Sucks Fingers, Bites Nails. The Psychotherapist's Reasoning

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Children and adults alike suck on their fingers, bite and break off their nails. Adults are resourceful in their reactions and attempts (and more often torture) to "eradicate" this habit.

Children are creative and wonderful in their ability to adapt and seek healing. Unfortunately, there are no universal recipes. I will offer several directions for thoughts and searches. There will be a lot - but practical. The topic is multifaceted and studied in different ways.

1. Sucking fingers (corners of clothing, in continuation - smoking is possible, etc.), biting nails, breaking off nails - symptoms that at first glance are similar, but usually have a different cause.

2. This is not just a "bad habit" - these are neurotic actions, often completely unconscious, not always controlled (especially in children whose volitional centers have not yet been formed). The child does not do this on purpose to annoy the parent.

3. Behind each such action there is a deeper reason - and adults strain, to be honest, not even because of the action itself, but because of the “charge” - uncontrollable and important, which they feel “behind” the actions. (Just as parents tense not because of the mess in the teenager's room, but because of the inner state of the teenager, which masks the outer disorder).

4. Any formed habit - speaks of the existing fixed mechanisms - is the habit of our neural connections. It takes time for it to change. And you need to propose and work out an alternative action or reaction.

5. We cannot take anything without providing anything in return. This is the basic rule of education. If we withdraw ourselves, we leave our grandmother or nanny instead. We take away the computer - we offer a meaningful alternative - our emotional presence, a book…. If there is no replacement, a new, possibly more serious and already bodily-somatic symptom will grow in this formed "emptiness".

6. The greater our stress, the more demands “to do something about it” - the more the child feels “not like that”, the more likely the symptom will fix or transform it into something else (for example, without comments on the adequacy of the methods “Parental therapy” - a child who was told that his arms and penis would be torn off with another “tapping” for masturbation - there was sucking fingers, when the parents threatened to cut off his fingers - enuresis began).

Sucking

We know a lot about the oral phase of development. This is the time when the baby-toddler enjoys and develops many bodily adaptations and mechanisms (for example, when sucking, three nerves with huge zones of "reference" are involved at once: the vagus, ternary and nasopharyngeal nerves) sucking milk from the breast. And exactly then and as much as he needs. Each child has its own norm, as well as the capabilities of the family system.

This is the "oral" time, when the feeling of I Existence is laid in the child and My Needs can be satisfied by the world. This is the time for the formation of attachment - the opportunity to generally be in close relationships, to accept and respond to intimacy. This is the time for the formation of basic trust or distrust in the world.

Each person has their own needs, lessons and experiences. If the child's need for various reasons was not satisfied, if something traumatic happened at that time - the child can “fully satisfy” - get this need by choosing “substitutes” - a finger, a pacifier, a pencil, a cigarette …

In finger sucking, we divide the age:

Babies and children after 3 years

Babies who are on mixed feeding, when cutting teeth, by sucking a cam and a finger, compensate for what they lack or anesthetize the process. This is a variant of the norm, you can “do nothing” with this (but - an important disadvantage - it can turn into a habit). At this age, the lack of contact with the breast is compensated by emotional closeness and emotional response and body contact.

With the help of sucking, older and very adult people return to themselves the feeling of the presence of someone important (they fill the void in which mom and dad should be), safety, and relieve emotional stress.

They Regress - they return to the past when the present is too tense.

For the only children in the family - an opportunity in such a strange way to take a break from excessive contacts (at school and kindergarten).

Need: Safety, Reliance on mom, relieve excess stress, return to closeness and tenderness. To regain a sense of importance while being jealous of the younger. Reduce your own criticality, control, get out of the pressure of criticality, control, perfectionism - your own and your parents.

What to do:

1. Find the source of neurotization - insecurity.

2. To reduce the possible exactingness and evaluativeness.

3. More bodily contact, massage, bodily games, especially hugs and everything that resembles hugs - hugs are a projection of the "womb", games of hide and seek, halabuda, and so on. Play babies.

4. Draw mandalas, houses, build something that would create a sense of boundaries. Play under the covers.

5. Give drink from a straw, from a drinking bowl.

6. Cooking food together.

7. Sometimes a paradoxical method works - to make thumb sucking not only permissible, but obligatory. I wrote out a prescription with a stamp - “on Monday from 15-15: 15 to suck with smacking the thumb of my right hand. Tuesday - from 16-16: 15 - suck with smacking the index finger of the left hand and so on. For parents this is a serious test, for children - paradoxical psychotherapy.

8. Play with water and in water.

9. Paint with finger paints.

Strange questions for an adult:

A child with this symptom is often hyperresponsible and sensitive, afraid of hurting others, saying “wrong”, offending, shy, self-critical. He often takes responsibility for his parents' feelings. Afraid to upset them, afraid to make a mistake, not live up to expectations. Can sometimes speak softly and indistinctly. It's hard for him to say No.

Suppresses natural aggressive impulses. Often he cannot say what he wants and does not want. Do not allow yourself to be wrong. It's hard to relax. The back can be bent, as if a load is on the shoulders.

Feels often fear and guilt. In the biting of nails, suppressed words, self-criticism, control are manifested. There are points in the nail bed - projections of different stages of our development. Sometimes a child "stimulates", picking or biting, "the point of conception, birth" … The same child may have frequent laryngitis, tonsillitis, bronchitis.

What to do:

1. Reduce pressure. To remove from the child responsibility for his feelings and howl of unfulfillment.

2. Teach and let you say no.

3. To stimulate to make the choice itself and to encourage its choice.

4. Share your mistakes with a laugh.

5. Himself "let go" and allow yourself to fool around and rejoice.

6. Play pseudo-aggressive games (where there is "destruction"). Pull a handkerchief with your mouth like dogs, growl, bark at each other, gnaw crackers, apples, push.

7. Sing, shout, manifest in any creativity, spit at the target from the tube.

8. Sculpt from clay, plasticine, play with kinetic sand, cereals, pour liquids.

9. Body and hand massage.

10. Play role-playing games, go to theater studios.

11. Let them say "Mine!"

+ everything that was written while sucking fingers.

Strange question for adults:

Breaking nails

A form of autoaggression and retroflection, suppression of aggressive and destructive impulses, resistance to pressure. Reactions to corporal punishment, guilt for physical pain or injury, feelings of inferiority, inability to physically defend borders, their territory, fear of corporal punishment, the need for tenderness and physical intimacy, self-punishment for masturbation or "forbidden" actions.

What to do:

one. Learn and learn to say no.

2. On the bodily level, defend your boundaries - defend your territory.

3. Give the right to the word "Mine".

4. Allow to show off.

5. Tear paper, play with sand, clay, draw with crayons, play janga, weave from a vine.

6. Games: boxing, bowling, small towns, darts, pillow fights, "chapaeva".

7. Play the drum.

+ everything that was written earlier.

Strange questions for adults:

Of course, every person and person has their own symptoms and their causes, and the severity of these symptoms and causes. Of course, psychologists complicate everything, and without them, how many generations have grown up. And, of course, instead of everything written, it is easier to shout, crack or smear your fingers with brilliant green. Good growing up.

Svetlana Royz