Embarasing coping mechanisms

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I'm curious about how people have different coping methods when they feel stressed but they feel embarrassed about it if other people see.
I'n my case I have trio of cuddly friends who I am very attached to, Puff is a Red Welsh dragon who is very special to me because I was born in Wales, and when we went back on a holiday about 18 years ago I got Puff from the market in the town near where I grew up, and also he really is Welsh, as he was born in Skewen in Neath. Theodore is my second oldest teddy, he was 13 on the 23rd of December 2015, he used to be yellow but is sort of a mix of grey and yellow now! He probably smells bad to other people but I like how he smells, it's familiar.
Oliver is my latest friend he's only been with us since early April 2014, he is a Merrythought bear, I have always wanted a fully jointed bear and I like that he was hand made by the only British teddy bear factory still making teddies in the UK, in the original building from when they started in 1930. He is rather proud of his heritage and doesnt want to get grubby like Theo and Puff are so he doesn't get as many cuddles and doesnt sleep next to me like Puff and Theo, but he has joined us for a few adventures, been to Cornwall twice and went for a flight in a big old Ukrainian bi-plane (Antonov An-2).
Anyway, I get a lot of comfort from them, and when I am stressed I snuggle them, cuddle and sniff them and rather oddly sometimes suck on Theo's nose! This would probably not be an issue if I was 2, but I'm actually 39! my close friends know they are special to me and they are good about it, but I sometimes feel embarrassed when I need to take them with me, they have their own bag they come in and i don't take them with me everywhere, although I wish i could! If I am going somewhere where I know I will be staying the night I have to have them then, and I always like to bring them along for any adventures I go on. Sometimes I am bold and have them sat on my lap in their bag but I always leave the top unzipped so they can breathe and see out and I like to let them see out the window. So far nobody has actually said anything negative, my biggest fear was when I took them to the USA and I was terrified that the security people might be suspicious why someone my age would be taking teddies in his hand luggage (well they are not going in the checked luggage, no way!)this was after 9/11 and i got into a panic about them thinking I may be tryimng to smuggle a bomb, or drugs on board and they might kill them to see whats inside which would have totally devastated me I dont know how I would have reacted, but actually they were really nice and even asked their names! I'm flying again next year and already starting to feel panicky about the security thing, maybe I just got some nice ones back then but these ones might be horrible. So does anyone else have methods of coping with stress and just feeling more secure that they feel a little embarrassed about or causes them distress if its something you cant really do in public. I was only diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, as well as Dyspraxia, Dyslexia and Dyscalculia in 2014 so I am still not sure if other people really understand it and how they perceive me. All I know is that people can be cruel, my teddies wont ever be cruel to me, and they are happy to let me ramble on about my interests! I shouldn't really feel embarrassed but I do because of how I think people are.

Just tell them that you're giving those teddies to some kids you know.

I tell you: cuddling teddies is so much better than thinking about mayhem because you are angry.

Enjoy those teddies!

I don't care what anybody says, I love my teddy bear. He's like a best friend to me. I can tell him anything, and I feel he listens. He's always been there for me, from when I was a baby, and then I took him to school when I was 4 and he helped me get settled in at school, and he's always came with me to any sleepovers and vacations, so that he can sleep beside me. And to this day he still sleeps beside me in bed. I even take him to my boyfriend's if I'm staying over his for a few days. My boyfriend doesn't mind at all. He's grown attached to the teddy bear too. My teddy bear is so friendly, that nobody judges me. Really, he's a neurotypical bear, he loves people and other teddy bears.

I've never had trouble taking any of my stuffed animals through airport security with me, and I bring them every time I fly. They send them through those X-ray machines so they can see there's nothing suspicious inside them, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Last time I flew (back in December) I even went through security wearing my weighted vest, which I was nervous about because I was afraid the weighted sandbags in the pockets would look like I was trying to smuggle drug packets through, but no one said anything.

As far as being concerned by what others think, I don't really bother with such things. I have a stuffed fox, Nat, who goes with me in my bag when I know I'm going to be doing something anxiety-inducing, like a therapy appointment that I know will be rough, or somewhere new to talk to strangers. I don't take him out, but I like to put my hand in the bag and feel him there, he makes me feel better.

More generally, I also have a rubber hammerhead shark named Bridie, and a rubbery bead-filled Nemo (the clownfish from Finding Nemo). I take them with me everywhere, and pull them out to play with them when I need them. I have Bridie out during every therapy session because she makes me feel safe and protected (that's the reason I chose a shark; I wanted a strong, vicious animal to watch out for me).

I play with Nemo a lot during my social skills group; he likes it there because his little fin makes him different, and in group, he's surrounded by others who are different too, because we all have autism (except for the group leaders). No one has ever said anything or made me feel awkward or embarrassed when I have Bridie and Nemo out, and indeed, one of my fellow group members even started a conversation with me (something that's very hard for her because she has more trouble with social interaction than I do) by asking if I liked the film Finding Nemo.

I have that old sort of blankie that I rub between my fingers, it's calming. That's not super embarrassing though, yet I don't imagine taking it in group work or use it with people I don't trust. Although sometimes OMG it would keep me from thinking about starting a free slaps day. I have beanies but I don't get attached to these. Don't want to.

Thank you all for your replies, I am encouraged by them to feel less embarrassed, after all as long as my friends accept it then really what should I care about what others think or say, I guess though that as a male its less acceptable to be seen needing to take cuddly toys with me.

I've got myself really worked up at the moment because I was trying to get a flight on a Trislander which is a plane that I have a bit of an obsession about, they will be retired soon so I really wanted to get a flight, but all the plans have gone wrong and it's kind of upset me quite a bit, but the silly thing is I was stressing out about the hand luggage size restrictions, it's not a big plane so they don't have much space for hand luggage, that would mean that Puff, Theo and Oliver wouldn't be able to fly in the cabin with me and I really want to have them there, not because I feel insecure about flying, its because I want to share the experience with them!

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so attached to them, but I am, I cannot deny that. It is strange that when I was a child I didn't really have many soft toys, instead my comfort objects were bizarre things like a chunk of cable that my dad got for me from his work, we are talking those really big cables, not household things, stuff that goes under the sea and stuff, it was sectioned so you could see all the interior features, I was fascinated by it and carried it around with me everywhere, even to school. I liked the weight of it, and the contrasting textures between the cold metal copper rods and the sort of matte solid almost hard rubbery feel of the insulating material, which was slightly translucent, if you held a bright light at the base of it you could see a aqua kind of colour shining through then the smooth outer PVC protective coating. I also used to carry mineral specimens with me, I still collect minerals (those are another major interest of mine) but I don't carry them around with me now, as some are quite rare, and not cheap and also rarer minerals dont often come in big sizes, so I'm very likely to loose them!

I have had bad experiences with my special objects before, really just being bullied at school for always needing to have something with me and it often got taken form me, once someone threw one of my minerals and it broke. I guess that's just kids being kids maybe not everyone is like that when they grow up.

StarTrekker, I like that you have a shark, I have 2 cuddly sharks, as well as Puff Theo and Oliver I have a whole collection of cuddly toys my bed is covered with them! one is a cuddly great white called Finz and the other is a leopard shark called Boo (because her markings seem to spell out Boo on one side) I also like to collect cuddly toy version of wildlife that I have spotted, so far I have a Red Squirrel (Rusty) badger (Bryony) hedgehog (Erin) a bat, who I have yet to name, and believe it or not, a cuddly tick! yes, they actually make those.! a friend got it for me more as a joke as he knows that ticks freak me out, but this one doesn't freak me out as I know its not a real tick! I really must get myself a fox as I have seen loads of them.

There is one thing that's not so good about having so many plush pals, I sometimes feel guilty that i dont give them all equal attention. is it an Asperger thing to be so attached to certain things and to attribute them with human feelings?

I think your description of the wiring was really cool. I like knowing WHY people like the things they like. Especially as kids where the thing that you like maybe you can't explain it and it seems odd to people and people dislike that about you or whatever.
What you write about the minerals that hits home. I collected rocks too. And this was horrible for some reason lol.
I know the childish tendencies seems to be related to autism... not sure why- maybe less sensitive to age-related social norms.
I do think it is quite weird to like those sorts of things past childhood. But that's just because I don't like them so I personally think they are weird. I stopped caring about them after I was maybe ... 11? I think because I realized that they didn't provide me with any comfort and didn't help. But even if I think it is weird that doesn't, and shouldn't, mean anything to you. You should keep them if they are comforting; you aren't hurting anyone it's totally fine.

As far as attributing feelings to them.... I don't know! I think everyone does that even to inanimate objects- even NTs. Most just don't get attached to them at all, but I think anthropomorphizing things is pretty normal human behavior.
How do you come up with the names for them? You mentioned for the shark Boo, but not the others.

In a completely different direction- to answer your question about embarrassing coping mechanisms. This is a bit involuntary, but I get embarrassed when I disassociate from events because I lose my memory of what I was doing, and if I have no memory of the event it makes me nervous, and I wonder if I looked "normal" enough during that time, but it's kind of a good thing because I CAN'T REMEMBER so I can't even stress about it!
I don't like hand-flapping much around others I also don't like rocking back and forth or side to side around others because I don't want them to think it is strange, because I know it looks strange to people that have never been exposed to it.
I would say any stimming in general I try not to let anyone see- ever, if I can avoid it.

At one point I had to travel to various parts of the USA, maybe 3-4 times a month. I always had a stuffed animal in my carry-on baggage to help me cope with being in a strange, noisy, uncontrolled, uncomfortable environment with weird food, a different bed, strange noises, etc. etc., etc.. Airport security really didn't care as they could see right through him when he went through the x-ray machine. They process how many thousands of people per hour? At that rate someone having a stuffed animal is way below their attention level (& nothing like the um, toys a co-worker and her husband brought with them). I later had a manager that travelled once a month and usually brought half her troll collection + a few stuffed dogs because travel was stressful. After the first trip we all took together no one in the department cared; it was her odd little quirk and we respected it. It's really difficult to feel negative toward someone for *loving* something, you know?

I still have my stuffed Steif bear, named...Bear. She's Victorian Rabbit *real* now, meaning her eyes are scratched up, her paw pads are chewed off, her growler is silent, joints are wibbly-wobbly and she's almost completely bald. I don't care, I keep her in our bedroom on a shelf right above my computer and talk to her as if she was my diary or confidant when I'm stressed. If someone sees her and asks, I simply say "That's Bear, my teddy bear and oldest friend". And that's that.

Last edited by Edenthiel on 08 Mar 2016, 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Same. When I am super stressed about something then I just forget about it, which can be nice unless I have homework or something because I have to choose between not doing it and ruining my whole day. Lately I have been a bit curious as to what the limits of this are, I can easily edit memories and create false ones if I wanted to, but could I remove all referrences to a certain memory such that it would in essence be deleted? I might be able to do it but I don't know because I havn't tried (or have I? ).

I don't really have any such objects (perhaps unfortunately), but I wanted to say that the idea of a grown woman keeping stuffed animals is actually very charming, so you should have no reason to feel embarrassed.

I try to make names from the latin name for the animal, only trouble is those don't often lend themselves to making names from, but if It can be an anagram of the word or something i would use that, Erin is called Erin because the hedgehog family is Erinaceidae, some are just names that have come to mind, I like the name Bryony so I used that for my badger, Rusty is because shes a red squirrel, and her colour is sort of rusty brown/red, Finz my cuddly carcharodon is called that because of his fins! Puff my Welsh dragon is called Puff after Puff the magic dragon, Theodore is called that or Theo for short because he's a teddy, yes very original I know! Oliver is named in honour of Oliver Holmes who was the 3rd generation to take on the family teddy bear/soft toy business (Merrythought) apparently he was a eccentric character with a wicked sense of humour and a bit of an adventurer, competing in the Peking to Paris motor challenge and flying Hot air balloons across India and the North Pole.

So I must ask why you found the mineral collecting (rocks are different) to be horrible? The most horrible thing for me is if I am after a particular specimen and I cant afford it or its so rare there isn't even any on offer , sometimes I get stressed if I am studying a specimen and I notice it has another mineral with it, because mineral dealers dont always check what they sell under a microscope, so they might only list the most prominent mineral, but I examine it closely under the microscope and occasionally find things that wasn't mentioned by the seller, that's usually a good thing as it means I get extra minerals but when that mineral might be nothing more than a tiny speck, its not always easy to identify and it annoys me when I cannot identify something, but at the same time I like the challenge, it's like being a detective!

I have found that my collecting habits have changed, when i was younger i would focus on pretty, colourful sparkly minerals, I still like them but now I am more into the chemistry of the minerals, I have learned more about the elements from collecting minerals than i ever did at school!

I know what you mean about the stimming, I rock like crazy when I'm sat typing on my computer or looking up stuff to research, its strange as i only do the rocking when I'm on the computer (at least I think that's the only place I do it!) I know I spin objects quite a lot and that is something I will do anywhere, i didnt even know that was stimming until I got diagnosed, I also make the occasional funny noise which i think is also stimming, i make this squeaky sort of nose when you keep your lips tight and blow through them. I also imitate noses I hear, its almost an involuntary reaction sometimes! There are also certain words that i say often repetitively, usually always in the same pitch or tone depending on the word. I used to think it might be tourettes but I think it is stimming, and that is something i do without realising, a few weeks ago I was walking through town saying this word over and over again, totally oblivious to everyone else, I only stopped when my friend who had spotted me and pointed it out that I was saying it!

Hi Darmok, I'm a male, that's why I feel a bit more embarrassed about having my teddies! The good thing is that one of my best friends has been inviting me to go over to his and his girlfriends house and stay over the night and i kept declining, then I think he knew why so next time he asked and i said no, he said I can bring my teddies! i was embarrassed about what his girlfriend might say but she was nit mean or anything so I'm happy now cos its nice to be somewhere else now and then.

I know quite a bit about minerals and rocks. (yes they are very different in that many minerals two or more make a rock usually) I said rocks in my post because I knew I was collecting rocks not minerals, because well I don't have those samples anymore so I don't know what rocks they were. Recalling the minerals of some I know that some was just clay and others were probably conglomerates... maybe some sandstone.. very sedimentary samples are coming to mind. (I was made to get rid of them as collecting rocks isn't very "lady like" ) and also horrible not because I didn't like them but because everyone else (mostly NTs) thought it was a terrible waste of my time and complained that I would get everything dirty and how terribly dirty everything was. I would sort them out by discern-able physical similarities (didn't know enough to really classify mineral content). I wanted to learn more about them, but no one around me knew anything and so I didn't get to learn about them until like.... 18yrs later in college!

I agree. It is very very VERY much like being a detective. However, when my eye sight started to go, I wasn't able to classify my rock samples as well. So I don't collect them anymore. However, get spectrographic analysis of the mineral content of your rocks- wow now that would be great, but I don't have access to that haha. If I were rich I would by one that and a polar-lens microscope I did a lot of chemistry in labs back in the day.... in my spare time I would take pictures of rock samples and mineral content analyses.
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And you know now that I'm thinking about it a lot of the autistic people I've met in real life have stuffed animals of sorts. It's an interesting trend.

I like to not only cuddle my stuffed teddy bears, but also use a MAM pacifier. I am very emotionally immature for my age, because my parents took my comfort object away from me when I was younger and still needed them, my pacifier when I was about 3, and my stuffed animal when I was 9. I just recently got a teddy bear, and have been sleeping great ever since.

They did this to me too. My teddy when I was 4. Based on the normal age for a kid to put it down is 3, which is BS btw. The worst was they lied to me telling me it left for a vacation and I knew it was a lie. I was "secretly" bought another one by a family member about a year later, kept it until I was 8. I have had "blankie" for 10 years now. Unresolved thing? Well, in any case it does no harm. The lie stayed though.