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Soham
Snowy Owl
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23 Apr 2014, 12:46 am

Ughh, yes, I never know what to do with the damn things.

This particular issue has become more pronounced as I've gotten older. It seemed, when I was younger, that I was almost oblivious to my own body or was pre-occupied with a stim so I didn't think about it, but as I became more aware/conscious of the body I was in (later teen years) I all of a sudden didn't know what to do with my arms, or how to position my self properly.


What's interesting, and something I only recently realized....a lot of the particular positions, stims, or gestures & hand twisting I find my self doing with my hands/arms to be "at ease" or to relieve tension are remarkably similar to mudras, and I was doing them before I heard about them or having knowledge of such things. (A mudra is a hand gesture...In yoga, mudras are used in conjunction with pranayama (yogic breathing exercises), to stimulate different parts of the body involved with breathing and to affect the flow of prana in the body. )


Like these

Image



When I'm in a situation where I really don't know what to do with my arms/hands, I'll most often do this, I find it to calm the nerves a bit and "ground" me in the moment

Image



Having pockets on sweaters usually gives me a place to occupy my hands with when it's cold, and a place to hold them in a certain mudra or way with out it being seen by others....but most often I really don't know what to do with them and have to find something to occupy my hands with, a stim of sorts, always fidgeting about.



EmeraldGreen
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24 Apr 2014, 7:07 pm

I like having the option of pockets, but I don't seek them out. My mom does that. She's always looking for shirts and sweaters that have pockets. :)

Thank you for pointing out what those yogic poses are! How interesting. Looking at the photos, these do seem to be the yogic poses that would be possible with the hands. Hand yoga.....I love it. I am always cracking and wringing my wrists, massaging my fingers, and just feeling very obsessed with my hand-joints.

Another problem is that I suck at arm and hand gestures when I am especially anxious. When anxious, I become a bit immobilized. Reminds me of selective mutism. I get selective arm mobility. :/


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Wags
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24 Apr 2014, 8:00 pm

I have this problem too. Anyone sometimes don't know where to look?



dianthus
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24 Apr 2014, 8:32 pm

I like to touch things while I am walking around so that keeps my arms busy. I am usually touching something on my clothing or my bag, like rubbing a button or playing with a zipper pull, or twirling a string around my finger. I can't just let my arms hang. Sometimes I cross them. I usually don't have pockets on my clothes but if I do I like to put my hands in my pockets. But I usually end up rubbing the inside of the pocket and that probably looks...wrong.



Soham
Snowy Owl
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25 Apr 2014, 12:15 am

EmeraldGreen wrote:
I like having the option of pockets, but I don't seek them out. My mom does that. She's always looking for shirts and sweaters that have pockets. :)

Thank you for pointing out what those yogic poses are! How interesting. Looking at the photos, these do seem to be the yogic poses that would be possible with the hands. Hand yoga.....I love it. I am always cracking and wringing my wrists, massaging my fingers, and just feeling very obsessed with my hand-joints.

Another problem is that I suck at arm and hand gestures when I am especially anxious. When anxious, I become a bit immobilized. Reminds me of selective mutism. I get selective arm mobility. :/



I too am always doing that with my wrists & fingers.

About arm/hand gestures. For the longest time, and perhaps still sometimes, I was quite uncoordinated with such things, or I was "blind" to the actual position & orientation of my hands/arms. As an example, when saying goodbye to a friend I would put my arm up and hand open for a "good bye" friendly hand shake. Well one night someone pointed out how weird my arm/hand looked when doing this, I'm not going to explain how it looked but I'll say it didn't look how I felt & thought it looked .







Wags wrote:
I have this problem too. Anyone sometimes don't know where to look?



I do this as well. I was actually thinking about this today while waiting for my order of food to be ready. I was thinking about this thread and how not knowing where to look somewhat relates to the feeling I get of not knowing what to do with my arms. Usually when I'm in a place like a restaurant, or a store, any place with a lot of people. Regardless my attention often gets grabbed by lots of things, the worst is when I'm staring at something and don't realize there's a person between my self and the thing I'm staring at.




_



Soham
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25 Apr 2014, 12:28 am

dianthus wrote:
I like to touch things while I am walking around so that keeps my arms busy. I am usually touching something on my clothing or my bag, like rubbing a button or playing with a zipper pull, or twirling a string around my finger. I can't just let my arms hang. Sometimes I cross them. I usually don't have pockets on my clothes but if I do I like to put my hands in my pockets. But I usually end up rubbing the inside of the pocket and that probably looks...wrong.



I too touch A LOT of things. When I was a kid it was much worse though. When going into a store there would be such a variety of different items and textures I wanted to feel and rub it all, and my mom would get angry at me for touching everything. I liked to smell a lot of things too.


Now that I'm older I've tried to suppress this urge to touch and feel so many things, maybe that's why I now have more troubles with not knowing what to do with my arms/hands (combined with more awareness of my body). But also like you mentioned I'll sometimes use a small item to "stim" and keep my hands busy with, a piece of string, a rubber band, a piece of paper to fold repeatedly, etc. This is something I've tried to suppress as well though. I often have a bottle of water with me where ever I go, so that's at least something to give my hands something to hold, and I'll toss it around and spin it in my hands it a lot.



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Quill
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25 Apr 2014, 11:31 am

Soham wrote:
I too touch A LOT of things. When I was a kid it was much worse though. When going into a store there would be such a variety of different items and textures I wanted to feel and rub it all, and my mom would get angry at me for touching everything. I liked to smell a lot of things too.

_


I was also really bad about that when I was younger. I would go down the aisles and touch everything that looked interesting to me. Sometimes I still do it, though I try to limit myself and I stop if other people are around.

I also have a hard time knowing what to do with my arms sometimes. I do the T-rex arms that someone mentioned sometimes, but I stop when I realize I'm doing it. Most of the time, I keep my hands in my pockets or even grip the sides of my jeans below the pockets when I walk.



melysllew
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25 Apr 2014, 5:02 pm

If I'm not holding anything then I don't know what to do with my arms. I don't know what I'm going to do in the summer when I can't just shove my my hands in my coat pockets...


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FallingDownMan
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25 Apr 2014, 6:12 pm

I like to carry a Rubik's cube with me so that I have something to do with my hands. Been doing it since the thing came out. It gives me something to hold, something to do with my hands (and arms since hands are tied to them) and even serves as a short conversation starter.



AmandaMarie
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25 Apr 2014, 7:15 pm

I distinctly remember as a young girl practicing swinging my arms while walking! Now it is not so necessary to think about, especially since it is acceptable these days to be carrying your cell phone around everywhere you go in your hands. So I usually just hold my cell phone in my hands when I am walking or standing talking to people and then you don't have to really be doing anything with your arms or hands.