I’m another cuticle and cheek/lip biter. Also, I pick at dry skin on my scalp, until it eventually bleeds, then I pick at the scabs. :rolleyes: I’m trying REALLY hard to stop doing it though!
I’m always trying to stop picking at my nails, and I’ve improved, but I can’t seem to quit.
When reading, I riffle the pages of my book with my right hand. I don’t usually know that I’m doing it, and I think I’ve done it all my life. Luckily, my husband finds it oddly soothing and quite likes it.
I crack my knuckles. They crack when I make a tight fist. I don’t realize I’m doing it most of the time.
Yes, there is a song in Godspell where one of the women sings about a pebble in her shoe and calling it dare. It’s one of my favorite songs, actually.
Labelless, do you go with the groove of the paper or against it? Because one of my nervous tics is to take a notebook and sort of strum the edge of the paper between the metal spiral. Does that sound familiar?
I have a habit of nervously tugging at my forelock. I guess I have brittle hair, or am just nervous a lot, because that lock of hair right in front is real short. Once the barber asked me cheerfully if I’d burned it off while freebasing. He’s a funny guy.
My relatives have noticed the hair-pulling habit, but I’m not sure whether it’s noticeable at work. I’m sure it looks odd when I’m doing it, though. For a while I wore a hat to try and break myself of the habit, but later decided that the resulting horrible forehead rash from my constantly sweat-drenched scalp was probably worse than the original problem.
Anyway, I fully expect to go bald before much longer, and then I won’t have to worry about it anymore.
Doesn’t it suck when you try to break yourself of a habit but it just ends up worse than before? I have a choice: pick at my lips, or break out. If I don’t pick at my lips I’ll pick at my face looking for hairs to pluck (I have a couple moles that sprout some nice hairs, awesome) or blemishes to pick at. So the constant face touching irritates my skin and I break out something awful, which leads to more face touching and picking, and the cycle continues.
A lady I was seeing asked me why I scratched my eyebrow with the nail of my little finger. I wasn’t aware I did it, and still have no reason, other than it feels good.
I rip the corners off paper and roll them around on my fingertips. When the paper softens, I start ripping it into smaller bits and roll those. When those soften, I tear them up again and keep going until I’m left with a bunch of little paper balls that I can’t tear anymore because they’re too small. I roll those around for a bit, then toss 'em and start again.
Another thing I do is take a piece of paper that has old notes scratched on it and draw boxes around the various notes I’ve written. Then, I continue the lines from each box outward until they either run off the page or intersect another box. Each box becomes an imaginary neighborhood and the lines become imaginary roads forming the basis of a road network. From there, I draw out an entire road network of lines crossing the page. Once all the roads are in place, I take each intersection in the congested areas and draw little ramps like an interchange to ease the flow of traffic… all while rolling little balls of paper in my other hand. Shoulda been a traffic engineer or urban planner or something.
[QUOTE=Inner Stickler]
Yes, there is a song in Godspell where one of the women sings about a pebble in her shoe and calling it dare. It’s one of my favorite songs, actually.
yay! someone else who knows Godspell!
I always become hyper and go on a cleaning/organizing binge. Always have to make the bed when I get out of it (I was never this way as a kid). I also bite my nails when my iron level is low (but once it increases it is no longer a prob). 
I pick at my thumbs with my index or middle finger. I find a rough spot, usually the corner of the nail and cuticle, and start rubbing, then picking, then injuring myself to the point my thumbs are raw. I keep nail clippers in my purse, work desk, and car to help trim away temptation.
However, I had acrylic nails put on three months ago (and I’m decidedly not the type), and it stopped the compulsion. It’s like the disconnect of not having my nails to do the picking is a turn off.
I got the acrylics also because I’m a middle school teacher, and my students notice such things. Now instead of the teacher with the icky thumbs, I’m the teacher with the cool black, dark blue, dark plum, or darrrrrk dark red nails. Way more hip.
Both actually. There’s the sensation of the smart clack the edge of the paper gives, and then the one for my fingers.
It’s very strange indeed.
One of my favorites, too. I have no idea what is the significance putting a pebble in your show and calling it dare but it’s still a lovely song.
Also, I am impressed that 3acresandatruck searched out my somewhat obscure reference.
I whistle under my breath until you could throttle me.
I pull at my eyebrow hairs, but just with my fingers, not with a tweezer. It started when I was at work one day reading something and a huge eyebrow hair fell out and landed with a sound on the paper. I could see it falling, first as a blurry shape then as it got closer to the paper it came into focus. When it landed there was an audible sort of “t” sound- this thing was big. It must have been an inch long and thick. I started thinking I must have more of these that are ready, or nearly ready, to fall out, so started picking at them.
Every now and then in my office as I’m reading something particularly dense and complex I’ll find myself pulling at my eyebrow hairs and dropping them on the paper. I swear, sometimes I pull out so many I’m surprised I still have eyebrows, but a quick check in the mirror assures me that they’re still there and don’t really look any different.
I twirl bic-type pens by their pocket clips. Bend the clip 90º, hold pen by the bent clip, and twirl it like a propeller.
I peel the labels off beer bottles when I’m drinking.
I have also sung the Superfriends theme song in the shower off and on for the past ten years. Somehow, it makes me feel like I’m showering at super speed.
I have a number of tics, like snapping my thumbs back and forth between normal and a sort of hyperextended postion, some weird thing I do in the back of my throat, bugging and shifting my eyes. Since I was little, I trace the profile of Hershey kiss in the air or with my eyes or my mind as my mental doodle. :dubious:
That sounds terrible, but I am usually aware that I am doing them and so I can be discreet about it.
Cuticle chewing, thumb crease digging, nail picking, cheek biting, air-typing, lip picking fool here. I’m a walking textbook of anxiety-displacement behavior. No amount of meds help. 
If I’m bored or nervous anywhere there exists scrap paper, the area will be full of little origami doojiggers in short order. Lately it’s been tiger lilies and lotus blossoms, since I got tired of cranes.
If I’m really badly off I’ll take a pad of paper and a nice thick, dark black pen and just write random things over and over to soothe myself. Sometimes they’re song lyrics or poetry/prose passages from other people; sometimes they’re fragments of things I’ve written in the past. If I think people will get nosy I’ll usually pick one that’s not in English.
I also spent pretty much an entire summer class writing rude haiku about the idiot in the back who was apparently taking the course (sociology of human sexuality) solely so that he could tell us we were all morally bereft, but that was more anger-management than nervousness.
I twist my hair, but I’ve got the excuse that it is genetic. I know this because my daughter twisted her hair exactly the same way I twist mine when she was only a few weeks old.