I wanna talk about unhelpful stims. The stims which maybe aren’t so okay because they end up h

I wanna talk about unhelpful stims. The stims which maybe aren’t so okay because they end up hurting you. Whenever I am anxious or overwhelmed I will find myself automatically doing this until my thumb is bleeding which is normally what alerts me to the fact I’m doing it. I'm working on ways to replace this stim. 

What I often see is arguments against stimming which emphasise that stimming is bad because of ones like this. What’s more important to understand is that stimming in healthy ways stops me from getting to the point where I end up uncontrollably stimming in ways like this as often. Sensory overload is going to happen but harmless stimming reduces how often it occurs. 

Stimming is healthy and important. If you have a damaging stim you can work on switching it but please don’t feel like you need to stop stimming.