A twenty-seven-year-old man sought help to stop biting his nails. He said he had had the habit ever since he could remember. He was extraordinarily tense, and he said he did most of his
nail-biting when he was worried and on edge. He admitted that he was so tense that with little provocation he would flare up.
He did the exercises and when last seen about six weeks after his first visit claimed that he had mastered the habit, and as evidence showed me how his nails were beginning to grow normally.
Blushing-About two years ago an attractive nurse said she had been plagued with blushing for as long as she could remember. She often kept thinking about it and then she would blush. She blushed in the company of young men. She blushed in buses, and did not even like asking other nurses about patients on account of her blushing.
She learned the exercises, but I was not sure how much help she had gained until she came in a few weeks ago to ask advice about some other problem. When I asked her about the blushing she merely commented, “Oh, that’s all gone,” as if she had forgotten all about it.
It is interesting to note that some years previously I had seen a man with similar trouble about blushing. This was at the time before I had developed the idea of the patient doing the exercises himself. I treated this man with a number of sessions of hypnosis, and there was little improvement in his blushing.
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