now. It's odd because picking at my cuticles doesn't feel like a habit (rather something I can "break" myself of doing) --- at times I look down and I'm bleeding and I don't know how it happened. My thumbs are kind of scarred on the edges, but I've taken to clipping my nails short to keeping from harming myself. I've been doing this as long as I can remember.

It's interesting that someone mentioned stimming. I used to think I didn't stim, but now...

Cuticles!! Oh my, I used to bite or pull them and they'd bleed. In recent years I do not bite or tear anymore because I hate the pain. Since I cannot handle the loose skin, I always have a pair of baby nail clippers or a little swiss army knife for trimming!!

In childhood I bit my nails occasionally but didn't enjoy the sensation. However, I was a thumbsucker until I was seven or eight.

I am _always_ biting my nails and skin at the side of my nails. I frequently end up with infected cuts where a bite went a little too deep and dirt got in. I soon learnt to just cut the nail and skin away to let all the infection out. Wow that looks bad typed out, but it works!

My cousin used to bit his nails from the cuticle up. I like to cut my hair. It does become a form of self mutilation. I did it because I wanted to punish myself, and my cousin did it because the meds he was on made him so emotionally numb that he caused pain to still feel feelings.

I've bitten my nails and picked at my cuticles for as long as I can remember; to the point that on any given day the skin around my nails is an assortment of raw skin and hangnails)