Aspies For Freedom

I don't stim alot I think. I think I might unconsciously do so sometimes, but if I decide to do it consciously it definitely doesn't have any effect. At least it is like that when I realize I have begun something stim-like I can't recall I have begun it.

Breathing...

Something which might be considered stimming which I do when I bike or walk alone is to breath in a melody, almost whistling but it would just be exhausting to whistle, aswell as people would hear me easier which is not my intention. I think it is alot easier to make melodies by breathing. I kind of get a kick when I breath a melody which have a certain meaning for me.

I don't consciously decide it but when made aware of it I can stop it.

Good one!

I tap my fingers and foot when there's alot of noise in the classroom.

Something tells me that I should stim more, one reason is because I want to be aspie but have a doubt if I really am. The other thing is that I feel constantly mentally exhausted without really knowing why.

Hmm... I do stare.

I stare and ignore what the teacher is saying at a boring day. I was more engaged in the lessons earlier.

Not like that, just looking into the air and don't care about the environments whatsoever, I'm often in thoughts then.

Not really because it isn't something you "set out" to do consciously, it is something that your body or brain latch on to more instinctively than say "eating ice cream" (which is of course "something I really like to do but don't really need to", too!).

The term "stim" comes from the concept of sensory stimulation, it is usually something that stimulates an understimulated sense, calms an overstimulated sense or balances for certain differences in neural "wiring".

(Exercises such "Brain Gym" build on this principle too: They are said to help the different parts of your brain work together better through stimulation by movement and exercises that encourage the brain's hemispheres to work together)

For example the stuff Pakrat just explained about pushing on your eyes, provides visual stimulation, similarly fluttering items in front of your eyes or watching spinning fans etc.

I did that too!

Blargh!

It's bizarre topics like this. I go yep, yep, yep, nah, yep...the whole way through.

Heh, for some reason I thought so. But I can't remember what you in that case posted.

Why I stim with a string.

Autists stim, it is common knowledge. But few understand that stim serves a purpose - actually many purposes.  For some it even defines self.  This was the case for me.

I am  a single modal child. What that means is my senses do not work in cooperation with one another.  At birth there was no sense of anything but light and dark.  Later, light took on shape and color, but not form.  Sound held no meaning at all. It was simply background noise.  Touch was an initiation into the world.  Touch was an all encompassing thing.  To touch was to join, to become part of whatever was touched.  I was a shape-shifter, at least that was my tactile perception.

Reality is defined by one’s senses.  My reality robbed me of a sense of self.  To “be” in mind, but not in body, is a very scary thing.  That was my reality.  

My string was my identity.  Without it, I did not know I existed.  When I was little, my string was not a string at all.  I would pick the long blades of grass from the edge of my yard and dart about “living”.  My grass gave me a sense of freedom.  It would tell me I existed by flipping back and forth in the wind.  I went one way; it went another.  It was the only time I knew I was present in “your world”.  But grass does not last.  Each day I had to find a new blade.  Then one day, Mom gave me a color streaming string.  I know now it was a multicolored shoelace.  I loved it!  That it was permanent, meant I was permanent.  Eventually I lost my string.  There was so much grief in that.  Loss of string is how I came to understand death.  For me my string was alive, my companion.  Dead and alive, I did not understand at first.  I used to think anything that made a noise lived:  the vacuum, water, TV, I thought they all were alive.  I used to think my string played hide and seek on me.  Always I started my days looking for it.  I learned Mom and Dad could find it.  Very much, I wanted it.  I made up a sign to ask for it.  I would even repeatedly work and fail to get it.  My need for my string was stronger even than my own anxiety.  Now I have other stim toys.  I use them to practice (the use of) my senses.  I turn a baby toy to practice my wrist movement.  I press a cushioned dart to try and develop tactile feedback by using (my) sight feedback.  And I have a robot who is about making choices.  I still have my string too.  It is much bigger now.  It has changed from a shoelace, to a jump rope, to a big rope.  All the time it grew with me.  I still use it to calm me down.  Stringing is still something I love to do.  But now I can sometimes feel my body form  - water and swim developed it. In water I am a form; on land I am not.  Swimming has taught me to feel me.  You can not begin to know the value of it. It is a necessary preskill to learning direction of movement.  Once you feel direction what was once an object based existence can become me based.  I string no more to define my identity.  I have even started leaving my string behind when we go out in public places.  It will make me stronger to work through the anxiety of it.  Hrick

It's whatever it is in the person, and that can be any of a number of things.  "Stim" is just a label applied by outsiders in the seventies who didn't know why we did certain things, things that all differ from each other.

There are what I call "background movements" that happen like it sounds, in the background.  They come and go.  I can suppress them sometimes and not others.  I am not necessarily aware of them as they happen.

There are movements that are clearly related to attempts to process things in my environment, they overlap and combine with the background movements.  If I don't do them, things don't make sense, or don't make as much sense.  They can be background movements but they can also have voluntary or semi-voluntary components to them.

There are tics which feel like an urge to do it and then having to do it just right.  They can be any movement at all, sometimes they'll look exactly like the background movement (but more forceful maybe) and sometimes they won't.

There are movements that come about through experimentation.  I might be overloaded and try moving in a bunch of different ways, on purpose, to try to find the best one to stop the overload.  Once I find that one I will continue it, on purpose, to stave off the overload.

There are things like listening to interesting sounds and looking at things and rubbing things on my face, that seem more like sensory explorations to me, but get called stims too.

And there is doing those things in order to de-overload and stuff rather than just as exploration.  There is rubbing things on my face for instance to provide familiarity.  That is different than doing it just because.

There is doing certain things as an outlet for emotions and stress and stuff, just the way my body naturally response to those situations.  And it can be any emotion you could possibly name.

And those are only some of the reasons.

Anyone who tells you there is only one way, or only one reason, that autistic people "stim" has basically decided that some of the things that got called "stimming" belong under the word and others don't, and there may be some kind of "stim police" out there but really seriously it's just a word someone invented as a false explanation ("self-stimulation") for anything we do that's either moving different or interacting with objects and such differently, and those things can have a lot of different reasons for them.