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It's not done intentionally. It's just an unconscious thing they do from time to time that people aren't aware of.

Real Life example-
Every night, Karen Sparrow rests her head on her pillow, pulls the covers around her and sucks her thumb.

But Karen is not a toddler trying to soothe herself to sleep. She is a grown woman of 38, with a job as a data analyst and a family — and this bad habit, left over from childhood, causes serious disruption to her life.

While concentrating at her desk, Karen’s thumb creeps into her mouth. Driving in her car, she unthinkingly takes one hand off the wheel to suck her thumb. Once, she even started doing it in a job interview.

I was in front of a panel when everyone started staring at me and I thought: “Did I answer a question wrong?” Then I realised: I was sucking my thumb,’ says Karen, from North London.

‘I apologised and they all started laughing, saying that they’d never seen anything like it before. I was so embarrassed, but I did get the job — I think it made a good talking point!

The habit is so ingrained that, when Karen dislocated her shoulder seven years ago and had to wear a sling — preventing her from sucking her left thumb as usual — she ended up sucking the right thumb instead.

‘I couldn’t not suck my thumb,’ she says. ‘I find it so comforting and relaxing. I do it while I’m watching TV and in bed where it helps me to go to sleep. The only time I feel self-conscious is at work, because I know it looks so childish.’ Clinical psychologist Helen Nightingale says adult thumb-sucking happens automatically and can have a familial cause. ‘It’s often passed down in families,’ she says. ‘It’s highly self- soothing and, as such, it is very resistant to change.’

12% of adults actually suck their thumb.