Biting Yourself

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The funny thing about a lot of my more classic autistic behaviours is just how natural they have always felt. When doing something feels like second nature, you can do it for decades without putting much serious thought into how unusual it is or why you do it. Since reading about AS I have been uncovering more and more behaviours and issues which I had never thought about before or at least never made the link with ASDs.

I have always, when under intense emotional turmoil or stress, resorted to biting my hands and my arms. Often quite hard - enough to cause bruising but not to break skin. This was at its height in my teenage years when I was very deeply affected by realising how different I was but not understanding why I was this way - quite an upsetting time. It is basically a more muted version of the release I would get from cutting myself (Although the cutting is something I need to do only very rarely these days).

I am now 30, married and have a career but it just occurred to me the other day how still doing this in times of stress is probably seriously odd (or at least from an NT perspective). I get the impression that to still occasionally have to do this as an adult is possibly even odd by Asperger's standards and more like LFA behaviour (Hope my clumsy way of putting that does not cause any offence).

What are other people's experiences? Is this common?

Heh. Needs a "Still do" third option. (I guess the forum didn't register your click to set the third option. It does that sometimes.)

Yeah, I bite myself on occasion. I never draw blood. It's not particularly harmful--leaves marks, but never any permanent injury. I don't worry about it.

And as for it being "LFA" behavior... I have come to realize that the spectrum is not nearly as sharply divided along "functioning" lines as people think it is; in fact, there are no clear divisions at all. I have learned a lot from people who are often labeled low-functioning, and have a lot in common with them, despite that I do all my own basic ADLs, live on my own (with some help), and attend college (with accommodations). I bet the only difference between me biting myself and someone labeled low-functioning for biting themselves is that I don't let people notice I do it.

Never have but have been tempted to.

When I was a teenager and would make mistakes or do something "bad," I would bite myself (such as on my hand or arm) in order to punish myself for it. My reasoning was that the more often I punished myself for being "bad" and "different," the more "normal" I would eventually become. My other punishments included scratching (like literally clawing) myself on my arms, legs, face and stomach, beating my fists savagely against my head (or hitting it against any available hard surface) or throwing my body against a hard surface and raising bruises.

Even now when I do "bad" things, I still want to "punish" myself....but somehow (I don't even know how I do it), I manage to fight the urge.

There isn't an option for still do. Even though its more of just chewing on my hair and sometimes buttons on a shirt.

I still do this occasionally, though much less so than I did as a child. I have rarely, if ever, let anyone see me do this, though there have been occasions when I have beaten myself around the head infront of people, when i've lost control.

I use to bite my hands up until I was about 9yrs old, and still beat myself rarely around the head when i'm frusterated.

When I was in my 30s I would often bite around the knuckle of my middle finger when stressed. I would bite as hard as I could until the pain took over from the stress. There were constantly lumps and bumps where I had bitten.

Why did I do it in my 30s? Living with someone who knew exactly which buttons to push to cause me untold stress and grief.

When I run in danger of freaking out due to a sensory overload, I often go/escape somewhere where people don't see me and bite my wrist to force me to calm down. It's like a distraction, it works and I don't do myself any harm by doing so as I know I shouldn't overdo it. The worst that happened was that I had a bruise for two days as a result.

I also have a (meanwhile less common) stim that seems to be pat of my family (motherly part): Biting my cheek/lip. My mother tried to stop me from doing so, but the urge to do so was always bigger.
Actually, I still tend to bite my lip, but the cheek is rather rare nowadays. My brother does so too, by the way.

Looks like there is no way to change the setup one the poll starts either

I am assuming this painfull self-biting is not NT behaviour, though? I imagine not but I feel a lot less sure about what is normal and what is not since wrapping my head around the possibility of being on the spectrum. I know that loads and loads of people (NT or ASD) bite their nails to some degree. Is this particular arm and hand biting only really seen within the autistic community or is it one of those things that are quite common but rarely discussed? As I say, I dont think NTs do this but am not too trusting of my own judgement of what is and is not normal behaviour these days.

I never bit myself. I used to suck my arm to help calm me, though. It was, at one point, mistaken for biting.

I guess it is possible that it is one of those "autistic quirks".
My mother has autistic traits (admits it herself) and my brother too, although he was diagnosed with something that is not considered part of the spectrum in his childhood (maybe he has an ASD additionally to that, could also have been a false diagnosis too, I don't know).

Still do sometimes when I get frustrated.

Always a chomper. Bit everything. I know what most common items taste like! Fingers, especially. I used to bite, suck and chew on my fingers in school all the time. Never thought it was odd, just something I did, like ripping shreds of skin off my lips or picking my ears till they bleed, staring at the sun, etc. I didn't care that nobody else did them - it's what I did.