i used to blink a couple times or look up when i had a particularly unpleasant thought  your therapist is right it’s a type of ritual we use to relieve stress and only makes things worse over the long term   it also is a pretty clear indicator to others that you have some type of mental illness you see a lot of homeless people with tics like gumming blinking head shaking etc   people are very sensitive to these types of behaviors i realized this early on and stopped doing it for that reason