Stimming or Tics ?
To start with I have severe autism and severe Anxiety disorder.
I press the side of my head against my left shoulder and occasionally my shoulder will twitch (did that make any sense) and this is a little hard to explain I involuntarily scrunch my entire face up like I just tasted lemon or it is just the left half of my face, I also flick my fingers.
Vocally I sometimes say "Kadis-kot" or "annnnnnnd" (that was deliberate) or "mum" I say that one over and over again prolonging the mmm's I also say the letter 'T' but vocally I only do it when I am alone but I have the urge to say something often.
I also tend to stutter occasionally I don't know if that comes into play with any of this
I just want to know if this is Tourettes or Autistic stimming ?
also if you have any questions I will be happy to answer them
Thank you in advance !
CyborgUprising
Veteran
Joined: 16 Jun 2012
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,963
Location: auf der Fahrt durch Niemandsland
I have autism (HFA), ADHD, and OCD. I do tics, stims, and compulsive movements. The difference between them is this: the stims are usually involuntary or not noticed until I stop doing them (at least physical movement stims). Often when I stim, my mind is off elsewhere - I'll be thinking about something deeply and not noticing what is around me.
The compulsive movements are things I feel like I -must- do, or it feels like something bad will happen or everything will go wrong unless I do them - as illogical as I know that is - I know that doing the movements or not has no actual bearing on how things will go.
The tics are more similar to the compulsive movements. I feel an urge to do them, sometimes weak, sometimes strong. They're different from the compulsive movements in that I don't feel like bad things will happen if I don't do them - they're also smaller movements involving fewer/smaller muscles.
The stims come from my autism, the compulsive movements from my OCD, and the tics could come from either or neither, or both.
I think what you're doing is probably a stim because it sounds pretty complex, and a lot of my physical stims are pretty complex. For example, one of the main ones I do involves me putting the backs of my hands up to the sides of my face, arms cocked up and wiggling my fingers.
When I was very young--3 to about 9 years old--I used to do stuff like that. I'd give myself horrible muscle cramps on purpose by scrunching my neck, and I'd squeeze my eyes shut until it really hurt, to see the "fireworks". Nobody ever saw me doing any of this, or if they did they didn't know what I was doing. I also spent an unusual amount of time alone for a small child, so it was easy for the weird things I did to go unnoticed.