Being able to control stims

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Sometimes. but the problem is, it comes at the cost of metal energy, atleast for me.

I can control stimming while at work. Though work is sometimes very stressful. During those times I usually let it out when I get home. Sometimes during work i'll go into the bathroom stall and rock myself. This helps a lot too.

I do stim in public but I do more socially acceptable stuff like twirling my hair or shaking my leg. I rarely if ever just sit still. At home I dangle a string in front of my face for hours -my autistic stim. As a child I did that and other weird stims (hand flapping, walking in circles and talking to myself ect) in public.

I fail to notice the majority of my meny and often stims, when I notice one I do not wish to do I can somtimes modify it or switch it out. Example, If I am sitting at a desk and rocking I can lean on the desk with my tense elbow with my hand on my head making a triangle of sorts and stoping that stim if really needed for a breaf period. The vocal stim, and when the very few times I catch myself doing it and its very weak, it is the only one I really shut down as soon as I notice, the same for mouthing words, I just hate doing it. The fact is the enegry is coming out one way or the other so its kind of useless to try to outright stop stimming, its part of being autistic.

I start flapping my hands whenever, wiggling my fingers when I am anxious or bored, or stare off into space when I am threatened or wish exit.

Often times though (in the presence of people I dislike) I will start bouncing and flapping and I really can't control it and not being able to stim causes me to cry and scream.

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Last edited by Jensen on 14 Aug 2014, 2:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

I went with somewhat often, though I am not 100% sure as I am a lot of times not aware I am stimming unless someone mentions it or I catch myself. If I read a book I end up messing with the page I am not reading with my other hand, when I talk sometimes I end up having a lot of hand movement and if more nervous face touching(which I am usually not aware of unless someone says something), or if i have a peice of paper it will probably end up crinkly since I tend to crinkle paper when holding it.

If I seriously tried concentrating on if I am stimming or not and then forced myself not to, all my focus would be going into that I would be unable to follow the conversation as I would be spending too much energy and focus on 'not stimming' and even straining myself in the process and I would probably have more anxiety/panic attacks due to less outlet for stress........I am thinking that would not be a healthy thing to do at all. I say if you have a stim that is harmful it would be good to try and change it to something else, but I think people with autism are supposed to stim suppressing that probably does more harm than good.