Is stimming involuntary?

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For the past 2 months I've got into the habit of closed mouth coughing all the time. Its pretty satisfying doing it but its getting outta hand when I start doing it I can't stop unless I consciously force myself not to do it. I probably look like I have emphysema or some other lung disease. Is this what stimming is or have I got OCD? This isn't the only compulsion I have, I also regularly grind my fist into my palm and rub my forehead with my hand rotated so that the fingers are vertical. Do these things sound like stimming or are they something else?

Stimming is involuntary, but if you've started an unintentional habit that is worrying you, I would go see a doctor.

In second grade I use to rock back and forth until the teacher broke me of the habit. She would sneak up on me when I was doing it and she smashed a huge dictionary down on my desk causing me to jump and my class mates to laugh at me. She did this because she said my rocking made me look like a mental patient and it made her nervous. Can you believe she was a special education teacher? I stopped rocking but I switched to pacing, knee bouncing, and foot tapping. You can remove one stim but you will develop another.

It could be stimming, could be a tic. Tics are only mildly voluntary. My experience of them is that they just kind of "happen"--I do them before I have a chance to think about them. For me they involve jerking my head in a sort of odd way, or occasionally a whole-body spasm, very brief. If you have a whole lot of tics and they're really constant and long-term, a doctor will diagnose Tourette's, but tics are so common in general that there's no reason to worry about them if you only have one or two and they don't interfere.

Stimming is usually voluntary or semi-voluntary. I say "semi-voluntary" because it's quite common to do it without thinking about it, as a sort of default movement, just like you might sit without thinking about it or walk without thinking about it. It's also common to need stimming to get into emotional or cognitive or sensory equilibrium, so it's voluntary, but necessary, like eating or drinking.

Bottom line, if it's a stim, it's harmless; if it's a tic, it's harmless. So I wouldn't worry unless you are doing this often enough and in situations where it distracts others. In that case you might ask a doctor for advice; they do have meds for tics, but they're generally a trade-off because the side effects might not make them quite worth it. Sometimes it's just better to deal with the tic as it is. And anyway, people get used to it; the guy who sits next to me in one of my classes has a vocal tic like clearing his throat every few minutes, and we all pretty much just got to the point where it was normal and we ignored it by about the second lecture.

No. Tics are the involuntary ones, stimming is voluntary. Or more or less so. There seems to be a bit of a sliding scale with both as far as the level of control is concerned, but as a general rule stimming tends to be more of an expressive, reactive movement than an involuntary one. Callista put it well.

I have to wonder what it would be then if you do things without realising it.....like there are things I do that most would probably see as stimming I guess, but a lot of times I am not aware of it. Like I have a tendency to pick up random things and set them back down, when I read I tend to sort of ruffle the pages(the only way to really describe it.) but yeah usually it takes me a while before I even notice.

Yeah thats what I'm talking about. It feels good so I do it when I'm alone but often without thinking I end up doing it in public too.

Oh yes, lets intimiate and humiliate kids so they conform to OUR comfort level... unbelievable, even for then.

I developed all sorts of 'girly', acceptable stims over the years but I'll tell you what - I catch a teacher even suggesting to curb my daughters stims in this way I will be all over them. It's never acceptable to attack a childs self esteem - for any reason.

Well my stimming behaviour used to be pretty much involuntary when I was little, then I became self-cons
cious of them and learned to suppress them so as not to attract attention and/or ridicule. Now sometimes I have to evoke stimming voluntarily so as to get the positive effect - rocking, finger tapping, spinning, etc.. But I try to do it when alone and keep away from any weird-looking stims .

Some stims might be harmful. Your coughing stim might be harming your throat. If that is the case you should def get help. Stims can be removed. You will probably replace it, but if the stim is harmful for you it's worth the shot.

Mine are involuntary. They're inconspicuous (toe wiggling and strange repetitive movements of tongue and throat muscles) but it sometimes bothers me that I can't stop. They don't do any harm....I just don't like it when I'm not the master of my own body.

I had that throat one up until I was about 12 but it comes back from time to time. In my case it was harmful though because I'd end up with swollen glands from overdoing it. Are you talking about where you flex the muscles at the front of your throat just under your tongue until you feel a click?

I used to Rock when I was little now I just make noises and mum would ask me what that noise was so I would say "what noise." now we call it the what noise.

Like mori_pastel, I was under the impression that stimming is voluntary, tics are not...

It's a weird one though, because I often run from wall to wall touching eaching wall as I go, and these days I don't even realise I've gotten up off my chair until someone yells at me to stop.

No mine isn't that intense. I close off my throat or my nose very gently, build up a little bit of pressure and then let the air through - it's like coughing very mildly. Then I alternate rhythmically between throat and nose.

It's a bit of both for me. When I'm having a hard time concentrating on something, solving a hard problem, or I'm a bit anxious, I'll rock intentionally, but sometimes when I'm doing something I'll snap out of the attention I was paying to it and realize that I'd been rocking or tapping my fingers on something the entire time. Either that, or someone will stop me and point it out to me.