Here’s How to Stop Touching Your Face So Much

Because you know it’s easier said than done.
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First, let me apologize: This entire article will probably make you want to touch your face. But we’ll get through it together.

You’ve probably read recently that you should avoid touching your face to help protect yourself against the new coronavirus (also known as COVID-19)—which you should. Keeping your unwashed hands away from your mouth, nose, and eyes has long been a strategy for preventing the spread of infectious respiratory diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s because some viruses can live for some time on solid surfaces outside the body—say, if someone sneezes on a subway handrail or a doorknob—and we run the risk of contracting those viruses when we touch our mouth, nose, or eyes after contact, Philip Tierno, Ph.D., microbiologist and clinical professor of pathology at NYU Langone, tells SELF.

Right now, experts think that the new coronavirus spreads mainly person-to-person, like through inhaling tiny droplets produced when a person with the illness coughs or sneezes. But because there’s still a lot we don’t know about the new coronavirus, not touching your face with unwashed hands is still one potential way to reduce your risk of getting the disease.

Even though the CDC specifically names the mouth, nose, and eyes as no-touch zones, it’s probably a good idea to keep your hands off your face in general. All the rubbing, scratching, and other ways we touch other parts of our face throughout the day still leave a chance that the virus could make its way to our mouths, nostrils, or eyes anyway, according to Tierno. So deciding that you’re only going to touch your cheeks and forehead is probably a lost cause.

Still, a very important and very annoying reality remains: Not touching our faces is often easier said than done. So to help you learn how to stop touching your face—both to best protect yourself as the new coronavirus situation unfolds and because it’s a solid health habit to nail in general—SELF talked to two psychologists who work with clients who deal with compulsive behaviors. To be clear: We’re not equating a face-touching habit with disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or to the experiences of people who deal with body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) like trichotillomania. But mental health practitioners who specialize in these disorders have plenty of tips that are widely applicable right now.

If you’re looking to practice good preventive measures and want to stop touching your face, here’s some advice that might help.

1. For starters, just be mindful of how much you touch your face.

Tuning in to when and why you touch your face is essential before you try to change the habit. “Think about the function of the behavior,” Marla W. Deibler, Psy.D., licensed clinical psychologist and vice president of OCD New Jersey, tells SELF. “Did I touch my face because I had an itch? Did I touch my face because I’m uncomfortable? What came before that made me more likely to want to touch my face?”

You might find that you have a specific cue or trigger, like when you’re bored in a meeting or when you feel your lips are chapped and want to pick at them. You might also find that you’re just a fidgety person who has a hard time keeping your hands still and touching your face is one of several ways you keep them occupied, clinical psychologist and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the TLC Foundation for BFRBs Suzanne Mouton-Odum, Ph.D., tells SELF. This is all good info to have when it comes to cutting back on how much you touch your face.

Once you realize how often your fingers drift toward your face, don’t beat yourself up and pressure yourself to drop the habit cold turkey. For one, touching your face is natural. A few small studies have tried to nail down exactly how often people touch their faces on average, with findings including estimates of 3.3 to 3.6 times an hour in public spaces and 23 times an hour in a classroom setting, but even without a ton of research, it’s not far-fetched to assume it’s a really common behavior.

There are dozens of reasons we touch our faces without even realizing it. “We’re all in the business of self-regulation and relieving our own discomfort, whether that’s scratching an itch or brushing an eyelash off your face,” says Mouton-Odum. “We’re constantly attending to our bodies in unconscious ways.”

It can be jarring to draw attention to a habit you usually do without thinking, because it’s likely that, once you do, you’ll start noticing it all the time, says Mouton-Odum. In fact, as you’ve probably realized through the new coronavirus news cycle, putting a ton of focus on how to stop touching your face might make you feel the urge to touch your face more. That’s because a lot of people are trying to combat face-touching by avoiding thinking about touching their face. And that just makes things worse.

“It’s futile to try to tell yourself not to think about something,” says Deibler. “You can’t think a thought out of existence; it’s a struggle not worth having. Instead, the goal is to develop an awareness of the behavior so you redirect it in a way that’s more helpful to you.”

2. Make the active choice to replace face-touching with another behavior or reaction.

I know you’re probably like, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that? Thanks, SELF.” Hear me out. “Do something besides touching your face” may sound like no-brainer advice, but it’s all about being intentional. The goal is to redirect the urge to touch your face to another habit so that, with practice, the new behavior is something you do without thinking. But before you get to that stage, you have to be deliberate. “When you notice you’re touching your face or want to touch your face, ask yourself, What can I do differently in this situation?” says Deibler.

Take, for example, responding to an eye itch that strikes while you’re on the bus, where you’ve been holding onto a public handrail. If you decide you don’t want to rub your unwashed hands on your eye (good choice), what can you do instead? “Maybe you ride out the itch,” says Deibler. “Notice how it’s uncomfortable but it subsides. Maybe you rub the itch with your shoulder or arm instead of your fingers. Maybe you whip out some hand sanitizer first.” Again, you probably knew all of these options before, but it’s less about the specific options and more about intentionally making a new habit. Whatever you decide, if you repeat it often enough, there’s a good chance that one day, when you feel an itch on your nose, you won’t scratch it immediately—you’ll reach for your hand sanitizer first (or whatever new habit you choose).

It’s worth noting that there isn’t a wealth of research that says touching your face with something like your forearm or your shoulder is any safer than touching it with your hands—we just know our hands are a high-traffic area when it comes to interacting with both germy surfaces and the rest of our bodies, which is why emphasis is placed on hand hygiene in preventing infectious disease spread. (For more information on how washing your hands helps you avoid the new coronavirus, head here.)

In any case, it’s reasonable to assume other appendages are okay alternatives to unwashed hands in a pinch, but Tierno recommends sticking to best hygiene practices whenever possible. “You can use the back of your wrist to rub whatever it is or use a sanitizing agent first, but it may behoove you to get up, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, and then scratch,” says Tierno.

For more emotional or circumstantial face-touching (like those of us who do it when we’re nervous, bored, or watching TV, for example), Deibler and Mouton-Odum are both proponents of objects that keep your hands busy, like fidget toys or jewelry. “If our hands have something to occupy them, we’re less likely to start scratching and rubbing and doing our old habits,” says Mouton-Odum.

Of course, if you do utilize a tool like a fidget toy ($10, Amazon) or a spinner ring ($13, Amazon), you’ll want to adhere to best hygiene practices of other high-touch objects, like your phone, which the CDC recommends disinfecting with a regular household cleaning spray or wipe. And, you know, make sure not to put these fidget objects in your mouth or around your face because, well, that defeats the whole purpose.

3. Find practical workarounds for your various triggers.

After you’ve paid all that attention to when, how, and why you touch your face, you can find some creative solutions. For example, if you notice that your contacts make you rub your eyes a lot, you may consider dusting off your old glasses instead. On the other hand, if you notice you’re constantly adjusting your glasses, swap to contacts. Pull your hair back if you’re always pushing it out of your face, or make sure to pluck that rogue chin hair you can’t keep your fingers away from. If you’re a nail-biter, you might want to get a manicure you’re less likely to gnaw at or try deterrent treatment polish ($16, Amazon). Basically, it’s all about finding what works for you.

Normally, Mouton-Odum wouldn’t advise these types of hacks as first responses to face-touching—and still recommends the emphasis be on mindfulness around the habit—but given our heightened attention to hygiene right now, it’s understandable if you want to take a little extra precaution. If this kind of thing will give you some peace of mind without interfering with your life in any major way, that’s cool too.

4. Address underlying emotional reasons behind the habit.

If you find that feelings like worry, anxiety, or other distress are triggers for face-touching, that’s something you want to tackle too. Obviously, tips for managing those emotions could make up an entirely new article (or several), but as a baseline, make sure you’re practicing self-care in the ways that are most helpful to you, whether that’s getting enough sleep, discussing this with your therapist if you have one, or possibly seeking out someone to talk to if you don’t see an expert for your mental health but feel like it might be helpful. Beyond that, if there are activities that you know are aggravating your distress—like scrolling through Twitter for minute-by-minute updates on the new coronavirus—now might be the time to cut back on those.

5. Actually practice not touching yourself.

Back to mindfulness for a sec. According to Mouton-Odum, most of us aren’t good with sitting in discomfort—and why would we be? It’s really human to avoid discomfort at all costs. But when combating a habit like face-touching, it can be really helpful to make yourself sit with it and develop a stronger sense of body-awareness.

“Practice—even five minutes a day—sitting with your hands in your lap and trying not to touch your body,” says Mouton-Odum. “Don’t scratch, don’t fuss with anything, don’t move a hair. See if you can do it.” Plenty of people will struggle but get better with practice. And when you get better, you might find that you have more control over all these habits that were once unconscious.

6. If you’re still really having trouble, put some reminders in place.

Like we talked about earlier, for some people, putting too much focus on telling yourself not to touch your face might lead you to a hyperawareness that’s unhelpful and frustrating. But everyone is different, and if you think setting reminders for yourself (like a push notification on your phone or a sticky note on your computer monitor that says “Don’t touch!”) might work, it’s worth a shot. If anything, flags like that can help you catch yourself in the act and stop.

Reminders can be more subtle too. Personally, I’ve taken to wearing rings in public—not because I need to fidget with them, but because when I’m sitting, I tend to move into the position of Rodin’s The Thinker without even, well, thinking. When I have rings on, though, feeling them bump against my face reminds me, nope, we’re not doing that! (Yes, it’s kind of like a gentler version of a shock collar.) SELF’s features director and fellow face-toucher, Sally Tamarkin, has taken to putting boxes of tissue in every room of her house to remind herself to use a barrier when wiping her eyes. Ask yourself what cues you can put in place as little reminders that won’t force you to devote all your attention to the mission.

7. Accept that you’re going to touch your face sometimes.

And that’s okay. The last thing you want to do is make yourself more anxious by convincing yourself that touching your face will have dire consequences. “It’s very easy to get overly worried about a specific behavior that’s problematic, especially when we’re bombarded by information that tells us we may be in danger,” says Deibler.

Remember that avoiding touching your face is a preventive measure. It doesn’t mean that if you touch your face you’ll definitely get sick (with the new coronavirus or anything else). Be kind to yourself, do what you can to stick to the CDC’s recommendations, and if all else fails, keep those hands busy with a fidget toy.

The situation with coronavirus is evolving rapidly. The advice and information in this story is accurate as of press time, but it's possible that some data points and recommendations have changed since publication. We encourage readers to stay up to date on news and recommendations for their community by checking with their local public health department.

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