Reply To: Am I going to gehenim?

thank you everyone for your helpful input about both practical solutions to help stop it and halachic information.

when i start biting it usually is without being cognizant. but after half a minute or a minute of it, i’ll suddenly tune in to the fact i am biting my nail. and i also then remember it is shabbos. (or in yesterday’s case, also yom kippur.) and i STILL cant break the activity. at that point half nail is peeled and i say STOP. but after a few seconds i peel off the hanging half. or even sometimes “even out” one finger with a longer nail to match one with a smaller nail (since i bit that one.)

based on this is appears i am certainly guilty of willfuly violating a derabbonon that carries gehenim.

i know it makes no sense, but i just cant stop myself even though i want to stop. maybe the underlying cause is anxiety. that is very possible or even likely.

golfer: i try adding specific special bakoshos from Hashem during davening. i havent added this yet, so thanks for the suggestion. but another problem i have is when i add a special tefila (i do it towards the end of shemone esrei in sim shalom before osei shalom), after a few days i am mumbling that bakoshe by rote without feeling special meaning anymore.

nechomah: i am aware of that and have already unsuccessfully tried using that as an incentive to get myself to stop. i even heard that if you leave your nails in public you will have to come back to this world as a gilgul (not necessarily human) to clean them up. i put the cut nail on the table and later throw them out. (really they should be burnt or buried.) sometimes, though, it gets lost before i have a chance too.

yitayningwut: how is it ????? ????? ????? ????? and how does that absolve me?