People telling you to stop stimming

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What do you do personally when people tell you to stop certain stimming behaviors? How does it make you feel?

I feel like I have to explain that I am stimming, not trying to be annoying. A lot of times, they want to know why I need to do it. Usually it's because I feel anxious or excited. Sometimes I am in a really good mood and somebody tells me to stop. It makes me instantly crabby and antisocial.

I don't think people have the right to tell me to stop stimming. I just keep on stimming. The people in my life who are closest to me understand what it is and they know I need to do it. So anyone who would tell me to stop would most likely be someone who does not really know me or even a stranger and I can't care what they think at that point. I have to do what my neurology needs for me to do to get through the moment.

I remember when I was in 6-7th grade, I was forced to sit still or be transferred to special ed. It was like a part of me died.

The only person telling me to stop stimming is me. I just discovered that what I'm doing is constant stimming so most of the time I just do it unconsciously and that's fine, it's very subtle to an outside observer, but when trying to meditate recently every other second it was stop stimming, stop stimming, stop stimming. It was almost like a meditation in itself - it takes all my focus to stop doing this. I'd take my focus away and try to concentrate on breathing like you're supposed to, and the stimming would start up again. Grr.

No one tells me to stop, but I do try curtailing it when around others like in school.

Some specific stims can be very annoying to others, so they do have a right to ask you to stop *that* stim.
It is not healthy to supress stimming for too long, but it is only common curtesy to at least curve it into a less annoying one around other people.

How would any of you reply to the question "Can't you stop that?"

It makes very irritated. I hate that they won't let me, but they won't understand if I explain it.

"No, becouse if i stop concentrating on not doing this, it'll start again"

Most of my repetitive self-calming behaviours are internal (biting certain parts of my lips, repeating phrases in my head, mentally replaying certain parts of songs, etc) so I'm rarely asked that, but if I were, I'd ask them to stop judging. That is a nasty habit that we'd all be better off leaving behind.

Although my ex did once ask me to stop "fidgeting" while we were waiting in line at a restaurant, and I had to admit he had a point (I was doing air squats and calf raises, and he said it looked like I had to use the bathroom).

Depending on where I am, I either try to stop, try to change to a different one or shake my head and continue. Most of the time I haven't even noticed I'm stimming and about half the time I can't actually stop no matter how hard I try.

I would say, "No, sorry but I can't."

You know what fascinates me? Someone again, for the million and twelfth time, just drove by my house blasting bass on stereo, invading my home and personal space with that noise to the point of making my physically ill. No one tells them to stop that. Why should I have to stop rocking?

Why fight stimming when meditating?

I consider stimming as my brain's sort of "wild stimming", a form it invented on it's own to bring itself back in balance. As such it is nearly perfect and should not be repressed or balance is lost. At that point other balances are impossible to attain.

Also, there are types of meditation that either aren't affected by stimming or incorporate it. They tend to be more physical, so that there is enough physical stimulation being created already.

Aaaand that's why NT people are so against stimming. Behaviors like blasting music are antisocial; their purpose is to impose on other people's space, consciousness, privacy & most of all bodily sovereignty. That's why often verbal stimming is far more disturbing to others; it imposes on them, where physical self-stimming does not (they don't have to look at me but cannot shut out my sounds. also I'm exceedingly sound sensitive so I understand that particular plight).

Stimming, ah yes I remember the days when my mother would say the following,"Quit playing with your hands as if it indicated something of a sexual nature, when in fact such was not the case at all." As well, my mom used to get onto me about making sound effects which I often did cause, to me it was not only something fun and often helped me enjoy a movie or tv show whenever I would reproduce the sounds I heard.

Before anyone knew I was autistic, my mom would tell me to stop flapping my hands or cracking my knuckles or scrunching up my face because it either looked weird, or she was convinced it was hurting me. Now that she understands stimming though, neither she nor anyone else has ever really told me to stop. At work, my supervisor sometimes jokingly comments, "Don't fly away on me!" when I start flapping, and my mom has been known to take my hand and hold it, not in an aggressive "quiet hands" kind of way, but gently, to focus my attention elsewhere. If anyone ever told me to stop stimming, and I wasn't bothering anyone else by doing it, I'd tell them to sod off.