How do y'all deal with harmful stims?

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Lately I've been having a lot of trouble with scratching my head-and not just scratching, but tearing at it. There are constantly open wounds in my scalp, and it's driving me crazy. Whenever I have nothing to do with my hands, they end up in my hair, either pulling at scabs or clawing at the skin. I'll notice and try to stop, but sometimes it's like I can't, and other times I'll end up doing it again in a few minutes. It's so bad I can't even touch certain parts of my head without it hurting, and my hair is matted with blood. I really want to stop this, does anyone have any ideas as to how to stop harmful stims?

Same thing happens here. Maybe do something that requires a lot of handiwork, get a something for tactile stimming(Fluffy blanket, an animal toy.), get a rubberband and snap against the wrist, a fidget toy, stress ball, pick at your clothes, wave your hand like you just don't care, put band-aids on fingers, stay away from those mirrors, especially the bathroom.

Make sure there isn't anything triggering the action, such as anxiety.

I've had a great deal of trouble with this one too, OP. One of my harmful stims is to smack my hands together extremely hard and I had one session where I did it so many times and so hard that my both of my hands swelled up to twice the size and turned purple and had excruciating pain for several hours preventing me from sleeping.

So I can't really help you on how to stop this because I'm dealing with the same issue.

Another one of my harmful stims is to smack my fist with an open hand as if I'm getting ready to beat somebody up. This one is less harmful but still painful if I do it enough times and hard enough.

A stim I used to do many years ago was punch walls with a closed fist. This one was by far the most destructive as it caused me to get evicted several times from a couple of different apartments. Also the noise would disrupt the neighbours and they'd complain about me. I haven't done this one in a while because of that. The last thing I need is to be Autistic AND homeless which I have been a couple of times and it's a pretty frightening experience to say the least.

I think my primary cause is the fact that I'm surrounded by too many people as it unnerves me in any situation. The less people the better and I'm quite calm then.

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*** High Functioning Autism - Asperger's Syndrome ***

ADHD, OCD, and PTSD.

Keep calm and stim away.

I have this, I used to make wounds. There's head massaging tool, maybe give it a try?

Have had a bad habit that could be classified as a "stim" since like age 11..

It helps to do isometric excercises ala Charles Atlas and his 'dynamic tension' thing (pitting your own muscles against each other to mimic pumping iron). Instead of pulling on your hair pull on your biceps and triceps by locking the fingers of your two hands together, and pulling your hands away from each other as hard as you can, for as long as you can. Enjoy the resulting pain in your upper arms. Enjoy it because it isn't pain that's being inflicted on your scalp, and because the pain is building up your muscles.