Weird coping mechanisms

Do you have any weird coping mechanisms?

I know I've been depressed for a few days, so I've resorted to some weird coping mechanisms. One of these coping mechanisms is reading math PhD papers. lol. I've never studied mathematics, but I've always found the subject very interesting, and I like to understand how these algorithms apply to the real world... So I read them and do the mathematical proofs. lol!

God, I'm so weird! I don't know why I even do this bizarre sh#t. It's a very recent thing, too. And no, I'm not in school anymore.. I graduated 1.5 years ago... and I've never done a PhD.

I don't think that's weird at all. I have some very weird coping mechanisms....so weird I wouldn't dare mention them.

Awh, c'mon...

Are they sexual in nature? I need a hint here!

Nothing sexual and you really don't want to know. I almost wrote it...started to them deleted it. It's too embarrassing but I've looked it up and I'm not alone in doing these things so that's somewhat comforting.

I center and calm myself with music ... not weird in it's self ... except it's korean pop music and that I do not understand the words ... just love the music ... it has been my salvation many times ....

This probably isn't so weird, but I'll listen to music for hours on end, that day I've listened to music since 3pm it is now 7:04pm, and I'm still listening to music. I've been doing this everyday this week. And I don't usually listen to music when depressed either, but this time it is more obsessive than anything.

This one is a little strange, although I have stranger ones I won't mention out of embarrassment....
When I'm feeling hypomanic, I'll take the main characters from books I've read and start to write a sequel (or prequel) involving those characters. Or I'll come up with stories of my own and brainstorm names for each character by writing them down for a few hours straight. I always found it to be an outlet for my mania/hypomania that doesn't get me into any trouble.

i rub the tops of my ears. ive done it since i can remember

My son does this too....has since he was a baby. I always worried it was an ear infection but nope...he just likes rubbing his ears for comfort. I think it's cute. He makes noises when he does it too...little mumbling moaning sounds.

I pick at the skin around my fingernails. I also talk to myself sometimes. It feels more cathartic to say things out loud than merely think them in my mind.

oh wow cool. ive never seen anyone else do it. sometimes i do it involuntarily and feel stupid

I think it's your brain telling you it likes being stimulated. If you enjoy reading the papers, your brain is telling you it enjoys reading the papers. If it wasn't happy, your brain would say "throw this nonsense in the trash". Sometimes, MI confuses us into thinking the brain isn't "normal" anymore. But we like what we like and we can still function. I'm still smart, but I short-circuit into violence every now and then - anger is my main symptom. To chill out my skull, I try to keep it occupied on other things.

I twirl my hair a lot.

I also rock back and forth if I'm really upset. I actually haven't done that in a while! Yay!

I rock back and forth too, usually while holding myself. Caught myself doing it a few days ago. Must be a self-soothing thing.

I rub my bedpost. It's a futon, so it's cylindrical and metal. I rub my hands around it and rock back and forth for hours sometimes. I also tend to talk to myself.

some of mine are:

look at queue times for theme parks i'll never even go to

make rabbit noises with my mouth (gotta be a rabbit)

grab on to something like a door handle or a hook, or something like that- and just shake it

walk in to the bathroom, make a couple of wiggling motions, then calmly walk out (for some reason it has to be the bathroom)

move my tung around my mouth
pretend that i've forgotten the alphabet (this one's weird)

it's like i'm talking to myself... hmm, i've forgotten what letter cake begins with

(long pause while i make thinking noises)

ah yes, a cake, begins with the letter C (or a curly cat)

that's how I was taught- curly cat and kicking king.

oh and..

wonder why my toes are ticklish

it has always been a facination, why are toes so tickilish (at least mine are)

Well, I guess it could be a coping skill now that I think of it, or is it just a nervous tick, but I bite the insides of my mouth. Not very attractive.

I do too. And my fingers sometimes

I clean, lay down and rub my feet together non-stop until I fall asleep or get up (it is so relaxing I don't know why), or I rub my dog or lay beside her.

It's sometimes hard to know where the line is for weird (and guess it's not so much a line as a continuum), but I went through a spell of writing on the bottoms of my feet in marker.

I can remember some of what I wrote, but can't remember the reasoning. Whatever it was, given my state of mind at the time ... Oh! I just remembered the reasoning! Yes, it was MUCH better than what I felt driven to do.

I usually rock a lot, back and forth or side to side. My leg often bounces up and down when I'm nervous. My husband notices it and then I fidget even worse.

These probably aren't so weird, but:

When hypomanic: pacing
When depressed: fetal position in bed.

Always and when depressed and anxious: snuggling with my kitty, watching sea otters at the Monterey Aquarium on a webcam (I do it all the time at work, and some co-workers laugh at me), read the papers.

Eat pizza.

I get really into researching heart failure and all of the various causes, symptoms, and treatments. Ive ordered massive textbooks on amazon before and will just go to town on those for a while.

Here is one I can mention without too much embarrassment. I rub the silky stuff at the tops of blankets. I have a jacket with silky stuff in the pockets and I will put it on and rub the silk obsessively for hours. It used to happen a lot at work....I would type with 1 hand because I couldn't take my hand out of my pocket and stop rubbing.