Vol. 1 Issue #227]

We spent the last two days putting together a big newsletter for tomorrow, the end of the week, and the month on the same day; how often does that happen? According to ChatGPT, once every seven months or 14.3%. Today, a personal story about nervous habits that may or may not have to do with a delay in psychosexual development at a very young age 😉 Once that image is burned into your mental retinas, we finish with some music. Enjoy the hours left in the day; tomorrow is a big one!

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One Big Story

The Glove

When I was nine years old, I told my mom I wanted to stop sucking my thumb. It turns out nine-year-old boys who spend the night at friends' houses and wake up with thumbs in their mouths are subject to teasing and mockery; who knew!? I don't remember if my mom suggested I wear gloves to bed, but I remember wearing them. These were 80s gloves you would wear in the cold Nebraska winters, filled with stuffing and covered in the same weird plastic material you would find in 70s station wagon upholstery. We hadn't quite figured out how to make odor-absorbing materials yet, which means the smell of gloves worn overnight was similar to what a plaster cast smells like when you remove it four to six weeks after injury.

Habits

The psychology of thumb-sucking and oral fixation is deep, and there is nothing you could look back on in my life that relates to trauma, pointing to my longer-than-usual thumb-sucking; looking back, I did it as a nervous habit, and it probably helped me sleep. Two weeks after I started my glove-thumb abstinence program, I stopped sucking my thumb. Five years later, I replaced the thumb with cigarettes and played around with that habit for a few more years. Quit that one in my 20s and replaced it with my fingers, first with the nails, and after thousands of dollars in dental work, I moved from the finger nail to the cuticles and nail skin surrounding my nails. Textbook oral fixation, I suppose.

New Gloves

Boredom and higher thought work led to my current finger biting. On the Boredom side, if I'm watching TV, I'll bite; on the deep thought front, I bite when writing. You can use many topical solutions to stop biting your fingers; I've used them all; some of them, I've even gotten used to the bitter taste; others, I just go up to brush my teeth if I unconsciously bite. Another downside to the topical deterrents – you can't eat anything with your fingers without getting the topical in your mouth. My current writing schedule is as extensive as ever; the battle between my fingers and my mouth is at a maximum level; where does that leave me?