What do our habits tell us about ourselves?
When I was a little kid at church, we used to sing a song called Hinges. It was fun to stand up and move our arms up and down and touch our toes after sitting for a couple hours in church.
“I’m all made of hinges, ’cause ev’rything bends
From the top of my neck way down to my ends.
I’m hinges in front, and I’m hinges in back;
But I have to be hinges, or else I would crack!”
As I got a little older, I mimicked my big brother cracking his fingers because I thought it was a cool thing to do. I was warned that it would cause arthritis when I got old, and my mom said that she had bulging knuckles because she used to do it too when she was a little girl. But I wanted to be like my brother and ignored the admonition.
I believe the caution about causing future physical degeneration and pain has been medically invalidated, but the issue of it being a bad habit still stands. In high school, I used to crack my knuckles absentmindedly and asked a friend of mine who sat in front of me in several classes to stop me whenever he noticed I was doing it. Fortunately, it did help break me of the habit. But later on in life, I found myself resurrecting that quirk. It became so bad, that all I had to do was bend my fingers like a claw to release a crack. As I learned about human behavior and the causes for habits, I made the connection between the frequency of my knuckle cracking and my anxiety. Like biting nails or twirling hair, overeating or excessive exercising, most habits are nervous ticks. It’s no longer an absentminded behavior as I am now aware whenever I do it. I have noticed that the frequency increases whenever I have problems in my romantic relationship, and the secret to quitting any bad habit is to manage the emotion that drives the behavior and sit with the urge rather than to give in to it.
But now I have additional cracking joints unrelated to my nervous tick. My knees used to pop every once in a while when I played tennis in high school. It wasn’t a big deal but they started to crack more as I got older. Not so much that it was noticeable to anyone else, but as entered my 40s, my knees became so creaky, I began to grow concerned and Googled my symptoms. Creaky joints is a harmless condition called crepitus. But I wonder how harmless it really is when I can crack my knees just by straightening my legs a hundred times a day, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes just to relieve a minor feeling of built-up tension in the joints.
Feeling of tension…. Huh. That is what I feel in my body whenever I am anxious. As problems mounted in my previous relationship, I had growing body aches all over. Doctors could find nothing wrong, and eventually that emotionally abusive partner walked out, my body aches disappearing with him.
But the neck ache returned in my next relationship. And here I am still dealing with a pain in my neck, only slightly relieved when I crack it. My knees have never cracked this much in my life. And while I am fully aware of my incessant habit of cracking my knuckles, neither the knees nor my hands seem to ache. So why don’t I stop myself when I see my hands cracking themselves, and I extend my legs over and over?
It’s almost satisfying to hear that pop, like a little dialogue bubble in a cartoon getting released, as if that noise is the only way my voice is heard. After all, anxiety is a build up of tension and I just gotta keep bending those hinges or else I will crack!
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