Are You Normal or Nuts?

Do you talk to yourself? Cry at beer commercials? Forget where you left your keys? Find out if you are normal or nuts.-By William Speed Weed

Senile or Normal?All right, dear reader, the jig is up. You try to pass yourself off as a regular person, with normal behaviors, but we know better. The truth is you have a few truly bizarre habits. How do we know? Well, because we all have them. Weirdness itself is normal -- and makes us human. But while there's a big fat line between Jack the Ripper deviancy and Jack the Double Dipper quirkiness, it's not always so easy to tell the difference between that "cute" little thing you do and a behavior that may truly be harming you, or others. We asked some brave souls to give up their behavioral skeletons and ran them by the experts. Here's what we found:

Question:How come I can remember everything I did, said and wore in second grade, but I can't remember where I left the car keys this morning? Is this early senility? I'm only 40 years old!

Though some short-term memory loss is normal as we age, it usually doesn't signal early senility. And you probably don't actually remember everything you did, said and wore in second grade. What you remember is a handful of outfits and maybe a dozen key episodes. This was possibly an important year for you developmentally, and you crystallized these particular events into your long-term memory by recalling them many times and telling other people about them.

"These memories are accessible now because you really paid attention to those events when they occurred," says JoAnna Wood, a research psychologist in San Antonio who has done numerous behavioral studies for NASA. "But this morning's car keys? Not so much, I think. You were probably thinking about important things like work, what to have for dinner, and the bills you need to pay," so you spaced out on the keys. In long-term memory, we enshrine a few good moments from each passing year, and those that stick, stick well. In short-term memory, which uses a slightly different part of the brain, we try to keep track of the flurry of things in the immediate moment, and often those things slip. The solution is to take the car-key problem away from your short-term memory: Hang a hook by the door and put your keys there every single time you come in.

A Broken Record and OCD Habits

Question:Why do I always have a song stuck in my head? Regardless of what I'm doing, some tune is playing over and over in my mind. Sometimes it takes several days to change the tune, so to speak, and, well, it's driving me nuts!

Besides suggesting you turn off your iPod, the experts we polled had almost nothing to say about this behavior, which leaves us with two possible conclusions: 1) It's a perfectly natural phenomenon and everyone experiences it, or 2) Our experts are all nuts themselves. But since this writer and all his editors at RD also have cranial jukeboxes, we prefer the first conclusion.

Yale psychologist Marianne LaFrance points out that trying to force a song out of your head only makes things worse. "Trying not to think about something makes you think about it," she told us. In fact, it's probably your fruitless efforts to "change the tune," not the songs themselves, that are driving you nuts. So why not run with it? Harvard psychiatrist Jacqueline Olds, who admits to being a radiohead herself, says, "I find that it's such a joy to give over to it. A stuck song is a message from your unconscious. If you love this song, why not sing it?" Or if you don't ("Who Let the Dogs Out," anyone?), think about what that message may be revealing.

Question:No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to resist straightening up piles of magazines in the doctor's office or leveling the picture frames on walls -- even in my friends' houses! And I have one friend who wears a parka with a zipper breast pocket. He never closes that zipper, so I always have to do it for him. He doesn't realize what a favor I'm doing him. Am I nuts?

"Just tell me I have spinach on my teeth; don't put your hand in my mouth!" cries psychologist LaFrance. Stop kidding yourself: You're not doing your friend any favors with the zipper, and, more importantly, you're not assuaging the basic anxiety that gives rise to this classic OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) behavior.

Harvard psychiatrist Olds notes that OCD behaviors are common in our society. "Everybody has a few OCD habits, and you can't really be too success-oriented without them," because the neat cubicle and flawless memo are richly rewarded. But in this case, your compulsive urges impose on other people, probably to the point of offense. You should seek counseling, and the first thing a therapist might ask you to do is to analyze your behavior. OCD patients make lists of rules: Magazines must be straight, zippers must be closed, pictures must be level. "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 line as well," says LaFrance. "But it doesn't work. It's the proverbial house of cards." Controlling the zippers and the picture frames is not going to give you any more control over your relationships, your health, your work or your life. Anxiety from these sources is what's really bothering you, and the only way to deal with those issues is to face them directly

Nervous Habits and Snake Phobia

Question:Why do I bite my fingernails or pick at my cuticles until they're bleeding? Is it just nerves? Hyper-grooming? Is it a form of "cutting" that some kids do? Attempting to control my environment? Or just something oral?

Letting your fingers do the vexing, eh? 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 your hyper-grooming is much more, says Joseph Himmelsbach, a psychologist at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. "It's a primitive way of releasing anxiety. Or you're probably mad about something, and you're protecting yourself against acting with a more appropriate display of anger. But this is an infantile or immature way of coping." If you're regularly injuring your hands to the point of bleeding, you should make an appointment with a psychologist, and soon thereafter, a manicurist.

Question:Snakes freak me out -- anywhere, anytime, any snake. If I see a snake on TV, I can't sleep that night. I once saw a snake in the park. My husband told me it was just a little garter snake, less than a foot long, but I won't go back to that park again. My husband tells me I'm nuts, and he wants to take me to the pet store to look at snakes. No way. He's the one who's nuts.

"Neither of you is nuts," says Nando Pelusi, a clinical psychologist with a practice in Manhattan. You have a classic phobia, and snakes and spiders are the most common objects thereof. "These fears are somewhat hard-wired into us," he says, and it's highly illogical, because cars and cigarettes and electric wires of our modern day are far more dangerous.

Conquering phobias of this sort usually calls for a behavioral approach, and your husband is on the right track. What you need is gradual exposure, starting perhaps with pictures of snakes, combined with relaxation exercises. Glance at the picture; breathe deeply. Once you can do that, move on to a TV image. Again, breathe deeply. Once you can do that, you might try being in the same room with a small snake in a cage. Take it slow, though. Going too fast will backfire. Then again, notes Michael Gitlin, professor of psychiatry at UCLA, maybe it doesn't matter. "If you live in a city and you're afraid of snakes, so what? It's like living in the desert and having a fear of elevators. It doesn't come up, so it doesn't much matter."

Hearing Voices, Tapping and Social Fears

Question:I talk to myself all the time, and sometimes I even respond aloud to questions I mentally ask myself. Is this a mild form of schizophrenia?

Not so long as you're the only one talking. If you hear voices that seem to come from outside yourself and they tell you to do something stupid, like kill your aunt Margaret, drop this magazine and get to the ER right now. But regular old talking to yourself is a normal human quirk. We rehearse what we'll say to someone we want to impress. We think up wittier replies for that recent conversation in which we failed to impress, and sometimes, like you, we solve problems.

NASA consultant Wood says you're using a "think-aloud protocol." Studies show that students often perform tasks better if they think out loud. Psychologists would once ask test subjects to think aloud so that researchers could figure out how they were solving the problems. But time and again, they found that these subjects did the tasks better than those who remained silent. So long as you don't overdo it in public, keep up the conversation with yourself. It's only helping.

Question:Why do I love tapping, drumming, and other repetitive rhythmic behavior? Am I borderline autistic? The same is true of my dad, but it drives my mom and my wife crazy. Is this a gender thing?

It's not a gender thing, and just because some autistics engage in repetitive behaviors, that doesn't mean you, too, have autism. The experts we talked to gave you a different diagnosis: anxiety. "The next time you tap, stop for a moment and identify what you might be getting yourself anxious about," counsels Pelusi. Is it your job? Maybe it's your wife. Facing anxiety directly is a better way of dealing with it, because while tapping may be a short-term relief, you're not dealing with the root problem. Himmelsbach adds that you may also have excess energy. "Go with the flow: Take up running, or become a drummer," he urges. Now, that'll make your wife miss your tapping!

Question:After years of hard work, I'm up for a promotion, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it. But I'm terrified, because that will mean I'll have to run meetings and do more speaking in front of groups of clients. I hate this. I get short of breath sometimes and feel like there's a weight on my chest. My palms sweat. I suspect this is a bigger problem than my deodorant can handle.

Unless your deodorant contains beta blockers, you're right. It's a bigger problem. What you have is a limited form of social anxiety disorder. Many people report "stage-fright" jitters, a general feeling of unease before speaking to groups. Joining a public-speaking organization like Toastmasters is a great idea for most people with stage fright. But Harvard psychiatrist Olds notes that your shortness of breath "is a little unusual," and that you're a good candidate for medicines like beta blockers, which counter the physiological response. It's useful to note that such fears are self-fulfilling. Ask yourself: Are you at the point where you're more afraid of sweaty palms than you are of running the meeting? If you can recognize this as a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps you can nip it in the bud.

Question:Sometimes I feel like a cold fish. My son's difficulties at school don't move me, my wife's bad day is unimportant. Then that heart-string-pulling phone company or holiday-time beer ad on TV makes me weep. Am I nuts?

Not at all. Emotions are tough stuff. And all of us, at one point or another, have our cold-fish moments. But you should recognize that you are probably displacing real emotions about something (your family, perhaps?) into the fictional commercial. You cry about that because it's safe, whereas crying about what's really going on is not safe. "An authentic appraisal of your relationship with your wife might cause a disruption in your relationship, causing you to take responsibility, so crying at the TV ad allows you to evoke the emotion in an abstract way and avoid the hassle," says Pelusi. "People have a tendency to distract themselves from the difficult and painful process of having an actual relationship." It works in the short run, but in the long run taking responsibility for your feelings and addressing your emotions, however tough, is the only way to deal with them. Courage, man, you're not crazy. You're human