What would you do if a friend of yours told you to stop stim

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If, for example, you started flapping your hands because you where happy and a friend said "Stop that", or if you where covering your ears to calm youreself and the friend said "Stop, people will think you're ret*d or something". What would you do? Yes, I have been there once, when one of my friends told me to take my hands of my ears.

I dont think Ive ever been told to stop before. In highschool one of the things that I was made fun of for was rubbing my arm, and I didnt even realize I was doing it until the end of senior year. People still make comments about the other things I do though. If someone did tell me to stop it, I would tell them to shove it.. Unless I respected them, in which I would say that "I just gotta do it".

yeah, I lose a lot of 'friends' that way because I can look pretty 'ret*d' when I stim.

I just tell them stimming comes with the territory. You can imagine what it was like when I was a child and I would stim like I had to pee real bad. I would put my hands by my urethra and do the pee pee dance. Yes, INSIDE my clothing at the time. This is how I learned that enough backhanding from my handlers could stop inappropriate stimming.

I didn't want to get hit any more so I made myself stop it. I still did the dance, but I consciously made my hands go in opposite armpits and held them down with my arms. I would fall over a lot until I learned to balance myself.


but after a while it was a strategy I could use with any other stim.


Merle

Funny that nobody has ever said anything about it (to my face, anyway). This is possibly because I have a flash temper.
I don't know what I would say. Possibilities range from, "Yeah, I guess that is kind of gross" to "So what."

I have only ever been told to stop once and this was by a "friend" in real life, which was in December 2007. I was at her house and we were watching a movie titled, "The Secret". I started rocking and she said...
"What the hell are you doing?...stop that you look like a freak!".
It took me a few seconds to realise what she was telling me to stop as I didn't realise that I was rocking because I was engrossed in watching the movie.
I responded by saying..."Ooops,".
I was thinking to myself..."I wonder if she will still want to be my friend?".
Thankfully, she did. I don't think I will tell her about my AS though, she isn't a "good friend" anyway, more like a person who I sometimes do things with on the weekends.

never cause if I wanted to fit in I knew I had to reserve that for home or not make it obvious. On a few rair occasions someone noticed me doing something strange but it was not obvious enough and I knew it was annoying and stopped.

Some people can, others cant I guess. We live in a world where people dont understand.

I stim with my legs, and a couple of days ago at a family lunch my dad noticed me doing it. He was sitting next to me, and he stamped his foot down on mine and announced to the rest of the table that I was "wriggling my legs again".

Back in high school a lot of kids noticed me doing it, and I got laughed at a couple of times. One time the row of kids behind me were all laughing and pointing, but the thing is that sometimes I notice that I'm doing it, and sometimes I don't. Once even a teacher told me to stop... I mean, is it really that noticeable?!

I rocked occasionally, and I'd sometimes clasp my hands together and twist my fingers around, but usually I got away with those behaviours.

What do I do? I try to avoid the behaviour in public, or if I get called out on it, I stop doing it. I know, it sucks, but what can we do?

I would f*cking yell f*ck you and leave. i stim because i NEED to stim.. so if you dont like it go to hell..

I dunno, my friend understands that I am not doing it to be annoying, he accepts me doing it as just an aspect of myself.

I've rarely been subjected to that - mostly because what I like to do is fairly innocuous and unnoticeable, aside from opening and closing DVD cases, popping the tops off ball-point pens, and maybe biting my lip. My mum has pointed out my DVD-case opening to me on several occasions, but it's never really stopped me.

My habit of speaking along with films I've seen before brings me more grief, though, especially when I'm with other people.

I'd laugh, then do it even more to annoy them.

If it was one particular friend, I'd point out all the stimming that SHE does.

I would continue! But that's just me.

My mother sometimes tells me that I look childish - I put my hands over my ears and close my eyes while I rock. I wouldn't do it if it didn't make me feel calmer or if it felt unnatural.
I'm pretty good about not doing it in public although sometimes I really want to.

I've had this sort of treatment from my sister.

Whatever I would say would cause a fight, so I don't know.

You could retort;

'you know what?, i think youd actually be a lot happier in life if you didnt let other peoples predujice define how your allowed to express yourself'
OR
'sometimes you need to step outside the mental box of worrying what everyone else might think, to realise what a tiny little box youve been living in for all these years'
OR
'thats no problem, i could just do the pelvic thrusting one instead?'

then throw in some combination-stims & vocal-tics to emphasize the point!

In my case, i never realized the things i did were stimming, so i thought nothing of doing them. I'm sure i did them at school and people never told me to my face. My brother always points out different things that i do that seem strange to him. I have always tried to hide or supress the behaviours that were the most obvious to me. The most embarrassing time was at work when it became very busy and noisy and i became stressed, so i flapping and hopping around in a minifrenzy, and a co-worker asked what was wrong with me, why was i behaving like i was, which was quite embarrassing to do at work. I'm not sure what actions are considered to be stimming sometimes though as i think of my many quirks, but im sure family and friends could point of a few.