"socially acceptable" stims

Post Reply New Topic

I pick my lip - which for the post part I can do in ways not overtly noticable, though if I'ms tressed out and not paying attention to what I'm doing I can easily gouge out a large chunk of it.

I play with my rings and bracelets till I lose them or break them. Is that stimming? I caught myself doing it frantically today at a work meeting and wondered. I had never thought about it as stimming before...

The word you're looking for is "hobby" -- playing guitar and knitting is not stimming.

.......pity


Oh well, I'll take my stimulation, you take your repetitive motion thingy!!
What ever stimulates you. It's great to feel something other than numbness or emptiness, right?



right?

I have a large bump on my lip that is a permenant scar from a moped accident I was in as a very small child and I will chew on it..and then it will become inflamed and I can't stop chewing...it is very annoying..over the years, all I have done is aggravate it.

From what I understand, stimming is a form of self-regulation used to fulfill some sensory need a kid has. It is generally some kind of repetitive behavior, like finger tapping, rocking, hand flapping, and that sort of thing. Hobbies and some of the other things mentioned here aren't stims because they are not used to regulate your central nervous system using sensory input. I actually just attended a lecture today on Sensory Processing Disorder at the National Autism Conference. It was really interesting. It did talk about stimming a bit, but mostly focused on the different types of SPD.

Fortunately, that's a more socially acceptable kind of stimming- because NTs do it as well. That's right, NTs are stimming when they fidget with pens or bounce their legs. It's an attempt to regulate arousal through sensory stimulation. It's just that NT stimming is usually considered socially acceptable, while many autistic stims, like rocking and hand flapping, are not.

Yes. I see people doing this all the time. Although when I get going with both legs, my mom will usually put out her hand to stop me.

Nope. NTs stim, too. Many bounce their legs, tap their feet, fiddle with pens, twirl their hair etc., and those are technically stims. Just socially acceptable ones.

BTW, tics are not the same as stims. Like stims, tics are also repetitive motor movements or vocalizations. However, tics are things that people feel compelled to do, and they may often seem involuntary. Stims are more voluntary, although they do fulfill a sensory need the person has (note that tics do not do this). Tics are not used for self-regulation, although they might look like stims at times (depending on what they are), they're actually more similar in nature to the compulsions of OCD. People with Tourette's have tics, and then there are also separate motor tic disorders that don't require the person to have as extensive a number of tics as with Tourette's. Some people with an ASD also have tics.

Another difference is that stimming is pleasurable (or at least not unpleasant), while tics are *not* pleasant, and are merely something the person feels like they have to do. In other words, stimming is calming, while tics tend to disrupt the person's attention. Tics also tend to be more transient in nature, like maybe a person has a facial grimace tic, as opposed to someone with a hand-flapping stim. Typical children don't have tics by the way. They look weird, and children with tics are often intensely self-conscious about them.

Well I guesss that depends on your definition. I've read books that say playing solitaire or computer games are stims. Hence the thread.

That's still flapping?

Wow, I guess I flap pretty much all the time when I'm walking around, then.

I don't like obviusly stimming.
I thoung the roof of my mouth
I rub my toes agains the top of bottom of the inside of my shoes.
I slowly with pressure rub the palm of my hand with my fingures.

-Less invisible-
I i'm sitting at a desk and can get away with it, i love to pop my shoes off and rub them agains the floor.
I cup my chin like I'm thinking and rub my lip.
Sometimes, when I need more and have the room. I put me hands behind my neck with them overlapping then rub my neck
with my thumbs or index fingures. It's pretty invisible and (i think) just looks like a confident relaxed posture. I will look like an cocky, as*hole in the wrong context, eg a meeting.

I click my teeth - kind of like grinding them, but just clicking them one side then the other. It's harder for other people to see me doing it, so I guess it's my most socially acceptable stim.

I've seen several videos of Temple Grandin being interviewed and in documentaries and have noticed her mouth moving in a similar way. It makes me wonder if maybe she does the same thing.

I'm a hand rubber. I've noticed that almost anytime someone starts talking to me I start rubbing my hands together like I'm putting on lotion. Or I bend my fingers back, or press my thumbs into the center of my hands. I also rub my fingertips on rough surfaces, especially my thumbs, which I guess would only get annoying if it's on a surface that makes a lot of noise. This is a fairly new one actually.

I also twirl my hair alot, rub my face, and I've always had this weird throat tic since I was young. I remember because I made my mother take me to be tested for tourettes. I learned to sort of do it quietly/subtly (it involves noise and neck movement) but when I'm stressed it comes out a little more. I've also started scratching rough surfaces too.

No one has ever mentioned noticing, and I guess they're not really out of control. So I suppose it's socially acceptable?

I had gotten the idea at some point that 'stimming' isn't so much about what's being done as much as it's about HOW it's being done, maybe how long it's being done for, if it's being done 'unnecessarily', and if the behavior's approaching what 'mainstream' would consider as being overly redundant or 'obsessive'. I kinda thought 'stimming' is more along the lines of what I call 'zoning out' (if that phrase rings a bell...?) -- just kinda getting spacy while doing something (be it gaming, tappiing, endlessly chewing on something...) in a more-or-less purely mechanical (unthinking) way. I also thought that, yeah, NT's could engage in 'stimming' but that Aspies do so with much more frequency and intensity...and that Aspies have different responses if they're prevented in some way from completing 'stimming' activity - like they're much more reliant on the 'stimming' for easing tension. Maybe this last (tentative) conclusion isn't accurate, which could help explain why I don't seem to have much in the way of 'stimming' behavior (unless, of course, I'm just not evaluating/categorizing my day-to-day behaviors 'correctly'). About the only thing I seem to swing into 'stimming' mode with is a clicky pen. I try to store them out of easy access so I don't unconciously start clicking away and driving others crazy with the noise...though, it seems catching - like a yawn. One person starts it and then everybody just kinda falls in line! Ha!

One of my main stims is socially acceptable and is finger-spelling.

I finger-spell (spelling words with the sign language alphabet) the main words of what I'm thinking before I speak them. It's a stim that only shows up when I'm stressed, and is partially because I process finger-spelling different than verbal language and it helps force me to not lose the ability to speak, and partially because the movement is soothing (the stim part of it).

I think clenching your hands on your wrists is reasonable socially acceptable, and is apparently another one of my stims. My therapist noticed that one.

I can understand why people can think of knitting as stimming at times. When I specifically need to be moving my hands I'll sometimes work on my nalbinding. In those cases its specifically the repetitive motion and how the yarn feels in my hands that's what I'm going for, nothing about it being an activity I enjoy. I think it might qualify for the definition of a stim, but I tend to not consider it one.

I think most my other ones aren't so socially acceptable - things like rocking. I'm trying really hard to not pick up a stim that is pulling my own hair, but that's definitely appearing.