 I think it would be really useful to talk about sort of like a another aspect of stimming which I think for some people it can be sort of like a sensitive issue you know particularly for me what I'm talking about is sort of harmful stimming and you know for me specifically when I'm having a bad time when I'm having a meltdown for me I have quite a lot of harmful stims and it's you know a lot of the time when I when I do those harmful stims whether it's like hitting myself or pinching myself or you know hitting myself against something it's it's almost always in a situation when it's it's a very very intense meltdown or I'm in a place and I don't feel safe and there's no sort of place or there's no sort of aid for me to kind of you know I don't have a safe place to go to and I don't really see any way that I can sort of fulfill those those needs that I have that sort of regulation need that I have and also particularly during times when I'm feeling very down or when I'm feeling very negatively about myself and typically in very sort of low self-esteem moods it tends to be the case that that kind of thing happens I know that there's things that are within sort of the harmful stimming label that could be perhaps relatively quite innocuous like biting your nails or like whatever would be a good one pulling your hair or pulling your hair is this I would not call that a knock you no no no you know just it's just like plucking hairs out of your hand or something or scratching or doing stuff like that but I also think that you know considering that there's there's such a sort of a big overlap between autism and mental health conditions you know particularly for me when I was a lot younger it was the case that a lot of the stimming that I did the way that I sort of dealt with my emotional difficulties and overwhelm from the day was you know things related to like self-harming which was you know it's um no and I think a lot of people that I've talked to have sort of shared that that kind of feeling and I guess I guess what I want to sort of know is I've given a lot of examples and I've kind of taken a bit of the lead on it it's it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately and especially sort of looking back on my past it's um yeah yeah Jesus it is a really important topic it's a really big topic and it's one that I also have personal experience with and I think pulling from what you said you actually brought up a lot of different ways that not just like the way it looks but different moments when people might self-injuriously stem and so I I want to bring some of that to the surface that there is a difference between a self-injurious stem that is not related to a feeling of anxiety or overwhelm a self-injurious stem that is related to trying to regulate during a moment of self of anxiety and overwhelm or overload and there's also difference between that and self-injurious stemming during a meltdown yes so during a meltdown I don't think that there's really if I've come to the point of having a meltdown I'm no longer really in control of like what stems or what actions I am taking so if I only say if I were a person who only self-injuriously stemmed during meltdowns my focus then would not be on how do I stop self-injuriously stemming during meltdowns my focus would be how can I put in systems supports and boundaries so that I can practice proactive meltdown prevention that would be there if I am self-injuriously stemming just because like this I think is rare but it just because it's like the thing that I do like it's not connected to overwhelm or I'm the same with biting my nails like I love biting my yeah so then I would say just looking for a replacement stem that meets that same need so I sucked my fingers I sucked my these two fingers here since I was born like it's a joke that I came out doing that and I did not stop until the summer between the fifth and sixth grade because it was meeting my needs and I was really happy and I did it when I was born I did it when I was I did it when I was happy I just did it because it was getting me sensory input proprioceptive input is what it actually is that I needed now however society is not really accepting of children after a certain age sucking a thumb sucking their fingers using a pacifier so it was a big battle to try to get me to stop and I was even like at some point having gloves taped to my hand and attempt to make me stop I had like my fingers taped together things like that and attempt to make me stop it wasn't like evilly intended so I'm not mad at the folks who did that to me but I think it just helps us to consider how stigmatized stemming is that it would be like normal to do that to a child who is sucking their fingers eventually I did recognize okay I'm gonna have to stop this like I'm getting bullied I'm getting a lot of coercion I'm getting people like punishments for this stem so I'm gonna need to stop now does that mean that I just stopped and was like I no longer need proprioceptive oral stem putt and stem putt stemming input stem putt nice nice that is that is just a stroke of genius I like that and now that's what that didn't happen right I didn't suddenly just not need that anymore so I started to bite my nails now you shouldn't buy your nails biting your nails is bad right so people kept telling me stop biting your nails they start I started getting the same reaction to me biting my nails and they they stop you they want to stop you from doing things but they don't give you any alternatives yes so I did stop biting my nails eventually but I still needed that input so I started taking my now long nails and slicing my gums with them to get proprioceptive oral stem I said it again I also I don't want to add it's not something that I that I've talked about before but for me I very much have something similar to that like like pressing pressing my nails against my my gums or like you know for a long time I've had a real sort of love love hate back and forth relationship with like toothpicks because you know left to my own devices I would just want to pick my teeth and gums all the time because it's like such a it's such a big big sort of stem for me it's it's very strange that you you're bringing up lots of things that I haven't like I haven't like talked about for it's it's very feels very validating to me yeah I mean and I hope I has having this conversation and those who listen to it I hope that they can see that they're not alone and that this is not something that we have to continue to put behind closed doors because if we don't talk about it then we don't talk about the ways we can support others in it either and so for me in order to eventually stop the self-injurious to me because of it was painful I wasn't like hating it but it was painful and there are negative side effects to doing that and I think also in a way you know slicing my gums does I think it opened an avenue for me to think of other like okay this pain is helping me even though it wasn't actually paying I just wasn't given access to this like knowledge or on proprioception and like all this stuff so I thought it was pain so I did wind up self-injury system also by getting proprioceptive input through slapping my arms so I had to really dial it back really dial it back and they got I got tied into anxiety as well so I started like slapping my arms repeatedly when I had a lot of social anxiety or social overload or sensory overload that then caused me to have social anxiety so it was all getting wrapped up together and I had to really dial it back to get to a place of realizing like where did where did this come from and it was like I just wanted to suck my fingers like so did I start sucking my fingers again no but I did start looking for replacement stems that would meet those proprioceptive needs so chewing gum, jewelry and drinking fizzy drinks and drinking hot drinks that would stimulate that area I have weighted blankets now I you know have things that I hug all the time plushies and things like that so getting a lot of those things into my life figuring out what worked for me now it wasn't magical because habits repetition can lead to habit and habits are difficult to change and once it got tied to social anxiety and social anxiety is very common for many autistic individuals I want to clarify that I no longer really experience social anxiety but I did have it severely I did experience severely from like fifth grade until I was like 27 so and I'm I'm 31 now so that was you're on now I am no you're not yeah I am 31 and it's funny being on social media and being 31 and having people think you're a lot younger and or me being like I was diagnosed at 23 and people like congratulations like how's it been like well eight years ago so it's been a lot of attorney do you really hear all that