Covert Stimming

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Yes. It's even in my diagnostic report. Open stimming can invite contempt, so if there are ways of hiding it, that's probably good.

I did learn through my schooling years to hide stims, or make them look less noticable.

Stims used to annoy me because when I stopped stimming one way by constantly monitoring my every movemsnt to prevent myself from stimming, the stims I had stopped came out as different stims instead!

It took me until around the age of 37 when I finally managed to stop all stims but after that I ended up with either a mental breakdown or a severe autism mental burnout, which kept repeating after a year or two of recovery until I finally started re-introducing stimming after I joined this site. Unfortunately I am still recovering and really long to be "Right" again. I am at least sort of there.

But the reality is thag it is mentally speaking dangerous to prevent stimms.
Most autistic and some allisticbpeople stim without realizing that they are because they have from an early age automatically taught themselves how to do it in less noticable ways.

If one was told off in school or elsewhere for fidgeting or being a fidgit, or often told to "Sit still" when one was already sitting etc, one most definately knows about stimming even if one did not know what one did had a name!

And stimming can come in different forms too! Both my Grandmother and now my Mother stim in verbal ways. My Grandmother did it often. My Mum also physically stims as I do.
Example of less noticable stims. If I am driving in the car and happen to be going a little faster than normal, so my Mum may get slightly nurvous, I sometimes hear a rhythmic noise and start listening to the car wondering what it is, only to find it is my Mum stimming to enable her to relax.

Stimming for some is extremely noticable. An example is when stressed one may rock back and fore, or another may flap their hands like mad! (I had to do this after the last burnout/breakdown because I found it to be the best shutdown preventitive measure. (Eating and drinking sugary foods also helped, but this was because shutdowns rob one of energy as ones brain uses lots of energy when it is under stress! I can go shaky after a shutdown and eating something like a pasty will ease me out of thee shakyness.
[ It is not diabetis. Had around 30 years of blood tests to try and find a physical cause before I knew they were called shutdowns and that shutdowns could come in different forms... One described me so accurately I had to check I had not written the description myself!]

Now hidden stimming can come out as anything from bouncing ones leg up and down under a desk to clicking ones pen repeatedly. Often one is unaware of doing it which is why one can be scared to even breathe in school after one has been told off! Teachers who told me off in their lessons would wonder why exam results dropped low the year after being told off, but it was because most of my mental attention was in preventing every single stim from emerging by constantly monitering my bodies every move whils in the teachers lessons! I could feel a single small drip of sweat drop half a cm as I was so involved in monitoring my body! No way could I concentrate on the schoolwork being taught!

A good "Safe" hidden form of stimming is to wiggle ones toes as no one knows one is doing it! I used to rap my fingers in a rhythmic pattern but this is audiable and visual.
Sadly, stimming often takes place when one is in deep concentration in the lessons, and it gives the impression one is bored and not concentrating, while the complete opposite is true which is why when one is personally taken back from being told off for doing it when one didn't realize one was, one can go from one of the top few in the class to one of the bottom few as ones attention is no longer on ones schoolwork for that year.
Allistic schoolteachers who don't know much about, or don't understand stimming (It is irrelevent if the child has been diagnosed or not) can be quite brutal when it comes to stimming in class as to them they find it a distraction. Schoolteachers who themselves stim or understand stimming can be easier to get along with if they think before they speak...
Why it is such a problem is that to a child, being found out for stimming, especially when it is what I call "Auto-stimming" can be a massively big deal as they have no other choice than to mentally hyperfocus on all parts of their bodies in order to try and prevent themselves from stimming, and it is highly embarissing for them as it feels like being told off for being naked in class when one was completely unaware, and one now was being looked at byeveryone in the class and one is trying to hide!

I’m an overt stimmer.

I do it in public without realizing or self-checking, including lifting my long hair up over my head and twirling it around my arm, spinning in pirouettes, stretching my jaw, sitting on the ground, flying like an airplane, touching my face, playing with my shirt hems, etc.

No wonder people always think I’m impaired.