All right, dear reader, the jig is up. You try to pass yourself off as a regular person with normal behaviours, but we know you have a few truly bizarre habits. How do we know? Well, because we all have them. Weirdness makes us human. But it’s not always easy to tell the difference between that “cute” little thing you do and a behaviour that may be harming you, or others. So we asked some brave souls to reveal their behavioural skeletons and ran them by the experts. Here’s what we found:
Why do I always have a song stuck in my head? No matter what I’m doing, some tune is playing over and over in my mind. Sometimes it takes several days to change the tune, and, well, it’s driving me nuts!
“You are my sunshine…” What’s that? Oh, sorry. Just humming a tune to myself. Over and over and over again. Research shows that “ear worms”—snippets of songs stuck in your head—are very common.
McGill psychology professor Daniel Levitin, a former record producer and author of the bestselling This is Your Brain on Music, says the ear worm “doesn’t indicate any kind of mental disorder necessarily.”
Though the ear worm is usually harmless, Levitin says a small percentage of people find it “so irritating or annoying that it actually either keeps them awake at night or prevents them from doing their job,” and may require professional help. Antidepressants, antianxiety drugs, and medication to fight obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD) all seem to help, “but this does not imply that people with ear worms are depressed, anxious or have OCD.” For most of us, Levitin offers a simple solution: Play another tune “and hope that it will take the place of the one that’s bothering you.”
How come I can remember everything I did, said and wore in Grade 1 but not remember where I put my house keys this morning? Is this early senility? I’m only 40 years old!
Though some short-term memory loss is normal as we get older, it usually doesn’t signal early senility. “Forgetfulness is a normal part of being human,” says Ron Keren, clinical director of the Memory Clinic at Toronto Western Hospital. You probably don’t actually remember everything about Grade 1 but a handful of outfits and some key episodes. You have solidified them in your long-term memory by recalling them many times and telling other people about them.
Keren says people who come to see him about memory problems sometimes are simply having trouble adjusting to normal aging. They “tend to be quite perfectionist and don’t tolerate any subtle changes in their ability to do things as they get older.” For people under 50, memory disorders are quite rare. Keren says forgetfulness can be influenced by whether or not you’ve had enough sleep, if you’ve been using alcohol or drugs—including some prescription drugs—and your overall psychological health and stress level.
And what about those keys? You were probably preoccupied with things such as deadlines at work and bills that need paying. Hang a hook by the door and put your keys on it every single time you come in.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to resist straightening up piles of magazines in the dentist’s office or aligning picture frames at my friends’ houses! Am I normal?
Our society tends to reward the orderly office and the airtight memo. But in this case, your compulsive urges impose on other people, possibly to the point of offence. And if you have a spouse with the opposite tendency, that could mean trouble. John Walker, a clinical psychologist and director of the Anxiety Disorders Program at St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg says, “We often see that. One person in a relationship puts a high value on everything being neat and orderly, and the other person puts no value on it—and that can cause a lot of stress.”
Psychiatrists say that the OCD patient thinks, If I follow these rules, even though they’re arbitrary and I made them up, then other things beyond my control will fall into place, too. But, of course, it doesn’t work. Controlling the picture frames is not going to give you more control over your relationships, health or work. Anxiety from these sources is what’s really bothering you, and the only way to deal with those issues is to face them directly.
Why do I bite my fingernails or pick at my cuticles until they’re bleeding? Is it stress? Hypergrooming? Or just something oral?
Nail-biting tends to be a habit we learn when we’re young. While some textbooks suggest it’s about perfectionism, this is potentially a more serious problem. Like monkeys and dogs, we’re programmed to groom, but such habits can be hard to break and can get out of hand. Walker says stress and anxiety may play a role in your problem: You could be comforting yourself “in a stressful situation by excessive grooming.”
David Moscovitch (no relation to the writer), the Canada Research Chair in mental-health research and assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, says if your nail-biting is bothering you “for reasons of aesthetics, or it hurts, or people comment on it socially, then it becomes a possible issue to address in therapy.” And you might want to make an appointment with a manicurist as well!
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