Hello. I grew up thinking I was someone with a lot of tics. I would make faces and high pitch noises as a child, then later on more subtle sounds with my noise and nails or fingers, lips or mouth skin bitting, legs shaking, etc. But then I got diagnosed with autism and ADHD a year ago at the age of 29. And it got me wondering, as I'm sure some of what I thought were tics are actually stims but I'm unsure for others, how do we differanciate them ? My take is that stims are somewhat controllable even if it's not easy, while tics are not. But is it possible to delay tics for a while (seconds or one or two minutes) until you can't and it ends up happening, or is it completely impossible to control ?
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Hi! I have AuDHD and tics (I'm trying to get an official Tourettes diagnosis), and I have a lot of stims and little tics. For some tics, I can delay them, but others I can't, and it usually just makes them worse when I do. Some examples of my tics Vs stims:
Tics: Rolling my wrists, waving/flapping my hand back and forth, locking my hand shut or flexed open, aggressive blinking and head jerks, sniffing, whistling, and some words.
Stims: cracking knuckles, drumming fingers, spinning in a circle or pacing, flapping arms (with emotion, especially happiness), humming.
The major difference between my tics and stimming is that stimming follows an emotion or stimulation of some sort. Tics are random and sudden (even if they're triggered by something in the environment, like a noise or something).