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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 

Parents

  • 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

Reply

  • 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

Children
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