Do older people who have aspergers stim as often?

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I stimmed alot as a kid (fidgeting, spinning, hand-flapping, few other things). In my teenage years I tried to supress my stims in order to appear more "normal", but that only led to very bad emotional problems. Now into adulthood, I stim as much as I did when I was a kid.

watching people stim calms me as well

I'm 33, never knew what stimming was until I started reading up on ASD but I stim as much now as I did when young, probably more as I don't get shouted at for fidgeting any more.

I pretty much constantly bite and pick my nails, open and close my legs and rub my quads.

I stim a lot.

I really just stim when I get stressed out, not always for a predicatable reasons though. Course thats always been the case.

I will preface this by saying that I'm only 28, but my parents (without knowing they were doing it, I think) trained me out of stimming (where people can see it) when I was a child, and it left me finding ways to replace that feeling. I usually sit in the shower and listen to the patterns or watch a fan rotating. I do that as much now as when as I was younger (maybe more, since I live away from home now and nobody tries to stop me).

I rock back and forth, nod my head, pace, walk in circles.tap my fingers.

I do this even today. I can control it for the most part unless I'm stressed.

I learned to control it around people when I learned people don't do that. That was about middle school.

I guess they made me feel ashamed of it.

I don't know if I stim or not. I do fiddle with the skin on my face and scalp a lot - I constantly run my fingers over it checking for any slight imperfection and picking at it and I have scabs on my scalp from doing this (yuck I know!). I also pick at the skin around my fingernails a lot. And I do crack my knuckles regularly, although this is not so much a habit as because if I don't my joints feel uncomfortable (not painful, just weird and unpleasant). And I'm always chewing on and biting my lips. But I'm not sure if any of this is really stimming.

You see, to my mind there are some things that obviously are autistic traits, like staring at a spinning object for hours, or handflapping, or rocking, but aren't some things just "people" traits? And where would the dividing line be, if there is one? Answers on a postcard please...

I havn't read that anywhere, could you give a link to somewhere they state that as a fact, or are you only talking about how it is for you?
If anything it gets less noticable as you grow older, because aspies learn to pretend to be "normal", and learn alot of social rules in theory.



I do many of those things myself, if I get a zit, I cant help but pick at it. And I unconciously run my fingers over my arms, shoulders, neck and face checking for slight imperfections, like you do LittleBlackCat. I also fiddle with my fingertips, running them over the nail of another finger. I do this unconciously while I concentrate or even when I just watch TV and relax. We have some cats, and I've notice them coming up to me often sniffing my fingers all of a sudden, since I made a gesture unconciously with my fingers and they took it as a sign to come to me.

I never knew about stimming(except for the stereotypical autism-rocking) until a few days ago, I never saw anything wrong with what I did, I just figured everyone does it. When I were younger I liked to close my eye and press it with a finger, you can see some very interresting patterns and colors that way. I also whistled alot, but I dont really know if that counts as a vocal stimming or not. I'm fairly new to this whole concept.

Is this stimming, or just some quirks anyone could/would do?

I'm almost 40 and still stim as much as I did as a child. I did not know anything about Asperger's or autism back then, although I learned as an adult that the school had told my parents they thought I had autism.

The only difference is now I control it well enough to where I don't stim that much in public, or if I do it's in a more subtle way.

I've not found that to be the case. With new skill sets I've learned more to be myself in those ways aspergers is cool, and to relax or lessen or just manage the bad ways. So it's not had to get worse.

That being said, I stim less now because I've learned to take better care of myself, so my stress, boredom, etc is less. When I'm bored/stressed/etc tho, I stim just as much now.

Well Im not that old yet so I cant really compare. But before I was diagnosed and even knew what stimming was, I just thought I fidgeted a lot. My stimming was never bad and I can almost always control it. I stim in private mostly when I want to. I dont think its really changed since I was a child. I'm probably more socially aware so I would likely subconsciously not stim as much in public or do small less noticeable stims or hide my stims(I sometimes finger stim with my hands under the table). In private I stim more.

^ - I have to google what 'stim' meant :p And I only found out about what I have (ie aspergers) a week or two ago.

Now that I know what 'stim' is, I'd say no. But because I'm aware of what I'm doing that I keep myself in-check.

I Stim all the time. I like to close my eyes and move about, especially my head, messing with my equilibrium. i also like to run my hands lightly over my sking sometimes, I also rock, and Vibrate. I also drum on things, but Im an actual drummer, so I dont know if thats stimming, or perhaps I became a drummer because I can stim all the time?

As an older aspie (51) mine is getting worse with age. Similarly with little rituals and thoughts being repeated. It is like I'm stuck in a loop sometimes.

Other thing is I've learned as I got older to control when I stim. Like when coworkers are around / I'm at work, I barely stim at all. But as soon as I'm alone (like driving home in the car) I'm stimming like crazy. Another way to control how NTs see and treat me, that I gained as a new skill set as I got older.