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

Post Reply New Topic

I flap every day, a lot of the time it is because an online friend has said something nice or they've liked something I've done or I just see a colourful thing or funny joke that makes me happy. Other times I flap are when I have artistic ideas, I tend to flap when thinking of new ideas.

With me this is correct, I will do so to calm both positive and negative emotions, and relax more when getting overwhelmed (especially when getting overwhelmed by sensory things). I find repetitive movements in general (like cycling indoors) quite calming, but drumming on my knee is more accessable and my favourite small movement.

Interestingly, I have discovered that some music, when listened to on repeat seems to have a similar effect on me as stimming. My best song for this is 300 violin orchestra by Jorge Quintero, it only started having this effect after I had listened to it for many hours so I think it is calming due to its familiarity as well as its rhythm.

Last edited by Cogs on 07 Mar 2012, 5:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly!

Moving my left foot

I'm sure lots of NT smokers do this too but it could be classed more of a routine if it's something you have to do

I've tugged at my hair since I was a kid. It's called Trichotillamania but I think it's my main form of stimming along with bouncing my knee , pacing and rubbling my hand over in circle on top of my scalp

-tapping fingers/toes to the music in my head
-air drumming to a song stuck in my head/song I'm hearing; I did this so much my parents bought me a drum kit
-making rhythms with my teeth and jaw
-scalp picking, hair pulling, scratching/rubbing head, picking skin off my feet
-picking skin off my thumb with my index finger
-playing 'guitar hero' with the lines on the road and my feet or fingers when I'm a passenger in a car
-rubbing my face, covering my face with my hands like this
-making this facial expression (without the pen)
-biting on my cheek(s)
-when I'm lying down/lotus position: rubbing feet against each other or pushing feet against my legs, wringing them in all positions, etc.
-picking nose
-scratching my neck
-cracking joints
-clicking pen (at a certain point I wasn't allowed to have click pens anymore)
-this
-putting objects in a certain order (only happens when I'm in public and can't do all these other things so I do this with beer cards or whatever I can find)
-pacing, but I don't really do this anymore, I mostly did this when I was a kid
-softly bumping head against the wall
-destroying objects (mostly in class), writing/drawing on walls or desks, scribbling on a paper but pushing so hard it breaks several layers of paper
-meowing
-automutilation
-making lists
-puffing cheeks
-as a kid: giving myself hickeys

That's all I can come up with right now (don't know if this is all stimming (is this all stimming?)).

Last edited by Ddddd on 10 Mar 2012, 2:49 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I seem to use "internal" stimming, such as making repetitive movements with my tongue or my toes, or I chew gum......mostly my stims are incomspicuous like that, probably because my parents and teachers didn't like me fidgeting.

I wouldn't call it a "favourite" stim though. That would suggest a consciously-driven decision, kind of "I think I'll do that nice relaxing stimming thing now." All that happens to me is that I sometimes notice I'm stimming. I have little or no control over the process.......it doesn't seem to please me or soothe me, it doesn't seem to do anything except exist.

As for why I do it, again I really don't know. My feelings tell me nothing about that. My intellect and education tells me that I'm probably doing it to relieve stress, but I haven't yet been able to see any correlation between my stress and my stimming......it's hard to acquire data because I have alexithymia (so I don't always notice when I'm stressed), and because my stims are so inconspicuous (so I don't easily notice when I''m stimming). I was thinking it might be a useful stress indicator when I catch myself putting a piece of gum into my mouth, but there have been many times when I've done that when I've neither been feeling stress nor seen any stress factors in my life, however hard I've looked.

This is may favorite stim companion. If I'm overloaded, I can lock myself away for an hour or so, listen to whatever song is my particular stress releaver of the day on repeat, and sit, bounce/jiggle my legs/tap my heels, and softly brush/scratch the back of my neck...and I feel reborn afterwards, like everything that was wrong with the world is right again.

This is really weird and I don't know if it's a stim or not but I wiggle my fingers when I'm reading sometimes. I only do it when I'm alone of course. I used to read out loud while I was reading books until the age of 10. I pick my skin and hairs from my eyebrows. I have no idea if any of these are stims, I've been doing all of these things since I was a little girl. Oh, I'm not sure if this is a stim but sometimes when something painful is happening to me I pinch myself to take the focus of the pain away.

I LOVE making chicken noises!! ! I think I could win a chicken calling contest, if there were such thing.

I spin unravelled paperclips and often pace at the same time,again it relaxes me and helps me think.This had the added bonus that I often have a paperclip handy for use in any number of situations, I've used them to open plastic packaging ,press reset buttons and on one ocassion pick a padlock.I remember recently a friend asked me if I had a paperclip they could use , not knowing my condition or my stimming habbit.It got a big laugh when I said, "Alright there you go" and just happened to have one in my pocket.

My favorite stim is bouncing up and down making little excited claps, because its what I do when I'm excited and happy that I can't control. I like being in that sort of mood, so its my favorite stim.

I bounce my left foot. But I don't have a favorite stim, I just stim...

This is probably habit. I smoked for 20 years and lit up after I ate, certain places on my way to work, when I drank coffee (I LOVE coffee and cigarettes) when I got on the phone etc. When I decided to quit I stopped lighting up during the regular times to break the habits before I actually quit. I made myself wait. I think this helped me because I tried to quit 3 times and when I did this I was the time I was successful.

I wouldn't say that I have a 'favorite' stim, but I have a lot of stims. The one that I do the most is rocking and head-banging. I do that a lot.