I'm not really sure, the best I have for you is possible high functioning Aspergers or some other high function autism, or it could simply just be a stress-related thing that you have learned to control. I personally have a thing for 3's when I am stressed beyond my limit including counting to three on my three middle fingers over and over again until I feel better. I was reading up on Aspergers and autism awhile back and they are starting to recognize that a lot of adults do have a high functioning form that makes relationships and socialization hard for them. My advice would be to start researching on your own if it's that important for you to know. For me, I NEED to know things about myself, but at what point with my therapy, I realized I had to walk away from diagnosis and just simply learn to function, and that is what I did. I have had so many diagnoses it's ridiculous. The only ones I agree with are Complex Ptsd, Major Depression, Anxiety, and a generalized dissociative disorder, the rest I don't even worry about. I just need to function. Hope some of this helps.

I go with the theory that such fidgeting is a form of self-soothing which helps release nervous energies. In my own case, it has gotten better with age, but at 63, I am still fidgety enough to make the calmest of souls nervous. When I first started using tactile grounding as a therapy tool to help me manage panic attacks and flashbacks, I began with the fidgets I was already using compulsively adding mindfulness exercises which simultaneously calmed my acute panic and brought deliberation to the chronic compulsion.

I, too, have sat through speculations that I am in the autism spectrum, but I don't care to explore the possibility. The rapid cycling name changes which have happened since I started psychotherapy in 1972 have me confused enough without adding more label-based theories to the slop. I'll stick to treating my symptoms while I let the experts spurt the exes at the labels. Sure, sure, ^IT^ is whatever you care to call ^IT^ this season.

Hey, loo, it's great to hear from you again! Welcome back! :-)

Diagnosing is an alphabet soup of labels, isn't it? I'm about to turn 60 on July 1st, and first went to mental health professional for help with my symptoms when I was 21. In these 39 years I was diagnosed as depressive, then bipolar II with PTSD, then with CPTSD only.

On the physical side as affects moods, I was misdiagnosed and treated for thyroiditis when I had simple diabetes with blood sugar ups and downs. That ended up causing me permanent kidney damage, another chronic illness to go with my CPTSD.

It's been hard to be patient with such shifting diagnoses, and even harder to cope with misdiagnosis that has resulted in permanent damage. What helped me was working alongside doctors for years as a hospital chaplain. I don't let them off the hook about misdiagnosis. But since I had brain surgeons come to me humbly at times for counseling about their own stress I came to understand they're just like us. The variety of human symptoms will never match what's in a book, like the DSM. That's why they come out with a new edition of it all the time.

PTSD symptoms like mood swings are the same as bipolar mood symptoms. When they go back to childhood, it's an understandable guess that they might go back to my DNA itself, so that led to my doctors thinking originally I might be bipolar II. It took time to understand it was childhood trauma from the outside, not genetic coding from the inside, that caused my symptoms. Figuring that out was, I hate to say it, trial and error.

So I'm glad you're focusing your attention on your symptoms more than you're focusing on your labels. Relief for your symptoms is the point, and the diagnostic label should only serve that. I like arfie's idea of fidgeting being self soothing. I live alone, and the weird thing I do is that I talk to myself out loud to soothe myself. I talk to myself as if I were talking to a DS PTSD friend here for peer support.

I took out the garbage Tuesday night. I had started talking aloud to myself inside the house when I grabbed my garbage bags and went outside with them. I forgot to stop talking to myself when I stepped out onto the public sidewalk. People out there saw and heard me talking to myself and gave me the weird looks you'd expect. People who talk aloud to themselves are "crazy," right? I shrugged it off, because I knew why I was doing it. I wasn't delusional or speaking to hallucinations, I wasn't answering schizoid voices in my head. I was soothing my CPTSD by talking offline the way I talk here, where I found my voice for coping with my CPTSD. I live alone, so it's do it yourself job.

Hope that helps. I could relate when you said that your hand movements sometimes are mistaking in public by others as waving at them. Sometimes my talking to myself is mistaken in public by others as talking to them or as just being addled. So be it, I say, it's ok.

Glad to see your back/ ok. I was diagnosed with high functioning autism, i cant figure out how to explain what makes me autistic. Besides every autistic person is different. Going through the diagnoisis tests they are very thourough to make sure symptoms are autism and not caused by trauma.
Im waffling sorry. Just glad to see you back.hugs

Wow you guys always make me feel more grounded and accepting. Thanks for still being here x

It's great to see you back sweetie..... It sounds like it could be some OCD? perhaps?

Akathisia is involuntary movements ?? often med related.... I had it on Perphenazine years ago and there's other reasons for it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akathisia