Is there a term for trivial, isolated, irrationally compelling behaviors?

Factual Questions
1

People occasionally fasten on idiosyncratic behaviors that seem to provide a sense of fulfillment completely unrelated to the specifics of the activity in question-- for example, clicking those retractable pens repeatedly, or popping that commerical bubble wrap packing material. There’s a whole pocket industry that appears to capitalize on the same principle, by manufacturing “stress-relieving” products like those little squeeze ball office toys they give away at conventions and such. Yet I’ve never heard a specific clinical term for such behaviors. It doesn’t seem like they typically reflect any larger pattern of stress-related obsessive behavior-- it’s not as though habitual pen-clickers go around repeatedly clicking every clickable item in sight.

Weirdly, I’m inspired to ask this question because I’ve discovered a personal fascination with paint scraping. It’s bizarrely specific-- there’s this one cabinet that was apparently painted improperly, and now the paint scrapes off at the slightest touch. This phenomenon is insanely compelling to me. A key, paper clip, any metal object, causes a nice clean scrape-- zzziiipppp!!! The sound, the texture, is just inexplicably fascinating for no obvious reason I can discern.

Am I stressed lately? Sure, but I’ve been stressed before, and I’ve never had the urge to scrape paint. I have absolutely no desire to go scraping paint off other objects, yet I’ll likely keep at this one cabinet until there’s no paint left. I have no desire to click pens or pop bubble wrap. What is this weird compulsion about?

2

Any compulsion taken to extremes would, I imagine, be symptomatic of obsessive-compulsive disorder. I am not a doctor, but I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

3

The pacing that some zoo animals will do is called idiosyncratic behavior, and that may well be the term you are looking for. However, you used the term in the OP.

4

I believe the term, colloquially, is “tic.” See the third definition here.

5

Fidgeting.

6

I’ve always called my habits such as that “nervous habits” even when they don’t indicate that I am nervous. Lately, I’ve taken up pen spinning, because if I’m going to put that much energy into something, it may as well look cool.

7

Wrong! The correct term is stereotypic behavior.

(sorry for the previous brain fart)