Hello, I'm not exactly bored, but I am trying to put off doing some recolours (ie. 'Sims work').

Ever since I was little, I have chewed the insides of my mouth. I'm not sure why. I have noticed that I do it more when I'm either stressed, or thinking about things. It makes me pull stupid faces (which is bad when I forget I'm doing it on the bus etc.) and it slightly hurts. I even read on the internet that it can cause mouth cancer! I don't know how true that is, but it does give me mouth ulcers. Sometimes I can go for a couple of weeks without doing it, but in stressful times, I almost can't stop, and have even made the bit I'm chewing bleed a couple of times.

Another one is, I have to admit I love salt. I eat way too much of it, even though I know it causes high blood pressure, and is bad for your heart. I have tried to cut down, but everything tasted horrible.

What are your bad habits?

Have you tried to stop?

Twirling my hair - always a strand on the left side (probably because I'm left handed) and it doesn't matter if I've got my hair up or down. My hand WILL find some hair to twirl. Have I tried to stop? Noooooo. I tend to do this when I'm thinking. If I stop, I may never think again!

Counting stairs - just stairs, nothing else. I could drop a box of toothpicks and not feel the need to count them while picking them up. (In fact, I probably wouldn't bother picking them by hand. I've got a broom and dustpan and know how to use them.) I've lived in my home for 11 years, I go up and down the stairs many times a day, I know darn well there are 14 stairs- but I count them every single time. I don't run into stairs/staircases outside of my home very often, but if I do and there are more than 3 or 4 stairs? I'll count them. Have I tried to stop? Well, I sometimes think it's a silly thing to do and should stop. But then I find myself counting again, lol.

Smoking - yes, I know how awful and bad it is for me and others around me. I have cut down and I may stop one day. This is the only truly bad habit I have. Have I tried to stop? Kind of. Since I can go all day without smoking if needed (like a job where there is no smoking allowed anywhere at any time) and it doesn't bother me at all, hopefully I can just stop one day.

Mustluvcatz, have you tried electronic cigarettes? My brother-in-law switched to them a couple years ago and swears by them now. Claims he has zero urge to smoke a real cigarette now. They still have the nicotine, but at least there is no tar or smoke, so I'd think that's worth it in that it should greatly reduce cancer risk. Not to mention you and your clothes will smell better.

As for me, I think I have trichotillomania, an irresistible urge to pull out hair. I'm not as bad as some people, because I don't get the urge to pluck all my hair, I only get the urge to pull hair out of painful scalp acne. Plucking the hair out of acne immediately relieves the pain. For some reason, the root sheath only comes out when I pluck hair from acne so it also always felt like removing a contaminant. It became a habit in my teen years and every time I got scalp acne, I'd end up with a new bald spot. It does grow back, but not as full as before so now my hair is a lot more sparse as an adult than it was before puberty. It's more obvious when my hair is wet, so that's part of the reason I never go swimming. Same story with facial hair and face acne, so I can't really grow facial hair because it's sparse and splotchy looking. I still fight the urge as an adult (and often lose), but fortunately I don't get scalp and face acne nearly as much as I did as a teen so it's not as bad.

I eat too much salt too. Extra sucks for me because I have high blood pressure, but I love salt and I really can't eat food without it.

Fast food. I manage to cut down to once/twice a week, but I just love it so much. I would rather eat a cheap fast-food double-cheeseburger than a $30 meal at a sit-down restaurant. If it wasn't bad for you, I'd eat fast food for every meal.

Being sedentary. I don't know what people are talking about, exercise makes them feel good. Every time I exercise, it just makes me feel exhausted, tired, and achey. I love being sedentary and just sitting around playing a computer game or tinkering on something. I can do it for hours upon hours. I have to force myself to exercise so I hopefully don't croak early, but I really hate exercise.

Biting my nails. For some reason, I can't stand to have any white on my fingernails. If I don't keep them "cut to the quick" (just learned that phrase recently), I'll catch myself even involuntarily biting off the whites of my nails. I don't usually bite them all the way across, I get them started and then peel the rest and that often results in the nail tearing off past the "quick" which is very painful and sometimes bleeds. That's when I come to the conscious realization of what I'm doing. Now I keep scissors in my desk and try to keep them cut to the quick at all times which has been pretty good at preventing me from biting them, but sometimes I'll forget and catch myself biting them when watching TV or something.

Eating sweets. If there is a sugary sweet treat around, I can't help but eat it. I'm pretty good about preventing that by not having sweet treats where I can get to them, but when a coworker brings treats or something, I can't help but make a 2nd, 3rd, or 12th trip.

Not finishing anything. I will start all kinds of projects, but never finish them. Me finishing something is a rare and news-worthy event, because it almost never happens. Only exceptions are work, because I have no choice, and video games.

Hoarding. I'm not bad to where I have dead animals under piles of trash or anything, but I hoard a lot of tech. I have over a dozen computers, maybe 8 smartphones, and huge number of electronic gizmos and gadgets. I should sell most, but I always think, "maybe I'll use that one someday!" I'm getting better though, I made a rule that if I haven't touched it in over 1-year, it's getting sold. Although problem is I keep buying more.

I need to stop swearing as much and I need to stop smoking as much.

You need to stop smoking, period. It has disgusting irreversible effects on your body.

More information here

I know that, I just like to do it, keeps the stress away for a while.

My worst habit is procrastinating

Three separate but related things - flirting with people who are engaged/married/otherwise spoken for, and not caring when I find out they are.

The third is not considering the above to be bad habits. :P

Pulling out my eyelashes. Started when I had a follicle infection, but I never stopped the pulling. Now I hardly have any on my upper lids, but when I get one it grows all bent so I pull it out. I scratched since I was 2 years old; stopped when I was in 50's - actually think I had some real skin problem.
Then there were the over-sexed years...

I have similar habits to Gnat's about the hair and especially the nails. Also, I've always eaten paper. It was much worse when I was a little kid, and I'd rip out the margins of the pages of whatever book I was reading and eat them, or notebook paper...never newsprint, though; that stuff was gross.

I guess that's a form of pica, but I don't know how weird it is, especially as a child, when a number of kids are munching away on pencils, chalk, rubber erasers and paste as well. I still do it sometimes in stressful moments.

Hm, there's a word for it in the Pica wiki entry. Xylophagia (consumption of wood or paper). Neat (the word itself, that is. Not the condition).

I sit on my ass to much and I'm on the internet machine way too much.

Nobody was supposed to notice that part of my post! The first 2 things, which aren't bad habits- more like little quirks, were supposed to distract from my one, true bad habit!

But seriously. Yes, I have tried them. My last job could be quite stressful and our boss allowed the use of those in the building. So I had one (they usually come in some kind of kit I think? but what I have it just a single cigarette) and I used it. There are replacement cartridges for the one I have, I should get some.

Having OCD about where something is placed on a desk or table

Plus, my stuttering is also a bad habit, but I can't get rid of it

I don't think stuttering is a habit. I stutter, too.

I also bite my nails... a lot. Even when I bite one so short it hurts, it doesn't stop me. My hands, quite frankly, look gross from all the nail-biting. It bugs me, but I can't seem to stop <_>

Same thing with me.

I was about to post the same thing!

When I was a teenager I got so many eyelashes falling in my eyes so it was much less irritating to just pulled all the loose ones out before they fell out. And it has just started happening again twenty years later. Not sure if it is a bad habit though as it seems to solve a problem.

Spending too much time on the Internet! Also, when I'm stressed, I'll chew on my lip/mouth and my lip can get really swollen and inflamed. And, of course, my worst one is self-injury...trying to break that one (kind of). I made it a year one time but since then it's been hard to resist every time I get really depressed or feel really alone, etc. I also probably spend too much time on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr) but that hasn't negatively affected my life at least.

I crack my knuckles at all times. Even if they have just been cracked recently. I don't know why. I always do.

But I seriously can't believe there's a tutorial of how to stop cracking knuckles.

I don't know why, but for years now I have been biting and ripping off small pieces of dead skin from my lips. No need for lip balm, dead dry skin won't be there long with these precision teeth. You have a point about stupid faces when doing that. Mine probably looks like this:

Haha I actually bite the skin off my lips aswell! Love that photo!

Posting on this forum at 1 AM.

Oh my, so many. Procrastinating, binge eating, biting the skin of my lips and the inner side of my mouth (it's always wounded for years and years now). And several minor things here and there. Funny that getting rid of "good habits" has always been easy. :/

About the cracking knuckles... It's not a bad habit, okay!? Don't even try to get me to stop!!111

As I read a bout cracking knuckles, I cracked my neck. Yeah..

I'm trying to stop smoking, I already have an e-cigarette.
I'm A nail-biter.
I rarely have breakfast. I'm already so used to it that I feel sick when I eat something in the morning, even when I'm hungry.

I also nervously move my right foot up and down, while my toes remain on the ground, my whole leg moves up n down pretty fast. Not sure if it's a habit or just because I'm a nervous wreck.

Playing with a pencil. Had it since I was a kid and it has persisted to this day. Occasionally, the pencil might fly out of my hands and hit something... or someone! Whoops...

I write really long forum responses that contain TMI and then feel embarrassed about it later.