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Have you ever thought about CBT for some of these issues? 3 of us here have various degrees of obsessive compulsive behaviours. I'm good these days. Daughter struggles and she does the same thing to the nails as you're doing right now. Actually when my son was little he used to bite his nails so badly they'd bleed. I tried all sorts of things to stop it including putting that liquid they sell for nail biting that is bitter. In the end he just had to put bandaids on all of them to stop them bleeding more.
Just curious but have you always had this problem or is it relatively new? I was wondering if maybe some other med you might be taking needs tweeking.
I understand the concerns you have about the SSRIs and mania.
You're in a bit of a pickle really aren't you.
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My therapist supposedly does a CBT-based thing, but when I asked him about the skin eating/picking, he said he had never been presented with this sort of problem!
We did talk about it a bit. I can't see him regularly now anyway I can't afford it.
All of my fingers are bleeding. I don't bite the nails -- I bite the skin.
The bitter stuff didn't help me. 1) it hurts on bleeding skin. 2) It's only a deterrent until I put it in my mouth the first time. After the first horrible bite, the bitter taste lingers in my mouth, so sticking my fingers in there again doesn't make it much worse... nothing to lose.
I've bitten as long as I can remember. As a child, I went through phases with my knuckles as well. I would bite/pick the feet too. For about a year when I was 8 I also plucked out my eyebrows and eyelashes but that stopped completely. The fingertips have always been a target though. From my teens on, I was able to get control of it. I'd have spells where it would get bad, and then I could focus and get it under control.
I am doing the things I usually do that help, but still can't get it under control this time. It is worse than it has ever been in my adult life. It has now been going on/escalating for a year. While I was in the US, I was using a strong anxiolytic. Even that didn't stop me. I've deformed several more nailbeds over this past year.