Those of you who grew up in the days of physical punishment when in school will very much know that stimming was not appreciated and so one would quickly learn ways to hide ones stimms. Ways one could stim without the teachers finding out, and this is ok because one had just channelled ones stims into an outwardly less visible way (E.g. moving ones toes or bouncing ones legs under the desk...).
But one thing never ever ever do is prevent all stimms.
[For for those who do not know what stimming is, it is an automatic external body reaction to help the mind cope with stress or preventing one from becoming overwealmed. It is usually automatic but can be purposfully forced to prevent a shutdown or a meltdown].
Now somewhere in my late 30's I got fed up of hiding stimms as the odd person would sometimes notice and mention it which would be embarissing... So I decided to teach myself to stop all stimms which was an absolutely massive task! (Never ever, ever do what I did). It took me at least two years and eventually, by continually monitering every single movement that my body did, and stopping myself, and it took me about two and a half years to stop stimming, as when I eve tually stopped one stim it would come out somewhere else in another form of stimming in a form of annoying "Whack-a-mole" style consistancy...
But it was when I finally stopped stimming which I had thought was a great personal achievement the troubles started.
Suddenly it was as if my internal safety valve had been jammed and locked shut, and there was no means for mental stresses and pressures to release, and so things built up and up inside and I ended up with the first of many mental burnouts (Breakdowns?) which took me ages to recover from every one. (By ages, really it was years though I would force myself back to work in a new job far to early after handing in my notice after the last burnout between six months and a few years before (Depending on how hard the burnout/breakdown had hit)).
So my advice is to NEVER, EVER PREVENT ONESELF FROM STIMMING. Learn to stim in other ways if one thinks it may help, BUT NEVER STOP STIMMING!
