Do you have a favorite stim? And why do you do it?

Post Reply New Topic

My stims are knee bouncing, rocking, moving my head side to side, and occasional hand rubbing.

The knee bouncing burns excess energy. It calms me, but in a very different way than my other stims. It is different because it does not produce the euphoric sensation I get from the others.

When I feel strong emotions or just the need to stim, I usually rock and move my head side to side, simultaneously. This produces a sensation inside my head that is extremely pleasant. It moves down into my chest and stomach. I can produce the same sensation over and over.

These are all done in the privacy of my home.

In school I always got in trouble for rocking on my chair. These days when I'm sitting at my desk I'm a big knee tapper, rocker or I do this thing where I place my right index finger on my lips and slowly turn my head side to side like I'm slowly shaking my head. After a while it makes my lips feel kind of numb.

Tapping/drumming my hands and feet to music. It's impossible not to do this.
Rocking in chair
Biting/picking nails
Biting insides of mouth

I've bitten my nails since I was 5. It brings on a sort of trance-like feeling where I can't pull my hand away from my mouth.

I've done almost every one over the years.
When I was six and we moved a long way from 'home' I bit my lip cheeks so much it left a HUGE hole in my bottom lip that took months to heal (super painfull, but I still bit it)... that left a big permanent scar.
My moms PTSD and her verbal whippings left me abandoning many, many stims, such as biting nails, sucking my thumb, bouncing my knees etc. etc.

This proved almost lethal at age 23, where the stress of performing in university + perfectionism + betrayal + no stimming + being social all the time + my own PTSD caused a major meltdown, which resulted in a suicide attempt at age 25.
NOT STIMMING IS BAD FOR YOU! If you are really on the spectrum, you NEED this.

I did stim a bit, just ones my mom wouldn't hate me for, like listening to music 24/7, rocking when standing and mental stims (which she could not see and punish me for).
Now I'm finally reconnecting with my crucial needs, and am constantly twirling objects (love the D&D d20's : 20 sided dies that roll perfectly in the palm of your hand: http://www.spellendump.nl/images/034/DG-MIX25D20.jpg ), bouncing my left leg and more. I used to make animalistic/alien noises, like squealing in my 20's, and that too is coming back some times.
I still hide almost all stims in public, but I love to sing along (when no one hears me)...

Thank goodness for stimming, it relieves SO MUCH STRESS!! !! !! !! !

I tap my feet, usually.

Twirling a string in front of my face is my favorite stim. I think I do this partly because of tactile sensory seeking and partly to relieve stress/anxiety. I only do this in private.

I stim a lot (more socially acceptable stimming) in public to relieve anxiety, and sometimes to block out sensory input. In public I pick at my skin (I know I should stop this), shake my leg/foot, rip paper wrappers off of drinks or snacks or rip apart Styrofoam cups, and sometimes talk, hum or sing to myself. These are the main ones but I tend to just fidget and move a lot.

My daughter used to have "piano fingers" when she was really little. She always looked like she was playing an invisible piano. Then as she got older it morphed into swishing her middle and index fingers together. I often tried her stims to see what they were like. That one stuck. Not only is the physical sensation a pleasant one, I like the sound, too.

My only natural stims are leg bouncing and feet jiggling (I raise my feet of the floor and jiggle them in various ways). Both help me focus when I am having a hard time attending to something. BUt I think they are ADD things more than ASD things.

I am just learning about stimming in this thread, and I don't do it much any more, and I didn't know anyone else ever did it, but I used to bounce my legs often. It drove people nuts. Once I started them moving, the action was pretty much automatic until I conciously stopped it.

I could sit for an extended period just enjoying the feeling, and noticing that the timing was usually different between the two legs... bouncing out of sync, but occassionally matching for a couple of bounces.

I pretty much stopped because it bugged people... I still do it once in a while when I am alone.

I feel like it could be a stim... I feel like I get the compulsion to roll my cigarettes and perform the physical motions required when smoking more than about the smoking itself, which i don't as much care for. i plan on switching to herbal cigarettes shortly, but i love the act of smoking.

my biggest stim has to do with my hair. i have very long hair, and for as long as i can remember i have been pulling it out (especially from one spot at the top of my head, where i've given myself a little bald spot twice, and especially if i find particularly kinky pieces), carefully locating and pulling out split ends, running my fingers through tangles and untangling them, stroking the hair, and rubbing my hands forcefully along my scalp, finding and removing tiny pieces of... i don't know what. scalp debris? gross, i know. i can't seem to stop. my roommate was going crazy from my hair being everywhere, so i started wearing a braid, which solved the problem for a while, till i got too sad from wearing the braid all the time and wanted to touch my head again. i also pull out eyebrows and eyelashes.

my dad brushed every day my hair when i was a kid, twice if i took a shower that day. we bonded over detangling products and the lengthly process of tending and brushing my hair, until i started middle school, when i finally got my first hair cut, and i guess i was deemed too old to have my dad taking care of my hair for me. that's when the hair stim started. to be honest, i never actually made that connection between the stim and my dad before i wrote this just now, but i guess that's probably why i do it.

I put one arm on top of my head and pull down on it with my other arm. Why do I think I do it? Well, it's a stress response and so I imagine it has something to do with releasing endorphins via some form of deep pressure.

My body is hypersensitive to sensory input and my mind is hyperactive. I somehow discovered when I was in my early twenties that if I play guitar while riding a bicycle at the same time, that the pain of my existence is decreased somewhat, at least while I ride. For me it is a meditation in motion. So I became The Bicycling Guitarist. The following is a video filmed last February that shows the results of thirty years of practice doing this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIrTjcHCNOc[/youtube]

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 23 Oct 2012, 1:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

I too am a scalp-picker. I twirl my hair as well--I've done that ever since I was a little kid--especially when I'm tired.

Flapping my hands near my eyes is a new stim I've developed. I used to, on a pretty infrequent basis, stick my fingers precariously close to my eyes.

I tend to rock, pace, and talk to myself a lot, but I wouldn't call those my favorite stims.

thank you for this perspective. i know i have given up on some self-soothing that i used to do as a kid (head banging comes to mind) and ive recently begun others again (not as a result of this thread, but in the course of treatment (such as shoulder contortions). perhaps i need to take another look at those methods that calmed me down before i thought they were just too weird to continue.

That's the coolest stim I've ever heard of!

Like others, there is no "favorite" for me, but I:

*pick at my skin
*rub my scalp
*crack my knuckles/neck/back
*chew my inner lower lip
*curl my toes tightly
*pick at my eyelashes
*twist my downward-pointed right wrist clockwise with the index finger touching the thumb and bump the lower arm against the upper arm twice, then flick my wrist upward (I hate that one...it's so embarrassing)

...and more I can't think of right now!