I stop myself every time this thread gets bumped.
For me it was an anxiety thing. If I found myself chewing my cheeks I needed to find the trigger. Identifying and dealing with the trigger lowered my stress level. I agree it’s a form of self-mutilation that does’t show.
Some things that helped me stop: I wouldn’t want to kiss anyone with my cheeks tore up, it’s embarrassing at the dentist, and I’m sure I’m making funny faces.
For me, stopping is easy, I’ve done it many times, with many methods. The insides of my cheeks get smooth again.
The problem is, I have always restarted. It doesn’t even seem to be particularly stress-related. Just habit, comfort, whatever it is. I start small, then work my way back up to the way I was before.
I’m going to try using a new website (beeminder) on which you set up a goal, and then input your daily or weekly status, AND then get charged money (you give them your credit card number) if you don’t follow through. It hinges on being honest, of course.
Won’t work for me, then. 
I recently whitened my teeth with a Rembrandt kit where you have to wear these plastic trays in your mouth. The whitening was so-so, but the trays were so comfortable I decided to keep them. Sometimes when I’m just tearing my mouth to hell I’ll put one in.
I’m a cheek chewer. I’m a naturally fidgety person, it’s always something, chewing nails, flipping pens, wiggling my leg, doing “The Wave” with my toes…
If I can find a nice fidgety action to settle into, then I’m golden. Strangely, having a smart phone on me at all times is a great fidget sink. Most everything else goes away if I can poke and fiddle randomly on my phone. However, if I’m stuck in a meeting, in a conversation that I can’t escape from, or getting bored with a movie or TV show, then the cheek chewing begins.
…the best is when you can get a strip of skin peeling off, and you can work it into a stretchy membrane. You pull on that for a while, playing with it, and then poke your tongue into it and break a hole, making it into sort of a stretchy St Louis Arch. Ahhh…bliss…
Eh, it is better than chewing on your shirt.
Contemplate chewing your cheeks and realize you’d have to be a contortionist to do it. 
Child’s boner: “A ruminant is an animal that chaws its cub.”
I ight get beat up for this because I am a diesel truck mechanic giving medical advice. But I have had similar issues and my Dr. steered me in the right direction. Chewing your cheeks is likely an emotional reaction to something. Try to recognize what kinds of feelings you are having when chewing your cheeks. Often changing a feeling is not as difficult as it might sound on the surface. Just for the hell of it I started chewing my cheeks to try and reverse engineer the situation. Well, I felt like people might be looking at me and I wasn’t comfortable thinking what I might be doing or not doing, at some level I felt a little emotional deceptiveness going on. Have no idea how you might be feeling.
Oh hello again old thread!
Well it gets worse if I’m stressed or pensive. But honestly sometimes I’m perfectly happy just ripping the inside of my mouth to shreds. Like right now: lalala rip nibble rip. Yes, I should stop. BUT I WANNA CHEW!
I was going to look into the hypnosis, see if that might be an option. Still haven’t got round to it…
I have been dealing & batteling with this issue for over a year now & as it slowly gotten worse. Myhusband has always told me to stop this habit & I say don’t worry, I won’t hurt myself, I’m not that bad! Dammit until this evening!! He’s fast asleep & here I am still awake watching ‘Law & Order; Criminal Intent’…& drinking & I’m biting my cheeks like I’ve never done before…kind of scary but still felt ‘good’ while I was doing it. I will say that I just turned 34yrs Sept 4th & I was diagnosed with ADHD & OCD & Tricitillamia when I was 14. Stopped taking meds when I first got pregnant when I was 18 & haven’t had a need to take anything since cuz I learned to deal. Well until tonight I have passed the typical bite episode into a fearfull episode of me possibly biting into a big time blood vessel right below my right side of nose & above that lip area to where I had to hold it down for 20mins to stop from bleeding profusely!! I was pleading with God at this moment to say I’m not ready to die,please help me!! Thanks to God & healthy platelets to cot my blood the way its supposed to…I have been spared in going to the hospital & having crazy embarressment in my face…uggz! So maybe its an OCD thing or just a habit or crazy stress & emotional issues I’ve been facing, but I know evrything is happening for a reason & maybe tonight is the last time I will ever bite my cheek & lips again!! =0)
you should try wearing a dental guard as much as you can until u break the habit. you may want to bite the inside of you mouth when you remove it but if you chew on something for a little while it will help relax your mouth.
Try replacing the nervous habit with something productive like facial exercise/massage. This is a good program that I do. Only takes 15min/day and you can break the exercises up into smaller units and do them whenever throughout the day.
eta: here’s another image of how stupid the habit looks. I know I know, but I used to do it too. :rolleyes:
Chew on something that doesn’t end up in the mutilation of your own body. A mouthguard or a pencap or gum have all worked for me.
Sorry if someone else had suggested it.
Try using oral pain killer.
The idea is that with the pain gone there is no reason to bite/chew.
Then the inflammation can reduce and get out of the way.
But also, is there a broken or worn tooth that is sharp and cutting into the cheek ?
If it wasn’t sharp… it wouldn’t cause the inflammation that can be chewed on.
Another thing is to practice recalling how much it hurts (or even an exagerated amount of pain) when you get the urge … Then you can poke that flap back with your tongue and try to forget its there.
I was ‘extruding’ my lip through my gap a few months ago. Now if I start doing that, I just imagine how painful it would be if the resulting flap (of stretched and inflamed membrane) got infected or torn.
Thanks for the further ideas. I’m still at it. 
Imagining the pain won’t help, it feels good. It doesn’t hurt at all. In fact, imagining it makes me want to do it. It also isn’t a particular flap or anything, I’ll just nibble anything in my mouth. Gum works quite well though. I must keep up the gum.
I’ve now started bickering about it with my SO. He was supposed to warn me when I was doing it, but it started getting annoying. He sort of stopped being supportive and just became mean about it. (Or at least, I came to associate it with him being mean to me.) Now if he warns me about it I just get really angry at him and want to do it more.
Stupid cheeks. Maybe I should get a cheek-ectomy. Or a teeth-ectomy. Or just go straight for the brain-ectomy.
Anyone else having any luck?
I recently went on a long plane trip, and in order to avoid my usual travel-puking, put on a medicated motion sickness patch (Scopolamine). On the way to the airport, I noticed I was feeling weirdly calm and wasn’t chewing up my mouth at all. I started thinking more and more about chewing up my lips, but the urge was just utterly gone. It was so weird!
Unfortunately, the side effect of the medication was blurred vision, which if you are planning to read anything, is the pits and the shits. So I won’t be taking that particular drug any more than necessary, but I think I might ask my doctor about an anti-anxiety pill. It was really nice being normal for a while.
It would probably take many years of repetitive motion to cause those lip lines, so I don’t see how that could motivate anyone to stop. Also, not everyone does it to the extent that it’s noticeable to other people.
Hello! I have been a cheek biter for as long as I can remember. I have always wanted to stop, but just couldn’t. Most of the time I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I always wondered if I was able to stop long enough for my mouth to heal, would I still bite my cheeks? In the last two weeks, I forced myself to stop and let my mouth heal. It took about 4-5 days for that to happen. Now that I don’t have anything rough for my tongue to find, I don’t feel the urge to chew! It is my own personal miracle, because I never thought I could stop! Try it and see if it works. Obviously, you have to have an iron will while your mouth is healing to not chew the new skin off, but having a smooth, healthy mouth is a wonderful thing! 