Tragedy has struck - I broke a nail!

Yes, a fingernail break. Why so mundane an occurrence a tragedy? Because I had a nail to break. My first broken finger nail. At age 54.

I'd bitten my nails for decades, ever since I had nails to bite. Let's just say the childhood home was a nerve-wracking place to be. I accepted my stubby fingers and their paper-thin gnawed little adornments. Until middle-age hit and I decided that a grown woman with bit nails was just pathetic.

I tried coating them with hot-pepper juice - that made for a spicy chew. I covered them with artificial nails - a difficult and bitter chew. Whatever was on my nail I chewed off and then I chewed the nails.

I went through counseling, hypnosis, neuro linguistic programming and more counseling. I did shamanic ceremonies to banish the habit. I asked my husband to slap me whenever he saw me biting my nails, but that would amount to battery.

So how did I stop a 50-year habit? I went to the chiropractor. Specifically, a network chiropractor. Instead of cracking your back, network folks address the nervous system to instill a state of ease that then allows the spine to align naturally.

According to Lane Cawthon, my network guy, my sympathetic nervous system was in overdrive, the flight-or-fight response kicking off at every opportunity, even though outwardly I appeared calm.

My laid back parasympathetic nervous system, which should have been running most of the show, was suppressed in favor of the macho sympathetic nervous system, ready to defend against all terrors, real and imagined, mostly imagined.

Here's the deal with the sympathetic nervous system. In its hyper state it consumes vast amounts of protein, leaving little for body parts made of protein - like fingernails.

I'd stopped biting my nails because they were harder to bite and I was less nervous. It was easy. Yet I cringe. All that money I pissed away on habit-breaking techniques! All the beating up I did on myself for failing to break the habit.

In the mind-body dance, sometimes the body leads.