Published on 12, July, 2020
Unfortunately, I'm having to re-type this as yesterday's one went into the spam filter and hasn't been retrieved
So, do you have habits and are you able to differentiate your habits from stims?
For me, my diagnosis has put my habits into a new stimmy light.
Also, although not diagnosed with OCD, I know I have it and have always had it, so again, how do you differentiate habits from OCD.
I will for example do the same thing more than once and re-arrange things so they are properly aligned.
I also having controlling thought related OCD.
Here are some:
As a child I would eat everything in my hand including my toys, pencils, pens etc
I ate the whole trunk of a knitted elephant.
Biting my nails and skin, until they bleed. My mum made me wear gloves in the house to try to stop this but I just ate the ends of the glove fingers.
I used to twiddle with and eat my hair when it was long.
Twiddling my toes.
Scratching, picking my scalp.
Rubbing my fingers together.
Blinking.
Biting my lip.
Grinding my teeth.
Making strange sounds + humming little tunes (I once got asked to stop by a work colleague because I was unconsciously humming the Funeral March).
I know I wrote more yesterday but can't remember them all at the moment.
Most of mine are lifelong.
With regard to habitual behaviour, I find this interesting:
You raise an excellent point here Debbie. Being a private soul, I won't divulge my habits here.....but they are almost ALL stims to a large degree. I now have good evidential proof that even my "addictions" are stims to a huge extent.
Number said: I now have good evidential proof that even my "addictions" are stims to a huge extent.
Now, that's really interesting ... yes, a diagnosis/awareness puts so much of us into a new light ...