Have you been biting your nails since childhood? Or do you automatically line up bottles on your mother-in-law’s dressing table? Do you keep the wound from healing and keep scratching it? But all these habits are signals from our subconscious.

By learning to recognize their hidden reasons and meanings, you can understand how a person treats himself and others, what he does not want to show to the world, and even what he does not know about himself.

That's why we decided to find out what our people are really talking about. bad habits.

The habit of biting nails or school neuroses

There is a whole galaxy of so-called “school” neuroses or neuroses of obsessive movements, usually acquired in childhood - biting nails, caps, pencils, pens.

According to psychologists, the habit of biting nails indicates internal anxiety and unconscious tension. Trying to resolve the internal conflict, the “rodent” transfers it to an external, physical plane - it literally gnaws at itself.

As a rule, this habit is associated with a lack of self-love and low self-esteem. By biting your nails and making your hands disgusting, a person unconsciously punishes himself for not being worthy of love.

From the point of view of psychoanalysis, any elongated oblong object (be it a pen or a finger) is a phallic symbol for our unconscious.

The habit of sucking or biting something like that is an unconscious way of receiving oral pleasure. Perhaps this indicates a significant concentration on erotic pleasures.

The habit of coping with stress through smoking

Psychologists are unanimous in their opinion: talking about physiology is nothing more than an attempt to justify the reluctance to give up a harmful addiction. Smoking is strongly associated with relaxation; it gives the illusion of relaxation and acts as a kind of psychological “painkiller.”

By compensating for the sucking reflex, the smoker experiences the peace and tranquility of the baby sucking at the mother's breast, thereby satisfying the need for love and food.

Many people claim that they smoke to concentrate, believing that smoking helps them concentrate. For some, smoking makes it easier to establish social connections - it’s easier to start a conversation about nothing in a smoking room than in an office corridor.

Whatever the underlying reason emotional dependence from a cigarette, in order to quit smoking, you need to get rid of it by finding other ways to concentrate, relax, or communicate with others.

The habit of uncontrolled eating - overeating

Food addictions are firmly in first place in terms of prevalence, ahead of drug addiction and alcoholism. We eat without tasting or smelling the food until we feel sick and the belt cuts into our sides.

The result is heavy sleep, digestive problems and weight gain, self-loathing and - as in a vicious circle - the return of an uncontrollable desire to eat this hatred.

The reason for most bad habits is the desire for pleasure. Food is its strongest and most accessible source. By overeating, we make up for the lack of positive emotions and dull our reactions to stressful situations.

Many emotional eaters protect themselves from mentally stronger people. In addition, in our subconscious there is a strong connection between food and sex: both are connected with the violation of the boundaries of our body and bring pleasure.

We often try to compensate for the lack of love with sex. And when we feel a lack of love and sex, we compensate for it with food.

Habit of biting lips and cheeks

People who have the habit of biting their lips and cheeks on the inside are well aware of the problem of stomatitis - the appearance of ulcers in the mouth. However, this problem is not the only one.

The mouth is the place through which we receive a huge amount of sensual pleasures associated with taste and eroticism. By unconsciously causing damage to this zone, a person punishes himself for being too internally focused on these pleasures.

Often such an obsessive action also means a desire for independence and autonomy from others. For example, an adult can no longer psychologically live with his parents, but he does not have the opportunity to separate from them.

Habit of cracking fingers

According to doctors, men crack their knuckles more often than women. Crunch lovers claim that this habit helps them relieve tension, relieve stiff joints and relax their hands.

But most often this habit speaks of internal self-doubt.

Fanatical love of order

They bring order wherever they go, no matter how appropriate it is. This habit speaks of a person’s compulsive craving for perfection, which makes it difficult to feel comfortable if suddenly someone puts a glass out of par with the others.

If you constantly tear off labels everywhere (from shampoo packages, jars, bottles) - this also indicates your perfectionism. A clean and smooth surface looks more perfect.

The fixation on the theme of order in psychology is called “accentuation” and even has a Freudian explanation. People who were potty trained in childhood using strict command methods, all their lives cannot stand the slightest disturbance of order, rubbing, cleaning and arranging everything according to a ruler.

This is a character trait, not a disease. However, it is worth taking this into account and not repeating the mistakes of your parents when raising your own children. And also realize that the world is not ideal, and that's okay.

Habit of scratching wounds and pimples

If you are haunted by a pimple that has appeared or a healing wound, and you have a strong desire to pick it out, then most likely you need to take action to restore your inner harmony.

This habit is akin to nail biting and indicates restlessness, anxiety and dissatisfaction. According to research by Finnish psychologists, a person who has such a habit tries to punish himself in a similar way for stupid or obscene thoughts.

This can be perceived as a symbolic reprisal against one’s own aggressiveness. Such actions can be considered as auto-aggression (aggression directed against oneself) in order to attract attention to one’s own person.

Habit of tearing paper

The habit of tearing paper expresses a person’s desire to realize his own aggression directed outward.

In cases where it is impossible to express one’s own anger, irritation, or displeasure directly to the “culprit,” a person chooses socially acceptable options for substitute actions.

Source website

Ever since school, have you been chewing on caps and every time you apologize to a colleague after “sharpening” her next pen? Or maybe you just can’t control the urge to put things in order everywhere, and you automatically line up cosmetic jars in neat rows on your friend’s dressing table, and then meet her indignant gaze? Whatever you say, habit is truly second nature, and getting rid of another “I” that interferes with a normal life can be very difficult. However, before you get rid of something, you need to understand the reasons for its appearance, says psychologist Oksana Alberti.

We repeat the same action every day, sometimes without realizing it. We often encounter the disapproval of others, quarrel with loved ones, if our habits are completely harmful, for example, smoking or a passion for alcoholic drinks. But here’s what’s surprising: no matter how hard we try to get rid of them, habits don’t go away. In addition to damaged relationships with relatives and friends, we also experience internal discomfort that prevents us from living. “Most habits are signals from our subconscious. If you know how to read them, you can understand about a person even what he does not understand about himself. You can also understand what he knows about himself, how he lived and lives, how he built himself. This requires desire, attention and a little knowledge,”- says the psychologist. That is why we took on a very interesting, but difficult task - to find out what certain bad habits say about us.

Habit of biting nails

Needless to say, a person with bitten nails looks repulsive? For many men, neat female fingers are a fetish, and therefore you should not count on increased attention to your person, if instead of nails you only have something vaguely resembling them. “The habit of biting nails speaks of internal tension, unconscious anxiety. As a rule, it is associated with low self-esteem and lack of self-love. In addition, by gnawing our hands and making them ugly, we unconsciously punish ourselves for not being worthy of love.”— the expert comments.

Habit of chewing pen caps

Firstly, every time you bring a pen to your mouth, remember that it may be dirty, and then problems will begin for you not only on a psychological, but also on a physiological level. And secondly, such a habit will most likely negatively affect your reputation at work. Oksana Alberti is sure that a person who chews a pen is perceived by others as an unbalanced type: “This habit speaks of the internal anxiety and tension of its owner. And one more thing: as you know, any elongated oblong object in our unconscious is a phallic symbol. The habit of constantly sucking or gnawing on something like this is an unconscious way of receiving pleasure through the mouth (oral). This may indicate a high degree of subconscious concentration on erotic pleasures.”

The habit of dirtying your pen cap will certainly negatively affect your reputation at work.

Smoking and alcohol addiction

According to the psychologist, the role of physiological dependence in this case is greatly exaggerated, and talking about physiology is just a way to justify one’s own reluctance to give up a harmful addiction: “Smoking and alcohol give us additional pleasure, give us a feeling of an influx of energy, and pump up our senses. They also play the role of some psychological« painkillers» . People engaged in active intellectual activity often smoke - they need it to slow down their actively working consciousness.”

Habit of overeating

Unfortunately, some people cannot stop not only with alcohol, but also with food. They eat until the button on their jeans pops off and they feel sick. The result is excess weight, dissatisfaction with oneself and an uncontrollable desire to eat away the grief that I created for myself. “The root of most of our bad habits is the desire for additional pleasure. Food is a powerful pleasure. In addition, in our subconscious, food and sex feel very similar. When we lack love, we try to compensate with sex. When we lack love and sex, we compensate with food,”- Oksana Alberti explains.

Fanatical love of order

Such people are called neaties - they restore order everywhere, even where they are not asked to do so. This sometimes really irritates those around you, since such behavior takes the form of mania, rather than a healthy craving for cleanliness. “This habit speaks of a person’s craving for the ideal, and it can prevent you from feeling comfortable if someone violates your ideal order. The more you want to hold on to something perfect, the more often it will be violated, because perfect does not exist in the world. And the stronger your desire, the greater the trauma for you will be the violation of this ideal. For example, you will constantly quarrel with those who rearrange things on your desk, and you will simply become unbearable for your colleagues,”— the expert comments.

Habit of asking again

Surely you sometimes ask your interlocutor for the end of a phrase, although you heard it perfectly well. Many people are interested in why this happens. Oksana Alberti answers: “Most likely, this refers to echolalia - an uncontrolled repetition of the last phrase heard. This phenomenon in adults may be a symptom of developing schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. In this case, it is better to contact a specialist.”

Habit of picking at something

If you are haunted by a healing wound, nail polish, or a pimple that has appeared and you definitely want to pick them out, then most likely you need to work on achieving inner harmony. “This habit is akin to biting nails - it speaks of anxiety and dissatisfaction. Also about subconscious idealism - you want everything to be somehow ideal, but most importantly, not as it is now. For example, you touch undried nail polish - this is a subconscious desire for it to dry as quickly as possible and quickly make you perfectly beautiful. It’s the same with the sore.—this indicates a constant internal rush", explains the psychologist.

Habit of cracking fingers

According to Oksana Alberti's observations, men crack their knuckles more often than women. “Such a habit speaks of inner self-doubt,” adds the psychologist.

Habit of biting cheeks and lips

Those who constantly bite the inside of their cheeks and lips are familiar with the problem of unpleasant ulcers in the mouth, but this is not the only difficulty, says the psychologist. “The mouth is a place through which we receive many sensual pleasures, not only from delicious food, but also erotic ones. Unconsciously injuring yourself in the mouth area is punishing yourself for being too internally focused on these pleasures.”

Habit of tearing off labels

Previously, those who constantly tore off labels from everywhere (from packages of shampoo, jars of cream and various pickles) were said to be lacking sex, but Oksana Alberti has a different opinion on this matter: “Once again we are talking about idealism and perfectionism. In our subconscious, a smooth and clean surface looks more perfect.”

Faktrum I wondered: why do we do strange things and what is behind this behavior?

1. Reluctance to change toilet paper roll

On the list of difficult things we have to do every day is replacing an empty roll. toilet paper will take last place.

But for some reason, many of us find it difficult to complete this simple procedure. Why? According to psychologists, the reason is not our laziness, but the fact that replacing the roll does not offer us any internal reward for the effort.

Similar household chores, such as taking out the trash or washing the dishes, are almost as boring and there is no special motivation for them either, but at least they give us inner satisfaction, because after completing these tasks the house will stop smelling. there will be no rodents.

Psychologists say that a truly motivating task must include three elements: competence, autonomy and relatedness.

Hard work should be challenging enough for us to feel competent when we finish it. We also need to feel that we have some control over what we do. Plus, this work should give us the feeling that by doing it, we are improving our relationships with loved ones.

2. The desire to bite cute things

Every time a child appears nearby, someone always tells him (always in a cutesy voice) that he will “eat him”, “bite him on the finger” or on some other part of the body. Similar conversations also arise when there are puppies or something else equally cute nearby.

So where do we get this desire to eat cute things as a joke? Scientists have two theories about this. The first is that the “wires” in our brain that are responsible for pleasure “short circuit” in moments of emotion.

When people (and especially women) see a newborn baby, they get the rush of dopamine that occurs, for example, when a person eats a tasty meal. This overlay of meanings makes us subconsciously want to put a cute thing in our mouth.

Another theory is that biting is a form of play seen in many mammals and that it is a manifestation of our animal side. Many animals lightly bite each other and playfully fight among themselves. It is not yet clear why they do this: to hone their fighting skills, to improve motor coordination, or just for fun.

3. Inappropriate laughter

Many of us tend to laugh at completely inappropriate moments - for example, when we see someone fall and hurt themselves or when we convey bad news to someone.

And although we know perfectly well that there is nothing funny about the death of our grandmother, we struggle to contain our fits of laughter at her funeral. Laughter in such situations does not fit into social standards at all, but it happens quite often, and there is a reason for this.

When we laugh in a solemn atmosphere, it does not mean that we are heartless and do not respect others. This is likely a sign that our body, under the influence of enormous emotional stress, uses laughter to relieve tension and discomfort.

And the giggle we make when someone falls or otherwise hurts themselves is an evolutionary function that lets the tribe know that although the person may be embarrassed or slightly hurt, there is no serious cause for alarm.

In general, laughter is rarely a reaction to something “legitimately funny.” Neuroscientist Sophie Scott says that laughter is most often used as a method of social bonding, to let people know that we like them, that we agree with them, or that we are in the same social group as them.

4. Fascination with psychopaths

Many people are attracted to creepy things, especially psychopaths. Late-night TV shows are filled with crazy killers, and for some reason we find them interesting. What arouses our interest in the most vile type of people?

There are three theories to explain this obsession. The first is that observing psychopaths allows us to temporarily leave our law-abiding lives and imagine ourselves in the shoes of someone who thinks only about himself and does not do anything that we do every day - for example, does not worry about justice or about the feelings of others.

The second theory is that psychopaths are a type of predator, and when we hear about them, it takes us back to the basics of our existence, where there is always a hunter and a prey. Stories about predators in human form allow us to touch our animal essence without real threat to life.

The third theory is that we are attracted to psychopaths for the same reason we are attracted to roller coasters and horror films. Sometimes we just want to be scared, and stories about maniacs can fill that need. And all because fear causes a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which, among other things, is responsible for the feeling of pleasure.

5. Visibility of awareness

Many of us have probably been in a situation where someone randomly asks, “Hey, have you heard of so-and-so?” And we automatically answer: “Yes.” Although if we had time to think about the answer, we would realize that we actually don’t even understand who we are being asked about.

In addition, some people feign knowledge although they know nothing about the subject under discussion. Scientists have studied this psychological crutch and found that most people use it to express their individuality and simply because it is convenient.

Many of us don't have a clear idea of ​​what we really know and what we don't, and so when asked, we may unconsciously falsify our own knowledge.

Another, perhaps more obvious, reason why people feign knowledge is because they like to feel like they know it all. But why? Scientists say that our society glorifies knowledge, and being knowledgeable in some area is a plus for social status, especially if your parents were also know-it-alls.

6. Crying

Crying seems quite common, and no one would think of calling it strange. But if we look at it in more detail, then what is happening - salt water dripping from our eyes at some particularly emotional moments - looks a little bizarre.

How are eyes, emotions and tears connected? Psychologists argue that crying is primarily a social signal, evolutionarily related to danger signals.

Young animals may make a specific distress call to let other animals know they need help. It has been suggested that crying arose as a way for humans to show their suffering without giving off alarm signals that would make others wary.

From an evolutionary perspective, this may have been a smart move, since it meant the other members of the tribe only had to look at the crybaby to know he wasn't in trouble. Interestingly, humans are the only species that produces emotional tears. Most other animals stop making danger warning sounds when they become adults.

7. Twitching when falling asleep

70% of people experience involuntary twitching of their limbs when falling asleep. Unfortunately, scientists still do not know why these spasms occur, but they, of course, have certain assumptions.

Some researchers believe that these twitches are nothing more than random reactions that arise due to the fact that our nerves malfunction, moving from a state of wakefulness to a state of sleep.

This is because our bodies don't have switches to press before we go to sleep. Instead, we gradually move from a state where our reticular activating system (the one that regulates basic physiological processes) is working at full capacity, to a state where the ventrolateral system (it is what causes drowsiness and affects sleep cycles) begins to work.

We can be between these states, for example, when we really want to sleep, or we can start to fight, firmly positioning ourselves in one state or another. It is because of this struggle, as scientists believe, that malfunctions occur in our “ignition system”, leading to twitching.

8. Gossip

Women are usually considered gossipers, but men are just as guilty of this social transgression. At least one study suggests that men gossip 32% more often than women throughout the day. What is the reason for this?

The fact is that most people have an innate desire to immediately become close to others. And this desire may well outweigh any moral obligations.

We want to form social connections with those who are nearby and gossip not only gives us a reason to talk about something, but also creates a feeling of trust, which begins with a series of signals that the talker gives to his interlocutor.

The interlocutor, in turn, shares the proposed secret, and thus contact is established. Gossip also gives us a feeling of superiority, it can cheer us up and brings some excitement to boring situations.

9. Love for sad films

Every day all sorts of nonsense happens to us, we are haunted by sorrows and failures, so it seems strange that some of us want to spend our leisure hours in even greater sadness. And despite this, we regularly sit down to watch melodramas.

This may seem paradoxical but the reason is that contemplating tragedies actually makes us feel happier. Watching tragedy on screen forces people to examine their own lives and look for the positives in them.

However, the researchers point out that this reaction is somewhat different from the reaction of a person who watches a tragic movie and thinks, “Damn, at least I’m not as bad as that guy.”

Such viewers have a more selfish outlook, they are focused on themselves rather than others, and therefore do not feel happier after watching the film.

In addition, watching melodramas or listening to sad stories makes us feel empathy and causes our brain to release a special hormone that increases our feeling of caring. Scientists call oxytocin the “moral molecule” because it makes us more generous and compassionate.

10. Awkward silence

Whether we have anything to say or not, many of us feel the urge to fill every moment of silence with conversation. Why does prolonged silence make us feel so uncomfortable?

Like many other things in our behavior, it all comes down to the desire to fit perfectly into a social group. According to psychologists, when a conversation stops flowing smoothly, we begin to think that something has gone wrong.

We may begin to think that we are uninteresting and that what we say is irrelevant, which makes us worry about our position in the group. If the dialogue goes as expected, we feel confirmation of our social status.

However, not all cultures consider silence in conversation to be awkward. For example, in Japan, long pauses in conversation can be a sign of respect, especially if the conversation is about a serious issue.

Our child has developed a habit of biting painfully, and we are very worried about this.

Biting is at first just a game of an experimental nature, because children do not understand that by doing this they are hurting someone. He had already bitten the teething ring many times, sank his teeth into many Stuffed Toys, gnawed the fence of his crib and did not hear a single complaint in response. But when a child first encounters a human reaction, it is often one that encourages him to continue his actions in order to cause new reaction. He found the expression on his mother's face funny when he bit her on the shoulder, the frightened look and the playful "0th!" his father who was bitten cheered him up, and his grandmother’s words:

“How cute, he bit me” - considered direct approval. Oddly enough, even the angry “0th!” or a stern reprimand may reinforce biting because the child finds the reaction funny or sees it as a challenge to his growing sense of independence. If you bite him back, you may only make the situation worse: not only is it cruel, but in addition, such an act on your part will give the child reason to believe that such behavior is completely acceptable, since it is demonstrated by the parents. The best way- this is to calmly remove the child from the bitten area and sternly tell him: “You can’t bite.” Then quickly distract his attention in some way. Do this every time he bites you and eventually he will understand what you want him to do.

READ ALSO:

• Games for children from seven years old: learning to formulate and...