Your secrets aren’t safe with me. Mostly because my memory is basically a sieve. But I will tell you who can keep them locked up, my nail tech.
Leading up to my nail appointment, I scroll eagerly through Pinterest looking for a new set, only to go with the same choice, which my nail tech, Daria aka NailsbyD, knows will happen every time.
As much as I look forward to having a fresh look on my hands, nothing will beat the catch-up and deep chats which are about to happen.
The first thing you notice when you enter the room is the smell. The warm mix of acetone, hand cream and acrylic powder that always signals you are about to spend the next couple of hours in someone else’s gentle care. It is her world, but she makes space for me in it every time.
The second thing is the familiar voice, calm, focused, slightly teasing as she looks and says, “Same shape and colour as last time?” I have sat in the chair enough times that she already knows the answer. But she asks anyway. The ritual matters.
This is a special story of a girl and her nail tech. A relationship built quietly and slowly, between gel lamps and colour swatches. A relationship that started with an appointment and became something soft, familiar, and strangely intimate.
This is where your nails happen. This is where your monthly therapy happens, too. This is where the relationship begins.
The girl behind the gel
Before becoming my nail tech and all the other girls before and after me, Daria was the girl who turned a spare room into a dream.
She is the kind of person who makes you feel welcome the moment you sit down. In that casual, warm way only someone who works from home can.
No forced small talk. No salon rush. Just two people, a UV lamp, and a rhythm you both understand.
She told me how doing nails started as self-care. Long before it became her job. “I really like getting my own nails done, and when I was a bit younger, I didn’t have a job, so I didn’t have a lot of money to go and get them done, so I would do my own nails.”
Then COVID happened, slowing everything down, pushing her towards the creativity she was craving. “I had so much free time that I would just practice doing it on myself, on hand models, just for fun. I like being creative and making people happy. When they are happy with the art and final result, that makes me feel beyond good.”
Working in a salon never felt like the right path. She wanted freedom and the independence it gave her. “I chose to work from home mainly for freedom. Setting up your own time, I feel comfortable. I wanted to be in charge. I had just left school, and making money from it made me feel good, like I was making it happen myself.”
Daria’s hands are steady, gentle, and expressive. The hands of someone who creates tiny pieces of art for a living. Someone who sees beauty in detail most people miss. You trust those hands more than you trust your own ability to choose a nail colour.
A relationship shaped like an almond, a square, or a coffin
There is a unique bond between a girl and the person who does her nails, especially when she welcomes you into the vulnerable space of her home.
I tell her things I never planned to say. She listens to me like she has known me longer than she has. Sharing updates from my life as she shares little pieces of hers.
We laugh. We vent. We overshare. I feel lighter by the time she is filing the last finger.
It is not quite friendship in the traditional sense. It is something gentler, more intuitive, built around routine and trust.
Daria recognises that bond too. She recognises the intimacy of private conversations and shared vulnerability. “Working from home builds relationships with my clients because it is intimate. There is no one else here. You can speak about anything, and it stays in the room.”
Clients open up to her, and she opens up back. “We speak about family problems and relationship problems. My age is like a lot of my clients; we can relate to each other.” And it is mutual. A constant exchange of life lessons and stories. “I learn from my clients, as they do from me. We just share each other’s experiences and advice.”
It feels therapeutic for both parties. “We sort of go through life together; it’s like a therapy session.”
Why do we trauma dump on our nail techs?
There are limits to everything. As comforting as our nail appointments can be, and as genuine as the connection often feels, the emotional exchange does not come without its weight.
Social interaction, especially the kind built on trust and routine, undeniably benefits our mental health. But the growing online narrative that beauty therapists double as full-time therapists has started to reveal its cracks.
For every TikTok celebrating “nail appointment therapy,” there is another acknowledging the quieter cost, emotional labour.
The term often used is ‘trauma dumping,’ when deeply personal struggles are offloaded onto someone who is not trained to process them, simply because they are there, listening and kind.
Knowing this, it felt important to ask my own nail tech how it feels to sit at the centre of so many lives, stories, and emotions. Not just mine.
“It feels genuinely special when clients trust me enough to open up. It means something to know people feel safe in my space, comfortable enough to share the good and the bad. That trust is something I never take for granted or lightly. But I admit that the role can be emotionally demanding at times,” Daria tells me.
Then there is the salon
My nail tech at home handles my hands. The place where I talk and decompress. But the salon handles the rest.
My feet and my brows. The pampering and polishing. My little escape from everything else that is going on. The salon has a different energy.
Bright, lively, and chaotic in the best way possible. Someone is always laughing too loudly. Someone is always running late. Someone is always asking you to pick a colour you know they will change in five minutes.
There is the woman who does my brows who greets me like a cousin she actually likes. There is the lady who does my pedicure who has known me long enough to comment on my life choices based solely on the colour I pick. Without meaning to, they somehow have become a part of my life too.
My eyebrow lady believes those bonds form because clients return. Repeatedly, with trust and routine. She sees loyalty as the foundation: “There is loyalty because I have been there for them when I can. Squeezing last minute eyebrow threading and underarm wax when I can. And they work with me when they can. It is reciprocation from both sides.”
My brow lady, salon techs, and I see each other as familiar. We come in regularly, someone whom they recognise every time, and someone whose life they have seen evolve through the years of appointments.
The beauty family I did not see coming
You don’t think about it much. How many hours do these women and men spend hours holding your hands and feet, shaping your nails to perfection, waxing your legs, exfoliating your feet, listening to your stories, and letting you into their worlds? But somewhere between appointments, they become more than beauty techs.
One salon regular, Rita Haddad, describes the experience as something far deeper than maintenance. “When I go to the nail salon, it genuinely feels like going to family,” she says.
“From the moment I walk in, I feel comfortable, welcomed, and truly taken care of. There is a level of trust that comes with knowing you are in good hands.”
Over time, she explains how the relationship evolves naturally. “They get to know you, your style, and exactly what you like, so you never have to over-explain. Conversations flow naturally, trust builds, and it feels less like an appointment and more like spending time with people who genuinely care.”
Scientific research backs up why these moments matter too. A study in Frontiers in Psychology found that receiving professional nail care, especially when people talk and share about themselves with their nail technician, can significantly strengthen emotional well-being, boosting positive emotions and relaxation more than doing your nails on your own.
The connection and communication between clients and technicians play a meaningful role in that psychological experience. That doesn’t just explain why it feels comfortable. It shows that the social and emotional side of these appointments can change the way you feel, your mood, and so on.
The final coat
People dismiss beauty appointments as superficial and high maintenance, but they are wrong. There is something powerful about a human choosing to sit, breathe, talk, unwind, and be cared for.
These women and men see us on tired days and glowing ones. Through heartbreaks and glow-ups. In return, we show up at their home, salons, and right into their chairs.
My nail tech finishes with the signature tap on the hand. The silent sign to put my fingers under the lamp. The gloss hardens, and the colour settles.
Suddenly, I feel like myself again.
Featured image by Daniella Daoud.