Diff between tourettes and stimming?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm trying to understand the difference between tourettes and stimming. I have ASD, and I do stim like with hand rubbing and rocking and such. But sometimes I do face stuff when I'm under a lot of stress or in a loud environment, too. Like blinking, squeezing my eyes shut and sniffing, grimacing in a twitch-like manner, etc., all fairly quickly and repeatedly until I'm out of the loud environment, need to hide it because I'm around unsupportive peopled, or out of big stress again.

Is this just different stimming, or is it tourettes kicking in at times too?

For me it sounds more like Tourette-Tics.

Tourette:
You can't control it less, you "have" to do it, it doesn't relax you like stimming. Also it's more the muscels in the face, while stimming are more often the entire body, or hands and feed. (You can also have tics with the hand and stimming in the face).

But tics also fluctuate. So you might have a tic just for a fiew months for example, while you can still do the same stimming (like ricking) even after years.

Tics become worse when you're stressed or overwhelmed. But generally, I've never seen tics where you have to rock back and forth unless your Tourette's is pretty bad, or it's just a repeated movement of you jerking forwards. And we can discount Clonic and Dystonic tics because they require you to be still. I've found that I equally tic and stim in a sensorally overloading environment, such as a convenience store. I flap my hands, bang on my chest, and because I'm on medication, my main tics are merely jerking and facial twitches. Though, I do find it difficult to differentiate stimming from ticcing sometimes because my tic urges aren't very pronounced anymore. My rituals, stimming and ticcing tend to meld together as one big blob. I tend to tell them apart by arguing that stimming calms me down, and ticcing is just a compulsion that stresses me out. (... which makes me tic worse...) but generally, I only stim to survive a situation that I'd normally melt down in.

Tourettes is harder to control than stimming

Tics aren't necessarily caused by tourettes, and some individuals experience them from other neurological issues. In fact, they are a less-common symptom of autism.

Tics differ from stims because stims are a response to a need for, well, stimulation. They are sometimes intentional and sometimes not, and are used to express emotion, to lessen anxiety or boredom, or to satisfy the craving for a certain sensory input. Tics, on the other hand, are uncontrollable, and are more akin to twitches than stims.

For instance, when I am anxious or frustrated, I will pace very quickly back and forth. This is a stim, because, though I am not thinking about it, I am expressing my emotions and attempting to physically release my stress. However, I experience a tic which involves the muscles in my neck randomly spasming and causing my head to jerk to the left, sometimes violently. The first, though not exactly "controllable," has a clear source and execution, unlike the latter.

I hope this makes sense.

im diagnosed with both and have no idea