I don't stim, but maybe I should start

Personally, my ‘stims’ are things that I have always done, but didn’t used to realise that they were a stim, I just thought that they were odd habits. I hair pulled for years since I was a child, I’ve always head scratched too, if I’m going through a really stressful patch it’s not unheard of for me to scratch my head so much that it bleeds. Smelling random stuff is another odd habit that I’ve had since childhood. Another random thing which I do that I didn’t realise was a stim until recently, is when I cross my legs when I’m sitting down, sometimes I wrap my legs right around in a knot. I think, if you stim then it is probably something that you’ve always done. I’ve even read that chewing nails can be a stim.

I floated the idea of that last item as a stim, with a clinical psychologist. The answer was positive. People have been trying to stop me doing it for ever. They obviously find it most annoying. I just find it uncomfortable after a heavy session. I have been attempting to use self-hypnosis to stop. I'm gradually succeeding. So much so that I think I have been suffering withdrawal symptoms It's almost as if my gut needs this stim to work regularly. Perhaps no big surprise, when you consider that seratonin is heavily concentrated around the digestive tract. And it's obviously connected to anxiety, anyway.

And with longer nails, I'm going to have to be very careful not to skin-pick excessively. That one is definitely recognised as a stim. But it's good to have longer nails. It means trivial ( but self-important) things like you can open a penknife without assistance. And it indicates things like sufficient calcium intake. So Idefinitely  won't be cutting them too quickly. Self-hypnotism encourages you to revel in the success of long nails, anyway. So now i suppose I might have to self-hypnotise to deal with the skin-picking. I should have done something about that years ago too.

And I reckon there are many others. The more you think about it, the more you start to see the possibility of other as-yet unclassified stims. But naturally, we shouldn't try to stop all of them; even though some of them might actually be major triggers for other people not to get along with us.

I floated the idea of that last item as a stim, with a clinical psychologist. The answer was positive. People have been trying to stop me doing it for ever. They obviously find it most annoying. I just find it uncomfortable after a heavy session. I have been attempting to use self-hypnosis to stop. I'm gradually succeeding. So much so that I think I have been suffering withdrawal symptoms It's almost as if my gut needs this stim to work regularly. Perhaps no big surprise, when you consider that seratonin is heavily concentrated around the digestive tract. And it's obviously connected to anxiety, anyway.

And with longer nails, I'm going to have to be very careful not to skin-pick excessively. That one is definitely recognised as a stim. But it's good to have longer nails. It means trivial ( but self-important) things like you can open a penknife without assistance. And it indicates things like sufficient calcium intake. So Idefinitely  won't be cutting them too quickly. Self-hypnotism encourages you to revel in the success of long nails, anyway. So now i suppose I might have to self-hypnotise to deal with the skin-picking. I should have done something about that years ago too.

And I reckon there are many others. The more you think about it, the more you start to see the possibility of other as-yet unclassified stims. But naturally, we shouldn't try to stop all of them; even though some of them might actually be major triggers for other people not to get along with us.

Weirdly I have never chewed my nails, I have actually wished many times over the years that I did, as opposed to pulling my hair! I actually like my hair, whereas my nails are stupid weak little things that never grow that long. Yet I have been stuck for most of my life stimming by pulling my hair out and scratching my scalp til it bleeds while my silly nails survive unscathed! 
I have managed to stop the hair pulling and reduce the scalp scratching the last year and a half as I inadvertently found a replacement stim. Although I didn’t realise that was what I had done until a meditation and mindfulness teacher pointed out that I was using chewing gum as a stim, through which I receive proprioceptive stimulation. That said, my chewing seems to cause some other people annoyance but I would rather chew than pull out my hair so if it works it works!

I have lots of other stims, some a little too personal or too weird to disclose on a public forum, I’m sure we all do!

Senor said:

I'm going to have to be very careful not to skin-pick excessively.

I now realise this is my stim.