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Stimming

NAS50499

Hi, 

I am an autistic adult had my diagnosis for over 10 years, I have noticed more awareness around "stimming"  and I not sure if some of the things I do are "stims" or not...such as repeatedly touching my cold ears which I find makes me very relaxed, hot ears make me very agitated, smelling things repeatedly especially my thumb and top lip this makes me feel calm, I used to self harm all the time from a child which I found soothing such as burning and cutting (I no longer do this as I have replaced it with weight lifting) but I am wondering if the self harm was also a "stim"?

A lot of the stims I have seen in the public domain is hand flapping, spinning etc 

  • Yes, self-harming can be a 'stimming' behaviour...

    I used to bite my nails to the quick and bite my arm or the side of my forefinger so hard it would nearly draw blood and would leave a mark for hours.

    I no longer bite my nails, but I keep them trimmed very short and if the white part grows to more than a couple of mm wide I get anxious and HAVE to trim them.

    I rarely bite myself now unless I'm under a lot of stress - I finger-bit on NYE as the noise and people was sending me into shutdown.

    I'm sat now with a gorgeous brass 'fidget spinner' I got while I was going through my assessment for ASD and which I now take everywhere as a discreet stim.

    The stuff you see in the public domain is the stuff that is:

    a) obvious

    b) most likely being carried out by autistics who haven't (or can't) be 'trained' or 'learn' to suppress or redirect their need to stim into more 'NT acceptable' things

    Anything you do repeatedly that soothes you is 'stimming'... this includes 'accepted' stuff like hair-twirling, thumb-sucking, listening to rainfall/birdsong sounds, sniffing specific scents etc.

    FWIW - I can relate to the weightlifting. I run a lot and I consider it both a form of self-harm (I run HARD) and a self-soothing (therefore stimming) behaviour

  • Most definitely. I have no nails on three of my fingers and a scar on my left hand from biting the skin on my palms. I have severely bit my nails since I was a toddler (I am 23) and I feel like this is a response to the external world and its intensity. Interestingly, the periods in which I was able to briefly stop I then would scratch myself raw until instead. It feels very wired into me to repeat this behaviour and it feels like I have to do it to cope and it somehow soothes me. It is hard to explain but I feel like I understand what you mean about it being a stim.

  • in reply to NIck

    i used to work with a piece of machinery that had a particular Humm that would put me to sleep during work. I would wake up face down on my table when someone poked me. Very embarrassing.  Slight smile

  • I like to circle rub back of my head when in situations around lots of people , if I do it for to long tho il actually put myself to sleep ,

  • in reply to Plastic

    i reported this one - do not reply to it please

  • I pass for normal most of the time but when I'm put in high-stress situations my right leg jiggles up & down at about 180 bpm. I could be a drummer for a German Techno band.

    I've also noticed my left arm gets the shakes - it seems the wrist joint is wobbling a little - at about 180rpm.

    Yes - the sad engineer in me has measured it. It seems to be based on the tension available from the tendons - bouncing on their elasticity.

    I have no control over it but I can feel that it is slightly soothing.