Increased stimming

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I've been working on cognitive issues, especially relating to focusing attention on conversations at work while minimizing my propensity for mental digressions. For example, not letting my my wander during meetings even when it's boring.

What I'm finding is that the more I focus on the cognitive, the less control I seem to have on overt stimming. I rock and twitch and hand wring much more visibly. It seems that the more present I am, the more intently engaged in the conversation, the more I lose awareness of my body.

I suspect others may have gone through this and I'm wondering if at some point the focusing become automatic enough to allow me some control over the stims or if I'm doomed to either clearer cognition or less visible stims.

This is an issue because the cognitive aspects are critical to my job. I've always had trouble with this and now that I'm trying, and even somewhat succeeding, to solve this the cognitive challenges, the stimming seems to be more obvious.

This same thing happens to me, and I haven't found a way to control the stimming. I did try, and I found that pushing it is stressful and physically uncomfortable, and I can't maintain the control long enough to really make a difference.

This is what I do instead: I've found that if I have something I can stim on, like a toy or a brush or something small that has a lot of texture and/or moving parts, I'll focus my stimming on that rather than on rocking, flapping, flicking, etc.

For me, stimming is the stargate to cognitive functioning, so I always stim and never try to not stim. I stim, therefore I think.

Why are you trying to not stim? Is it because you don't want to look weird at work? Perhaps you could try turning a more weird stim into a less weird stim for those times when you need to stim at work, e.g. rocking in your chair into bouncing your leg under the table.

Stimming is the sensory experience.

I'm not exactly trying not to stim. I just noticed recently that I the more successful I am at staying engaged in the conversation, the more obvious things like hand wringing becomes. Part of me thinks to hell with people. Just deal with it folks. But in a professional environment, it can have a negative effect. People can be real jerks, in case you haven't noticed.

The same thing happens to me. Luckily for me, I don't have any really obvious stims.

Google "fidget to focus". Many people need to fidget with something to focus. It's so well known that in many classrooms kids are allowed fidgets. My daughter has floam to squish around. Heck, I've seen executive fidgets. Just make it a fidget that's not too annoying to others and have at it. Some eccentricity is acceptable.

I rub my fingers together a lot. It doesn't bounce tables like bouncing a leg. Finger tapping or pencil tapping is annoying. Squishy balls. Doodling. Stuff like that isn't usually a problem unless somebody is a real...um....don't know if I can say it here.

Maybe you are becoming hyperfocused on your conversation or your work and losing awareness of sensations and movements due to the hyperfocus?

I stim like mad all the time and ESP when I am working my brain really hard or pushing myself. Sounds like you got a little bit of this going on in your life.

I find myself having to sit with my left hand under my left thigh to prop myself up when I'm thinking hard. I don't care if it looks weird because I get horribly uncomfortable if I can't do it. I also can't sit for long with my feet planted flat on the ground. I'm always either crossing and uncrossing my legs or bending my knees back and curling my feet underneath my chair.

I used to bite my nails, pull on my hair, and pick at my face all the time when I was little. Luckily I don't do that so much anymore. I still like running my fingers along things when I walk though, like the mortar cracks on concrete block walls. Or pulling the leaves off the hedges or plants as I walk past. I remember getting crap for doing that when I was little but I still do it sometimes.

Also, when I've had an office job I have to get up from my desk and walk around every 20 minutes or so. I just can't sit in a freaking chair for hours on end like some people can. I get all uncomfortable and claustrophobic feeling and my back starts to hurt. If I really need to think hard I need to find someplace where I can pace without being noticed.

Maybe these are ADHD traits as well as people with that seem to do the same stuff. I know it has something to do with focus because there more I'm deep in thought the more I need to move around or do things with my hands.