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I feel like I don't have a place to be myself + cleaning my room.

Abigail

About stimming:

I feel like I have nowhere where I can let loose and just stim without judgment or forcing myself to not do them too much. I mask at college, which is only 2 days a week but they are full days. Same with at work, which is only on Sundays. When I get home I know I should be able to fully let things out but especially when I have had college and work I am so fatigued and my family is asking how my day was so I have to give them a "satisfactory" answer because if I just say it was "good" then they will keep asking me questions like what did I do and thing like that.

My favourite stim is rocking back and forth. It's calming for me, but whenever I do it with them around they tell me to stop because it makes me look "crazy" (whatever that means). So I mainly just fiddle with my clothes, especially if they have tassels. Then when I get to my room I watch YouTube on my phone and rock like crazy to try and get some of the pent up stuff out. I'd love to be able to just pace around my room but I'm scared that my parents will come into my room and tell me to clean it.

I'm not really sure what to do. I don't like holding it in but I feel like I don't have a choice. They just tell me to stop (which I do, I don't want to get into an argument with them about it). I feel like I've been having to hold them in for so long then I won't be able to stim freely when I have my assessment which may affect the diagnosis.

About cleaning my room:

I know my room is a mess and I am trying to get through it when I can. I started it last week and moved most of my washing into a basket I have in my room but I got distracted by my desk and completely went through it and got rid of everything that I had from my crafting phase that didn't last very long. I had loads of plastic bottles and those cardboard tubes from toilet paper as well as a bunch of other stuff. I was so proud of the desk but she just said that I had so much other stuff I needed to do I shouldn't have focused on the desk. I may as well have not done anything if that was all she was going to say.

Parents

  • It looks like you have a major education job on your hands. First of all you need ammunition in the form of books, the more academic the better, on the subject of autism and stimming in particular. You can then use passages from the books to support you in your argument. Your argument should follow the truisms:1) that stimming does no harm to anybody else, it might make people mildly uncomfortable to see it, but people can put up with mild discomfort quite well, 2) not stimming causes you a great deal of discomfort, many times greater than that experienced by anyone seeing you stim, 3) stimming helps you to self-regulate, it allows you to exert a level of control over your mood, 4) stimming helps to avert meltdowns and shutdowns and no-one wants to witness those, or for you to experience them, and 5) stimming helps you maintain a generally more healthy mental state.

    You can also 'stealth stim' - if you have a pair of earphones on and you are rhythmically moving about, rocking or whatever, people will assume that you are listening to music and having a 'bit of a bop'. Miraculously, neurotypicals become entirely unbothered by the bodily movements. Quite bizarre really.

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  • It looks like you have a major education job on your hands. First of all you need ammunition in the form of books, the more academic the better, on the subject of autism and stimming in particular. You can then use passages from the books to support you in your argument. Your argument should follow the truisms:1) that stimming does no harm to anybody else, it might make people mildly uncomfortable to see it, but people can put up with mild discomfort quite well, 2) not stimming causes you a great deal of discomfort, many times greater than that experienced by anyone seeing you stim, 3) stimming helps you to self-regulate, it allows you to exert a level of control over your mood, 4) stimming helps to avert meltdowns and shutdowns and no-one wants to witness those, or for you to experience them, and 5) stimming helps you maintain a generally more healthy mental state.

    You can also 'stealth stim' - if you have a pair of earphones on and you are rhythmically moving about, rocking or whatever, people will assume that you are listening to music and having a 'bit of a bop'. Miraculously, neurotypicals become entirely unbothered by the bodily movements. Quite bizarre really.

Children