Why did I bite my nails?

As mentioned in my previous post, the reason I started biting my nails was just because I (stupidly) copied a chidhood friend. That wasn't the reason I continued biting though, because I moved away and never saw her again, but the habit stuck.

A lot of people bite their nails when they're stressed out, and this makes sense as nail biting is classified as being a nervous habit. I'd bite my nails in school while thinking about all the work I had to do, or all the exams coming up etc.

I also bit and picked at my nails when I was bored. I'd constantly chew on my nails while watching a film or watching TV, or while I was at work and there were no customers to serve. Even now as I'm typing this I keep catching myself running my fingers over the corners of my nails, something I'd do until the corner broke and I'd "have to" bite or pick the free edge off.

My solution to this would be to arm myself with a variety of different hand and nail products during exam time and keep them beside me while I wrote notes or memorised. 

The products I used back in 2013 when I grew my nails

This would be stuff like hand cream (not usually good stuff because I would try to constantly apply the hand cream throughout the day and didn't want all my good stuff to be gone in a matter of days) which I would rub onto my nails and massage in to encourage blood flow and try to add moisture to my damaged nubs. I'd also have some coconut oil to rub onto my nails, and some nail gel to apply 2-3 times until it absorbed into my nails. The idea behind this was that I would do something other than pick at or chew on my nails when I was bored and stressed, and channel this energy into something productive. It'd seem like a waste to bite my nails after spending so much time making them healthy and strong, and things like this usually worked for me...but only for a certain time.