My therapy cats

Just a neat little thing I thought I'd share. So I have this behavior triggered usually by feeling excited or happy about something where I will rub my hands against my face/eachother. I can do so hard enough to break the skin on both my hands and face at times, or just the repeated rubbing wears it down. As a kid I used to have calluses on my face from it. I still have them on my hands. Anyhow background info given, I have 2 cats, and noticed that whenever I would try to start this behavior one of them would suddenly appear and prevent it in some way, usually by walking between me and the object triggering the behavior and also by demanding attention and petting/rubbing on me then. I realized for the first time ever that this behavior I have is self-injurious, and my cats' behavior reminded me of how a service dog may react to his owner with hitting themselves or something similar.

It was also interesting to me because my cats seemed to always intervene even though I am not distressed at all while performing the behavior, and actually enjoy it. This means they are not responding to my emotional state (by itself anyways), they are responding to my behavior, and are intelligent enough to discern I am harming myself even when I'm not really aware of it at the time. Anyways. Keep in mind this is all assuming they are actually intending to stop the behavior and it isn't just coincidental. But they stop me literally every time I do it around them. So who knows.