How many of us have a secret weird habit? Something we'd rather not reveal to the world -- that others might see as freakish? I'll confess to one that embarrassed me as a child: I sucked my thumb until I was 11. What finally made me quit was the pressure of pre-teen friendship; I knew sleepovers with my friends would be impossible unless I kicked this babyish habit.

My secret thumb-sucking past came to mind last week as I watched the premiere of the TLC series My Strange Addiction. Among the women profiled was a twentysomething who sucked her thumb in public, a ratty strip of blanket twisted around her fingers and pressed up to her nose.

Others had more outlandish habits. One woman ate sheets of toilet paper while another found comfort in the white noise and gentle heat from her blow drier which she slept with at night. Each knew her behavior was odd and unusual but rationalized that since it didn't hurt anyone, it wasn't a habit that needed to be broken.

Viewers tuning into My Strange Addiction merely to see people do freaky things miss the larger message. These behaviors are a form of self-comfort and self-protection for these women, just as thumb-sucking was for me.

As an adult looking back on my childhood, I understand why I clung so long to an old habit. My earliest years were the ones that were the most secure, stable, and safe. After I turned 4, all that went out the window. Over the next six years, my parents uprooted our family four times, enrolling me in five different schools. I was shuttled from bustling New York City to the cow country of rural upstate New York, moving there and back not once but twice. Thumb-sucking took me back to the safety of childhood, to places that felt permanent and friends that stayed put. It was only after we'd bought a house and settled down in the suburbs for good that I felt secure enough to put down roots, move forward, and end that childish habit.

Although the first two episodes of My Strange Addiction were light on the self-help aspect, tonight's episode -- featuring Crystal, a woman addicted to licking kitchen cleanser (you'll know the brand when you see the canister), and Samantha who visits tanning salons up to three times a day -- delves deeply into past traumas that triggered these behaviors. Although some reviewers (like the one at BostonHerald.com) have dumped on the show and the women with an almost vicious snarkiness, you can't help but feel empathy for Crystal when you hear her back story, see her daughter's reaction to her deep dark secret, and learn how her addiction is literally eating away at her.

Is there any redeeming value to a show like My Strange Addiction? I believe so. By showing these behaviors on television, the program lets us know that we're not alone no matter how strange and offbeat our addictions are, and that help is available to break these habits.

How does a strange addiction develop? It's widely understood and accepted that many women seek comfort in food, alcohol, gambling, drugs, sex, exercise, even shopping to suppress feelings of pain and unhappiness. But eating kitchen cleanser? Sleeping with a blow drier? What's that all about?

In an exclusive interview with the show's addiction expert, author and psychotherapist Dr. Mike Dow, I was able to find out how these strange addictions developed and why the women featured on the show might have chosen these behaviors over the addictions we're most familiar with:

Why do these women embrace these particular behaviors instead of more commonly 'accepted' ones?

We've all heard the phrase "pick your poison."  The women on My Strange Addiction pick "freaky" poisons. But whether you choose to medicate underlying anxiety, depression, boredom or loneliness with alcohol or kitchen cleaner, the underlying reasons are the same. There's something in your life you're not getting, and you stumbled on something that gives you a sense of this in your life (excitement, calm, stability, something that will never leave you like humans can). Our feelings about drugs and alcohol may have prevented someone from gravitating towards these more common addictive substances, so people then turn to other ones - and food (or chalk or toilet paper) is more socially acceptable than heroin.

Is there a specific reason why someone would develop an oddball addiction instead of using food, alcohol, or drugs?

Sometimes. Lori (our hair dryer addict) grew up in a very religious and conservative family, so drugs and alcohol may have gotten her disowned or shunned. And since her appearance was important to her as a female teen growing up (as it is to most teen girls or for that matter, any teen or adult), medicating her anxiety with pasta would have caused a consequence that was always visible (weight gain). So Lori found something (the lull, sound, and heat of the hair dryer) that gave her the peace she needed in the form of something that may be considered "oddball."

And because these sorts of things are more freaky, are those who are addicted less likely to open up to others and eventually seek help?

Absolutely, and this is why I'm so happy the show is shedding some light on rare addictions.  In performing thousands of hours of psychotherapy, I know there are some very strange private addictions in the world.  And what happens to these people?  They know they need to stop, and most people think of 12-step programs as being the place to go when you face addiction.  You can find many different 12-step programs - for food, sex, gambling, co-dependence, love - but good luck finding one for household cleaners, toilet paper, or hair dryers.  These people end up feeling even more alone, and that feeling makes them feel more helpless.  When people can see the patients on the show coming clean (after all, as they say in 12-step programs - you're as sick as your secrets) and treating their addiction, it gives them hope.  Maybe there are other people like you.  Maybe there are things you can do about it.  And maybe there are experts out there who will understand this.

My Strange Addiction airs Wednesday nights at 9 pm EST on TLC.

It's a good thing that there are now three women on the Supreme Court, because Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has made it clear that he doesn't believe women have constitutional protection against discrimination -- even with the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

Scalia's comments were made during an interview published in California Lawyer and the Huffington Post is already weighing the impact of his statements:

For the record, the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause states: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Marcia Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law Center, called the justice's comments "shocking" and said he was essentially saying that if the government sanctions discrimination against women, the judiciary offers no recourse.

"In these comments, Justice Scalia says if Congress wants to protect laws that prohibit sex discrimination, that's up to them," she said. "But what if they want to pass laws that discriminate? Then he says that there's nothing the court will do to protect women from government-sanctioned discrimination against them. And that's a pretty shocking position to take in 2011. It's especially shocking in light of the decades of precedents and the numbers of justices who have agreed that there is protection in the 14th Amendment against sex discrimination, and struck down many, many laws in many, many areas on the basis of that protection."

_{Photo of Antonin Scalia © Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images}

Related articles:

• History of Women on the Supreme Court
• And Then There Were Three: Kagan on the Supreme Court

Earlier today Reuters reported that despite 11 consecutive months of job gains in the private employment sector, a record number of people are so discouraged that they've given up looking for work. Those individuals -- nearly 1.3 million in November -- do not figure into unemployment statistics because the Labor Department only counts as unemployed those actively looking for work.

Reuters provides a gender breakdown of dropout rates and several explanations as to why women are faring better:

Nearly two-thirds of the discouraged workers were men, perhaps a reflection of sharp declines in male-dominated industries such as construction and manufacturing, where jobs are expected to remain scarce.

Ethan Harris, an economist with Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, said the economic healing process will be faster for women than for men, in part because women are more likely to go to college and obtain the skills needed to find a job.

Among 18- to 24-year-olds, about 41 percent were enrolled in college or graduate school, according to Census data. Broken down by gender, 45.3 percent of women in that age group were enrolled, compared with just 36.7 percent of men.

Related articles:

• Top 10 Best Paying Jobs for Women
• Jobs That Pay Women More Than Men
• Jobs That Employ the Most Women

The following story would make a great opening for a novel...if it weren't true:

When I was five years old my life, as I knew it, ended on a clear January night. I stood on the cold sidewalk in my pajamas, watching our house burn after the basement exploded from a natural gas leak. We never went home again. My parents were a young couple with four children and had put their savings into a small start-up business that had yet to see profit. They lost everything, and we were homeless for months. Through great perseverance and ingenuity, they found a new opportunity to start over.

That five-year-old girl standing on the sidewalk grew up to be an expert on change, no doubt influenced by that life-changing moment that January night decades ago. Janice Van Dyck knows full well that change also involves choice and control. Change we initiate -- change we choose -- is very different from change we're thrust into or change that happens beyond our control.

Her article on women and change provides insight into the process of starting over -- a good way to launch into a new year. Whether 2011 ushers in changes you implement or changes that are thrust upon you, letting go of the past -- and grieving its loss -- will help you establish a more stable foundation on which to build a healthy future.