My stims growing up were a bit obnoxious in hindsight. I had a lot of verbal and other noise making stims like pencil clicking. I didn't know why I needed to stim these ways, they seemed so natural to me and I usually didn't know I was doing any of it unless someone stopped me.

As I was told to stop, I started more harmful stims like skin picking and hair pulling. At the time I didn't know how to work on less obnoxious stims.

I've been working on replacing the harmful ones with quieter and not harmful stims. Fidget cubes and 3D printed slugs are some of my favorites. My sister got me a metal fidget cube for Christmas and the weight of it is so delightful!