Self-conscious Stimming?

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I have been diagnosed with Aspergers as a 20 year old, and I don't remember stimmimg when I was a kid, but I remember when I turned 13 I started "Autistic" behaviors of Stimming like walking on toes, hand flapping, and rocking back and forth. In my teen years, I didn't know anything about Autism. I didn't know rocking back and forth was a stim for those with ASD. When I was about 16, one day I was doing it and people starts saying, "What are you doing that for? Are you Autistic or something?" At the time I thought no. When I went to college I started learning about the disorder and I thought to myself, "oh wow...I better stop rocking back and forth cause I don't want people to think I have Autism" now being diagnosed with Aspergers, I feel more comfortable with Stimming, and have even found new ones. But I felt good being now "allowed" to rock back and forth and it feels so good.

Bottom line...I wasn't sure if my Stimming was because of Aspergers or not, can you control your Stimming? Is it possible for someone with Aspergers or Autism to control when thy stim and when they do not...or hide it from others so that no one thinks they are weird? Or is it always an unconscious and consistent thing?

I don't do hand flaps anymore, I walk on my toes when I'm at home on the kitchen floor in bare feet, I rock back and forth, I shake my leg, and I also added tapping my thumbnail on my lip.

Some people with ASD can control or hide their stims. I did it for years, even before I realized I was on the spectrum.

I switched to more hidden things like wiggling my toes or flexing my calf muscles

Though currently undiagnosed pending my referral coming through, I have stimmed quite a lot my entire life and it never occured to me to think about it very much until I started reading about AS (maybe I prefered not to).

From being a young child I rocked my head side to side and would never be concious of doing it apart from the resulting tourment from the other pupils - pretty frustrating! I still do it sometimes when I am talking in particular I think and it is one of the most embarresing and frustrating things about my probably Asperger's simply because it is so obvious to everyone apart from myself.

I have also always rocked from being a young child although I now I am able to limit that to when I am alone. In the past, when I realised I was doing it I would cringe because I was aware that it was quite strange behaviour although I am now experimenting with allowing myself to rock if I am alone and feel the need - It's quite liberating but I do worry about the possibility of this leading to me rocking without realising it when around people. That could be a problem since I am not even diagnosed never mind open about AS with work and friends yet.

I do the restless leg thing and also have other little things like finger tapping, nail biting and a few facial ticks all of which I try to keep under control when around people (although sunglasses help with some facial ticks).

It's kinda funny really, for someone who up until a few weeks ago did not cinsider himself anywhere on the spectrum, I seem to have quite a few autistic behaviours even just in terms of stims. One question that occured to me was how common full-on stims like rocking and hand flapping (about the only one I dont do) are among people with Aspergers compared to classic autism?