What are your strange nervous habits?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not like tapping your fingers or bouncing your leg. What fidgety things do you do that would seem really odd to others?

Me, I play with tape. I pull off a piece, roll it up, and squish the stickiness. When that spot stops being sticky, I’ll unroll it and reroll it to a stickier spot.

I also pick at my lips. They are constantly chapped, so I pick the chapped skin off. When I’m really stressed, or they’re really chapped, I won’t stop despite pain or bleeding. Sometimes I’ll hit a nerve or something and my lip will swell :eek: or I’ll do it absent-mindedly and suddenly realize that my fingers are all bloody. That’s not all the time, though, usually I just feel a chapped spot of thick skin and a quick pull gets rid of it.

So, in what ways do you fidget that will make me feel less crazy?

2

Playing with my rings. I have one on each finger and I’m constantly fooling with them.

3

Sometimes I pluck at my beard hairs. Today I think I only plucked a single hair. But I had to restrain myself.

4

Biting my nails. And my hangnails. And my cuticles. Also, eating my fingers clean off my hand on especially rare occasions.

I’ve also noticed that I scratch my head and raise my eyebrows too often, perhaps attempting to appear pensive.

5

I keep a pebble in my shoe and constantly fidget with it with my toes. Each pair of shoes has it’s own pebble in the left shoe; there are replacement pebbles on top of my chest of drawers in case I somehow lose one. I’ve done this as long as I can remember.

6

Holy cow, you folks are nuts. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, I’m a doodler. And by “doodle,” I mean that I’ll draw enormously intricate shapes and curlicues, which always have to end up radially symmetrical or I go crazy. It’s constant and unconscious; I keep a legal pad on the left side of my desk (I’m a lefty) that’s strictly for doodling, just so that I don’t inadvertantly ruin important papers with my “art,” and each day there’s a unique design on the top sheet of the pad.

7

Shortly after I learned to type, I got in the habit of typing out sentences when I was nervous. Not on a keyboard, not even on a desk or table but random “air typing.” I wasn’t even concious of it and still find myself doing it every now and then when I am really stressed out.

8

I bite the sides of my nails until they bleed and become raw. I do the same thing with my lips. Sometimes I’ll run my fingernails over my face to find any little bit of skin that’s peeling.

If I get really stressed, I’ll take a pair of tweezers to my legs and tweeze out my leg hair. I’ll also overtweeze my eyebrows when stressed, too, although this one is totally noticable in a bad way so I try to keep that particular impulse curtailed…

9

I chew on my jewelry.

I wear sterling, and most of my rings are misshapen with teeth marks. I have, over time, bent a couple of them to the point that they’re unwearable.

My boyfriend gnaws his fingernails to a pulp.

I slap his hand whenever I catch him doing it, and I get The Look whenever he catches me gnawing on my rings.

I don’t think it’s working. We just do it furtively now.

10

I dig my thumbnails into the insides of my fingers, and my index finger nails into the insides of my thumbs. I’m really trying to cut this out, because I’ve got nasty calluses just under the second joint of each finger/thumb. But it’s hard!

11

I’m an over tweezer. I’ve discovered this in the last week. I had (to me at least) longish white hairs on the under side of my chin and neck. I have a pair of tweezers in my bag, and while surfing the net just started going to town. Though if you’re not careful in that area, you get bumps, and now I’m a bit bumpy on my right side. (Left handed tweezer.)

The worst though is I run my fingers along things. Like paper. The edges of the paper, lift it up a bit and I’ll start running my fingers along it. I’ll do the same thing with thinner hems of clothing too. At night, the edge of the sheet or pillowcase. It’s oddly soothing to me though. My mom said I started doing this before I could walk though. Apparently I would coo and gurgle while doing it. I don’t make sounds now though, but when caught will be quite embarrassed.

12

I’ll do this pretty much any where on my body to an existing wound. Some times I don’t even notice the blood until something else catches my attention and I look down at my hands.

It isn’t very attractive, so it is something I am trying really hard to stop. Not so easy.

13

Biting my cuticles, not so much my nails since I started wearing dark polish.

Picking at owies, scratching the scabs off.

Scratching my scalp. Pulling my hair.

Biting the skin off my lips. Chewing the inside of my lip or cheek.

Grinding my teeth.

14

Give me a beer bottle, and it will be sans label soon enough.

15

I’m another lip biter/picker, though I think not to the extent that you all are; I generally stop when it gets painful, or when I just barely draw blood–not like I’m getting more than a tiny dab on my fingers, most of the time.

I also twirl my hair; I think I picked this up in the several years I sported a ponytail.

My most eccentric (and intractable) habit would probably be chewing the collars of my shirts, t-shirts and similar collars especially, though I do it to some extent with my button-down Hawaiian shirts as well. This ultimately leads to completely ruined shirts for me. (I am even now fighting the urge between sentences here.)

I don’t know if I would categorize any of these as “nervous” habits, though, in the sense some of yours are. To some extent, they’re all associated with thinking for me, especially the shirt-chewing thing. I often find myself gnawing on a thoroughly soaked collar while working on a problem…

16

That’s me. I eat the heck out of the inside of my mouth, because the effects are not as obvious to the casual observer as, say, nail biting, which I have never done…

I do totally become a hangnail/ragged cuticle freak, and have actually stepped out of meetings at work in order to go back to my desk, get my clippers, and clip one off. If for some reason I can’t get to clippers soon enough, I’ll pluck obsessively at the offending hangnail or cuticle until it’s gone - even if I cause bleeding.

17

This. I do the exact same thing. I have done it as long as I can remember. The skin around my thumb nails is very thick now so it takes lots of jabbing to get it to hurt. It is almost like an itch I MUST scratch.

I also wring my hands when I am nervous so I try to keep one hand in my pocket at all times to prevent it, doesn’t work well when I am sitting though.

18

I chew the tops of pens and pencils - I think it has something to do with the time that I stopped smoking - instead of having a cigarette in my mouth, I’d have a pen. It’s very embarrassing to have someone ask to borrow a pen and it’s all mangled…luckily not too many people ask…

19

Did you call the pebble “Dare”?
I am a lip and cuticle picker, too, and I will also do it until I bleed. I know I’ll regret it but I can’t stop myself. For some reason using chapstick makes it even easier to peel my lips so that doesn’t stop me.

If I have pen and paper I doodle but I don’t draw things I just make line designs, like I’ll outline a word repeatedly.

Lately I have been obsessed with my eyebrows and I will constantly feel around my eyebrows for stray hairs. If I find one I have to pluck it, if I can’t get a hold of it I will sometimes make my skin raw trying to tweeze it.

Man, I sound like a masochist.

20

I had no idea what you were talking about till I did a search on ‘pebble’ and ‘dare’. Apparently something to do with Godspell? But anyway, there’s nothing significant about it…it’s just a fidgety thing I do. Well, apparently it was the first thing to make a psychologist think I had something called asperger’s syndrome, but I’m not even sure if that’s something real or not.