Stims - what's wrong with it?

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Okay, so instead of sucking my thumb, I sucked another finger. Kept doing at night so until my parents bribed me to stop. I sill bite my nails.

I move on to biting pens, then starting biting my finger, I like to play with my beard with my hands, I sometimes press my pants or shirt when some part isn't "straight", I have a keychain holder that spins so I spin it, etcetera.

Except for the fact that my finger looks weird, is their anything actually wrong with the whole idea of stimming?

To me it's just visually stimulating which leads to irritation, depending on the movement. But I don't know about other people, I can't look inside their minds.

Depends on the stim

I don't know... I think I crack my knuckles several hundred times a day. That's bound to cause problems at some stage in my life... Once I crack one knuckle, the others have to be done, whether I wrench, pull or push them to click. As you can imagine, my fingers are starting to ache after thirty five years of this.

I think the little physical stims don't tend to bother people (like flicking fingers or rocking) but they might think that you are weird (not anyone persoanlly!). The more vocal stims tend to freak people out, heck I have seen people practically swim away from me in the local swimming pool when I start humming! Its good though cos they usually leave me alone in one area of the pool! The only person who is also ASD that has a stim that irritates me is always tossing his keychain up and down. It really annoys me but I think it is more the noise rather than the physical movement.

Oooh. Humming can be a stim? Life just made a lot more sense.

I love rocking with or without the chair. It is the most calming thing for me. How can it be bad. When stressed I do carry it to the extreme.

There is nothing wrong with most stimming other than it is now deemed "normal" in most situations.

That's true, but I do worry that I'm going to be crippled with arthritis in my hands later on. Since I'm a musician, this would be particularly disastrous for me... I still don't know if cracking your fingers really does cause arthritis, or if it's an old wives tale.

To a lesser extent I also click my knees, toes, ankles, hips and jaw... I can't stop! And it does seem to really annoy people.

Depending on the stim, it could be annoying, disruptive, or even inappropriate.

Because a lot of NT's think it looks weird and NT's are afraid of weird.

I used to bump my head against the back of upholstered seats or chairs if the back was high enough. In the car - everywhere - until I was about 12 when my stepmother forced me to stop. I liked to go barefoot and when in a rocking chair on carpet, liked to make circles with my feet on the rug. Are those types of behaviors considered "stims?"

There's nothing wrong with stimming at all, NTs just make us think there is because they want us to be more like them.

My husband gets annoyed when I start tapping my fingers or toes rhythmically, because if he doesn't realize it's me, he freaks out and thinks his heart is beating too fast or that he's shaking (yeah, he's got adorable little anxiety issues of his own

Other than that, I don't think anyone notices anymore. On the train, I tap my toes inside my boots, which no one can see, or fold my hands together and tap my fingers, or pick at my cuticles or bite my lips. I don't do anything more noticeable in public much now. I used to rock, hum, chew on things... When I was a kid, I hummed myself to sleep almost every night, these days I wiggle my toes to sleep

I don't think there's any reason I should feel embarrassed about it, but I still do, and that's the main reason I've learned to tone things down. But I don't think there's anyone I know who I haven't observed stimming somehow at one time or another. I just do it more often than average. Sooooo what!?

Everything that I've read says that it's an old wives tale. It can cause soreness and some muscle strain, but it clears up once you stop cracking your fingers.

Yeah, I've looked into this a lot myself a few years back, because that's one of my habits, too. I've not found any conclusive studies that say that it has anything to do with Arthritis.

I tend to crack my knuckles (and toes, and jaw), bob my leg, flap my foot, and twist my hair as stims. I've gotten some comments from people over the years about it and more than a couple of funny looks, but it's not really had much of a negative impact. They're all relatively discreet ones, though. The most overt it gets it when I'm walking around and still twizzling my hair over and over.

I tend to bite too, but usually just people I'm affectionate with. My hygiene squicks always kept me from biting pens/etc. :p