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autism (a bit sad)
I was thinking about stimming earlier, so I looked up some information on it. I didn't really understand the line between NT and ND stimming, but overall thought mine wasn't that bad or often. A few things I did were on the ND list and the ones on the NT list seemed really mild, but yea. Not bad. I just have this one particular thing I do a lot, that I need to quit. Hmmm, lets try not doing that for tonight and note what happens.
I started crying and doing all my other ones. I don't understand why I am able to not do it for a few hours/all day if I'm out but when I'm alone I need it. The idea of giving it up is deeply upsetting, but I have to for a few reasons. I have not discovered anything as good as this. I feel very emotionally immature. Like a child.
really sad now
I feel like I'll never be as good as normal people because I have autism. Like I'm stunted. A child.
spoiler
You can't just cold turkey a stim like that, there has to be more to it although Idk what. It's not emotionally immature to be reliant on a stim for comfort or stability though, I still pick my lip and such constantly, and get agitated if I can't.
maturity
I know it can feel like that, but none of this is anything to do with your maturity level. NT society likes infantilising autistic people which is horrible, not fair.
'tism talk
It could be due to masking. When you're out in public you might feel a pressure (likely have since you were very little, hence why it seems normal) to act like a neurotypical person, so you're not perceived through an ableist lens. I certainly feel this pressure a lot. You might be able to maintain it for a certain amount of time, but then become disregulated and feel the need to do it once you're able. I've had a similar thing with one stim since I was a kid — my parents would constantly tell me off for doing it, but I couldn't stop, which made me feel like a broken mess.
Unless you have a good reason to give up your stim, I'm not sure why you would try going cold turkey like that. It's a good way to self-regulate, if it's not hurting you. I've had people to tell me stop moving or bouncing my leg because it's driving them crazy and idk, sorry Stacy, I'd rather that than bite myself until I bleed or something. Nowadays I just say I'm autistic and it usually gets people to shut the fuck up, but I have a fear that it also makes them see me as less human, because of the way autistic people are portrayed in popular media and public education.
descriptions of stimming behaviour
Right now I've got a couple of stims that have been really unpleasant. One is me biting the inner side of my lip — this is usually a good one while I'm out in public since nobody probably pays attention to what I'm doing inside my mouth, but on the other hand, I don't notice that I'm doing it until my lip starts bleeding and swells up, so I need to find a good replacement for that. Another one is me twisting my hair — it's made my long hair look so shabby and broken, it's making me a bit sad. Need a fidget spinner or something, but then I'm risking people infantilising me, like you mention.
spoiler
There is extreme pressure to avoid this in public, I simply can't. And yea, parents made me stop a lot. I really wish my parents had taken me to a doctor and got a diagnosis.
I knew I wouldn't be able to just be done with it forever, but I hoped to make it longer then like 10 minutes. I really just wanted to see where I was at with stimming. I don't need to give it up immediately or anything, but the item I usually do it with is kinda falling apart. Doing it with other things isn't as effective either.
Yeah samesies. That would have saved me so much trouble in life.
Aww, yeah that sucks :( Hope you can find something else that works
I would be careful to lump ND stimming together like this. Autistic stimming is different from ADHD stimming. To compare autistic stimming and NT stimming, the difference is that autistic stimming is much more varied and expressive. There's a complexity and depth in autistic stimming that is missing in NT stimming. Autistic stimming can also be hyperspecific. For example, I have a vocal stim after I've transferred GBs of data from a drive to another drive where I say, "There, the young ones are all aboard." I have a weird stim that triggers when the Internet is slow where I start blinking my eyes in a weird rhythmic pattern. There's probably at least 50 unique stims that I do and a lot of it is just weird shit like blinking-when-the-Internet-is-slow stim.
In general, you can't stop doing a stim. The best you could do is find a similar stim and do that instead. And the similar stim has to be within the same category of stim (motor, vocal, tactile, and so on). So, if you have a maladaptive stim like headrocking into a hard surface (ie you're basically giving yourself a mild concussion), you could switch that stim into something less maladaptive like headrocking into a pillow or headrocking in the open or slapping your forehead or punching things, but you can't really just stop doing the headrocking-into-a-hard-surface stim cold turkey like that.
You're masking when you're out, so to compensate, once you're alone when you don't have to mask, you stim more to make up for the times when you weren't stimming because you're out in public. For me, I feel suffocated if I'm forced to not stim. For work, I get around this by stimming during bathroom breaks. You could even vocally stim to a certain extent if your vocal stim is humming. Driving a car is also a good opportunity to stim because it's not like people are going to hear your vocal stims or see your weird hand flapping while out in the road.