What was most challenging for you as a kid with CMS?
As an adolescent?
As an adult?
I think the most challenging thing for me as a kid was focusing in class due to my IIM. I would struggle with focusing when I was performing these movements.
As an adolescent, my main struggle was feeling self-conscious about my movements as I began to regulate when and where I did them. As an adult, it is more of an issue of conforming to my new schedule as well as a new environment. |
As a kid, dealing with how my teachers treated it/ getting in trouble for something I couldn’t control.
As an adolescent, learning to be okay with the fact that CMS was part of who I was and learning not to see it as a bad thing. As an adult, I tend to hold something while doing my stereotypy, typically a pencil since that is what I am usually holding and I break a lot of pencils. I go through about 60 pencils a semester. I have to remove all the broken pencils from my bag and replace them with new ones at least once a week. This has actually been a problem my whole life, it was just never the biggest problem until now since now it is the only problem left. And it really isn’t a big deal. It is just pencils. |
As an adult: This may sound awful, but the hardest part for me is scared parents of kids with CMS trying to find out how to get rid of their kids' CMS. I don’t blame them, of course. Of course they want what’s best for their kids, but all this talk of “what’s wrong with my kid? How do I make it go away” makes me feel like something’s wrong with me, and that this thing that's part of me is something bad that needs to go away.
On a completely different note, doing my movements will sometimes give me a headache or make headaches worse if I already have one. |
As a kid it was how my parents treated me and thinking there was something wrong with me. Also being in school was uncomfortable, and I struggled with fine-motor coordination.
As an adolescent it was self-consciousness. And as an adult it’s just been the struggle to accept myself and share it with others I’m close to even though I don’t let them see the movements. |