Your Favorite Stim

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Pull out/on my hair
Flexing my feet/twist my limbs
Sing if I'm at home.
Grind my teeth
Hold my ears when I'm feeling emotional

The least destructive is playing with blu-tac

I repeat phrases too.

I do a lot of repeating too.

I fold the top portion of my ear over and press it against the canal. My ears are almost always cold on the outside edge, and hot in the middle so it's like a double bonus because the temperature difference is just enough that's its super soothing and distracting. I actually forgot that I do that until I read this, it's become such an unconscious movement.

lately I've been clapping, playing with my hands as if I were making a show with my hands. Rocking back and forth and hitting my head on my pillows.

Pacing has to be mine.

Mostly pacing or clicking buttons

I just wanna say thank you guys so much for all of your replies for two reasons in particular.

1) I wasn't even aware that a lot of these are Stims, and I do some of these myself.

and

2) I grew up, all the way through into full adulthood (30) in environments where it was imperative that I suppress my Stimming. Otherwise I was liable to be bullied to the point of physical violence or emotional abuse. And so now that I'm in my own home, a safe space, with a supportive significant other I am trying to start stimming again because otherwise I live in a constant state of burnout, depression and anxiety. But I've forgotten how to, and I have a lot of conditioned responses to my own stims where I feel ashamed for doing them. I've had plenty of advice from bloggers in the autistic support community as to how I can start stimming again and move past the negative responses. I was told I should try as many stims as possible, to keep trying them until the conditioned responses stop and I can be comfortable again with who I am, and so all of these examples help me SO MUCH. So thank you guys, from the bottom of my heart.

Tapping just above my top lip with my fingertips is my favourite. I like scrunching my toes up around certain textures, but I've wrecked my shoes doing that one.

Listening to German sounding Christmas songs over and over again.

Petting one of my cats.

for physical stimming i futz with a transformer for mental stimming i recite the names of the four dinobots whos names start with s from the original tv show (slag sludge snarl swoop)