Stimming, foreground or background activity?

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A guy said on Youtube that when he was stimming he only thought about that and nothing else. In that case it may the most important difference from (NT) fidgeting.

However some people here said that they ofthen started doing it while doing something else, and they not necessarily realized that they were doing it.

What do you think?

I usually stim without realising it, but sometimes if I'm more stressed or overstimulated than normal I have to concentrate on stimming to calm down.

usually it is a background thing, but there are times where i indeed actively stim.
those times are rare though, only when i'm really stressed

I don't consciously do it, I never even really even noticed that I did until honestly pretty recently. I kind of lived in my own little world for a long time.

A small clarification: by "not necessarily realize doing it" I referred to realizing doing the activity, not to realizing that it was called stimming.

It depends on the stim and/or my stress level. A fare amount of the time I am aware that I am stimming to some degree, but I'm not focussing on it or really thinking about it at all.

Background, mostly.

I stim quite often without realizing it. Mostly with my hands - some sort of fidgety thing. My wife points it out to me when it's particularly noticeable. She jokes and tells me that I must have been a chain smoker in a previous life (I don't smoke).

I have recently been told by people I know and trust a lot, that I do in fact stim a fair amount, which was interesting cause I honestly didn't think I stim all that much. But apparently I stim a lit more then I even realize so definatly backgrounds or me with a bit of foreground I think .