biting lip From the perspective of this article, it is the constant chewing of the skin inside the mouth, often referred to as cheek biting or cheek chewing. This is a disgusting habit and, like many habits, it can be very difficult to stop. This habit probably started from feelings of stress or anxiety. It could also have started if you had a brace on and the metal caught on the skin on the inside of your cheek and ripped off a thin layer of skin, without doing any real damage. However, this would mean that you would run your tongue over the loose skin and then want to bite it. You use your fingers to push the skin towards your teeth and bite off the excess skin. Interestingly, this is quite pleasurable and you continue to bite off more skin.
If you are biting lip Due to stress, anxiety, or simply perceived pleasure, you have created a relationship between the thought you have and the action you take. You see, the mind and the body are linked. The mind affects the body and the body affects the mind. If there is an external situation that you feel is dangerous or painful, your subconscious mind will trigger an emotional response. Your body will naturally tense up and then you will feel even worse. These automatic reactions and trigger responses are programmed from a very young age, perhaps when he was learning to walk and fell over and over again. You hurt yourself when you fell and then you felt pain. This then created a relationship and neural pathway in the mind.
Neural pathways are elongated neurons in the brain that connect one side of the nervous system to the other. They are basically created when we perform a task. The neural pathway is strengthened when we repeat the action. We first perform a task using our conscious mind (present thinking mind) and then as we repeat it, it goes into our subconscious mind (autopilot mind). The action has become familiar and the subconscious mind takes over and acts on autopilot. The subconscious mind is where our clothes are stored.
There is a relationship between the feeling of stress or anxiety, and the action you take when biting lip. This relationship is known as Pavlovian Conditioning. This one was discovered and named after Ivan Pavlov, a famous Russian physiologist who rang a bell at the exact moment when he was fed to the dogs. After a while he rang the bell and the dogs came running salivating. This proves that the relationship in the mind of an external situation can affect the mind and then can affect the body’s reaction to that situation. This very concept is why when you feel stressed, you automatically start biting lip without you even knowing it. He is embedded in his subconscious.