"Grinding" teeth = "stimming" in HFA/Asp

Post Reply New Topic

Would bruxism (grinding teeth, especially in sleep, probably caused by anxiety?) qualify as a stimming behavior for diagnosis of HFA or Asperger's?

Is bruxism common among people on the spectrum?

Bruxism affects all people, but I had a particularly bad case of bruxism that required I get a mouth guard. The mouth guard only irritated me further and made my grinding and clenching worse. I still have it along with jaw clicking.

It is stimming only if you do it while awake.

For example I grind my teeth back and forth to various tunes I hear in my head. That is stimming. Grinding in the evening or when you are tense is not stimming.

I would agree that to be stim it would have to be a decision or choice. Even a sub-conscious choice can be a stim. However, an unconscious act is usually the result of something other.

I had night time teeth grinding during a two week period of high stress. It resulted in a tooth with a slight internal crack that pinched a nerve with temperature change. It was quite painful. I suggest you do whatever you can to relive the stress.

Well, I know it was always a habit for me, and not a nervous habit. I guess it was stimming, since I did it in the same manner in which I would shake my leg.

I used to have a hard acrylic guard for my lower teeth. As the dentist explained, if my body fell into the nighttime habit of grinding, my upper teeth would merely skate across. There was no satisfying chew or grind for my body to lock onto.

*it did take two or three visits to the dentist to fine-tune the hard acrylic guard so that it was not too tight, but neither did we overdo and make it too loose

By the way, I am pro-stim. I mean, look at how baseball players stim to deal with stress and to maintain concentration.

For those of us on the Spectrum, I think stimming is a fine way to deal with sensory issues. Plus, at times a joy of life issue where we really get into an activity. And yes, I'm all in favor of having a menu of a couple of more discrete, lower key methods for public.