It's Not Abuse

I realized today that something my Mother drilled into me - and that had stuck - was the handling of some of my stimming. She would call my repetitive motions or sounds created with objects “abuse”. I was “being abusive” to the items and/or was just being “abusive”.

Stop being abusive.

I recall many times that was said to me when I was stimming. Clearly She didn’t know what has going on and certainly I didn’t but here we are, so many years later and I can recall saying something almost identical to “stop abusing that” to my own children. I’m sorry.

So now I realize that I’ve actually taken my stimming as “abuse” to heart. I’m having a very hard time allowing myself to stim and it’s quite frustrating. I’ve noticed that by the time I finally agree with myself to allow myself to stim I’m doing it almost out of spite. That’s probably not the right attitude …

I’ve also had a ton of issues trying to communicate this verbally to my partner and that’s also frustrating. Hopefully writing this out helps. That’s the goal anyway.