I am trying to quit this bad habit of biting my lips and cheek. I would bite so deep that would not be able to bite on that side or talk with out pain. I went to my Dentist and he first suggested numing my lip for I can stop the biting but that seems to last for short period of time then I would continue. Then when I followed up he mentioned I was doing lots of damage to my mouth and the scar tissue growing back was going to stay like that it is bumpy now. The dentist highgenist suggested to order a mouth piece for when I stress out or fell the need to bite my self. Since this is out of my control the anxiety and I dont want medicine dentist said this will help since they know I will use. I hope this will help others. My insurance covered some part of it. I just hope this helps once and for all and stop I have seen a huge change.
I've done this as long as I can remember; I'm 18 now.
As everyone else has described, I start and keep going to try and "smooth out" the lip. If I feel a little lump of skin I try and bite it off. I think it may result in me having slightly bad teeth, as I went to the dentist and he told me I must grind my teeth, which I don't. It must be from biting my lips.
I don't think I do it when I'm stressed, I seem to do it when I'm bored. However, I can go days without doing it and then other times I'm doing it constantly for days on end.
The only way to stop doing it is chewing gum, or eating. I've chewed a whole pack of gum in one day at times. :)
I keep reading these to see if anyone has posted their email address. I really need support from any 43-48 yr. old moms out there. I have a dentist appt. tomorrow morning at 9:45 and I am terrified to go thinking he will gross out from my inside lips and cheeks! I so want to cancel but I won't. The more I worry, the more I bite!! So please, if anyone needs support, email me. I feel so alone in this.
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I am in Tampa FL.
Thanks
No doubt they have. You should see some of the pics of people's teeth in posters etc, no way they're going to be "grossed out" by your lips, and remember, they get paid to see them anyway lol
Also, am I the only one who doesn't do this out of anxiousness.
As I can't really say I feel anxious when I do it. I just seem to do it out of habit really.
I agree, fatherdougalmaguire... I do this and have done for as long as I can remember but in think I do it when I don't have anything else occupying mind, I particularly do it when I'm driving to/from work.
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I have a couple ways that might help people stop. I started biting my cheek senior year of high school while filling out college applications. It was clearly a way of coping with the stress of thinking about my future and whether I was "good enough" to get into the right colleges. I kept biting my cheek for a year or two until I took a psychology class and learned about operant conditioning. I decided to reward myself with a jelly bean every time I could go 15 minutes without biting. It worked! After a week or two, I was out of the habit and didn't start up again for another year. You can adjust the amount of time between rewards based on how bad your habit is, and you should obviously choose something you like if jelly beans aren't your thing. It's also important to reset the clock at zero if you bite; otherwise, you could bite the whole 15 minutes and still get rewarded.
I did eventually start biting again, and by the time I got around to addressing it years later, the impulse was so strong, despite headaches, ground down teeth, and raw, painful cheeks that the jelly bean approach didn't work at all. I wanted to bite more than I wanted candy or any other reward I could think of. So, I decided to change reward to punishment. Because we have such strong bodily reactions to scent and taste, I decided I needed to use the worst tasting thing I could find, which ended up being gelcaps of cod liver oil. These things taste absolutely horrible. When I would bite I would immediately throw one of these in my mouth and chew down on it, releasing disgusting fish oil into my mouth. It takes a lot of self-discipline to punish yourself like this, but if you can do it, it is REALLY effective. I only had to punish myself TWICE to end a multi-year habit for a year or two before relapse. It's very important that the punishment come as soon after the biting as possible, so your subconscious links the action and unwanted result as cause-effect. I kept gelcaps in my pocket so the delay was only a few seconds.
Ultimately, the enduring solution was not reward-punishment based, but a deeper shift in how I think about myself and my relationship to the world. Finally believing that I'm enough regardless of how successful I am, and relaxing into that sense of unconditional enoughness, the stress and anxiety that led me to biting just fell away on its own. I can't really tell you how to get there, unfortunately, except to say that it's possible and that there's really no one keeping you from it but yourself and your own concepts. Good luck!
I've been doing the same thing since high school and I definitely noticed it increases when I'm stressed. I was able to stop it by forcing myself to stop whenever I noticed I was doing it, and eventually I would realized more and more quickly. I also started chewing gum a lot. This worked really well, BUT, if you chew too much or too often you can get a sore jaw or temporary lock jaw. I developed temporary lock jaw and had to stop, so I occasionally catch myself chewing my lips. Hope this is helpful.
You are not alone! Telling yourself to just "stop" does not work! It is funny to me though that others think that you can simply just stop doing it. When my husband mimics me doing it while I am doing it in an effort to cause me to stop doing it, I do it even more, because he stresses me out! I did have a 3 year stretch of time (been doing it since I was a little child) where I did not bit at all! Now that I am doing it again, I am trying to remember what I was doing then and what was different in my life at the time because certainly it wasn't because I was stress free. I realized that I was running every day or at least 5 days a week. I think that the running relieved my anxiety and was a different, healthier outlet rather than the inside of my cheeks and peeling the skin on my lip. So, I am going to try it again, and hopefully it works this time too! I am 38 and have wrinkles around my mouth and cheeks from this behavior! I hope my insight might help you and other too. Wish me luck?
OMG! I didn't know there are so many people like me. I'm originally from Thailand. My cheek biting habit started when I was in kindergarten. My mom used to find my inner lips bleeding. She thought I was suffered from cold sore or lip ulcer of some soft. She would put this purple anticeptic on my lips. I looked like a monster. Other kids used to tease me for it. Then I tried so hard to keep this secret because I didn't want my mom to put that purple thing on my lips again. And I think it started from there. It's my little secret that I kept to my self my whole life. I would do it all the time. I bite my cheeks so much that my 2 front teeth totally chipped. I had to get them fixed a few times. My husband would caught me doing weird face all the time because I'm trying to get to the side of my cheek. You know what I mean. I really wanna stop this because it hurts when I eat spicy food. And I look like a crazy b*tch doing it. Over the years I find a few things are little helpful. Drink a lot of water, and exfoliate the lips. I just take a towel and rub it on the lips until dead skin comes out. That helps smoothen out the lips and minimize the urge to bite.
There's this medication that I liked to put on the wound when it's bleeding. It make the skin smooth over night. Pretty amazing. For some reason in the US is percription:(
So nice knowing I am not alone. I feel like it's almost an obsessive compulsive issue mixed with anxiety. Honestly though, it's not hurting anyone. If our biggest concern is that we chew the insides of our cheeks, then we have pretty decent lives :-) I am thankful to not be suffering from something worse.
I have been suffering from this for years, too and here's what helps me: After brushing my teeth/flossing at night I swish my mouth with a capful of peroxide. Wait till it's super foamy to where you can't hold it in your mouth anymore and spit. (Don't eat or drink ANYTHING after!) The peroxide will speed up the healing process which of course makes the skin smooth so you won't have the urge to bite as much.
Try it. It really works, but you must do it EVERY NIGHT. Bonus, it's cheap, kills germs in your mouth, freshens "morning breath" and whitens your teeth!