What types of stims do you folks use?

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I haven't always paced to music, but that's the main thing I pace over now. I spend a lot of time doing it, especially when I get excited. In a way, it's made simple music come off as boring to me, because I will listen to parts of songs or the same song over and over in the same sitting (or should I say pacing?).

I've always twirled my hair as my eyes go crossed since I was a kid. I could imagine kids at school thinking I was extremely ret*d. A lot of times I would stick my tongue out too while I was doing it. I've quit for the most part, but every now and then I get this craving to let go, act crazy, and do it again. Especially when my hair grows out.

I like rubbing my fingers nails from my wrists to the top of my ring finger. Popping them is a hard habit to break, too. Actually, I've had urges to flap, but I've always resisted. There's a kid at school who had done it and I saw how people hurt him, so I held back.

Leg "shaking" and foot tapping primarily for me (I'd have been a great thrash metal double-bass drummer ), plus I rock a bit and drum with my hands and fingers sometimes, and I fiddle with my hair like a good 'un.

Last edited by TAFKASH on 05 Feb 2005, 8:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I chew on floss sticks. I love those things and it keeps my mouth busy or I chew the inside of my mouth.

I also "rock" myself to sleep. I lie on my side and rock back and forth until I go to sleep.

I also have to have something soft to stroke while going to sleep.

I quess you can say I pace, because I can't sit still!

Oh, I forgot the best thing!! I loovve to shred paper. Any junk mail that comes through my house is fair game!

I rock a lot.

I also am CONSTANTLY toying with something in my hand, usually spinning it.

I pace, usually looking at the ceiling, walking on the outsides of my feet. I do this for hours each day at work. I give a lot of training classes over the phone, and I picked up a 20 foot long phone cord and a headset. So I pace back and forth at the limits of the phone cord while talking and looking at the ceiling. I came across a slinky at work, and so I would relentlessly play with the slinky while pacing. Soon people at work started giving me LOTS of slinkys...

Snapping fingers, twirling hair, popping knuckles, rubbing my hands on my pants, tapping things, scratching.

I also tend to roll my shoulders a lot while walking. Usually every third step I will roll my shoulders. This is pretty involunatry, I do it without thinking about it.

chewing on the inside of my mouth excessively is the major one!

I used to rock and sing myself to sleep as a kid.

I chew the edges of my fingers all the time. I also crunch my hair between my teeth. I used to this continually as a child without realising. When I was 6 or so my teacher tied the two braids in my hair together to stop me (she suceeded until playtime when I untied them!). My mother used to tell me I would choke on my hair too.

I also jump up and down if I am very stressed although I hide away from people when I do this.

The most frequent stim I do nowadays without always being aware of it is banging my first and second fingers against my thumb, especially near my ear. I do it when I am stressed or concentrating or in one of the many situations I don't want to be in.

I also twich my legs and ankles a lot and always have done, even as a toddler.

During my teens I used to carry small pebbles in my pocket all the time and rub them until they wore down. They had to be smooth and my favourites were those that fitted into my palm so I could curl all my fingers around them. I say during my teens but I only stopped a couple of years back when I had my daughter and had to keep both hands on the pram! I still have a bag of my pebbles hanging on the headboard of my bed.

I used to do the head banging thing when I was younger but not anymore. I used to climb inside the built-in wardrobe in my bedroom, close the doors and lock them from the inside so that I could squeeze into the corner and bang my head from side-to-side against the two walls. I could do it for hours at a time. So much so that my parents would be screaming at me to stop the noise. Often they used to get so sick of the noise that they would go out. In fact just writing about it now makes me feel quite safe and calm again. However stressed and upset I was at the time (and I had some dark times) I would feel better sitting in the wardrobe.

I partake in...

Leg bouncing a lot
Spinning/fiddling with random inanimate objects
Clicking anything mechanical and clickable (mechanical pencils, remote control battery covers and the sort)
Rocking a tiny bit when alone
and a host of other smaller stims

Oh yes - my remote control battery covers are all sellotaped on because I always break them from constantly clipping and unclipping them..... I never considered this as a stim, but maybe it qualifies.....

I love this or even an empty one as long as it the top is firmly screwed on ~ the trapped air inside makes it nice and bouncy (makes a good sound too ~ I could do it for ages).

Others:

leg bouncing
Knuckle cracking
Drumming my fingers on things
making patterns with the tips of my fingers and my thumb together
Bending my fingers back as far as they go
waggling my foot

And many more ..............

I mostly bite nails and suck or chew my knuckles. The nail biting has destroyed my front teeth, not just my nails. My dentist has told me to stop, or I'll need root canals someday.

When the nails on my hand are too low to chew, I'll bite the skin of my knuckles. This has made my knuckles appear calloused and red all the time. Also, I'll tear my toenails apart. I'll click them with my fingers over and over again as well.

I'm always doing something...

I've also picked at wounds. Once, I kept an open wound on an ear going for a very long time. Perhaps a couple years. I was embarassed by it, so when I'd go out I'd bandage it or try and hide the wound behind my hair. I just couldn't keep from touching it, peeling the skin away. I'm glad I don't do that anymore!

Is talking to yourself stimming?

Dexedrine is my stim of choice. Caffeine is just too weak. Doses that make other people have psychotic episodes give me borderline ADD at the worst.

I apologise in advance for the length of this post. I just have too much bouncing around in my head and need to let it out.

I never thought I had stims until I read the above posts, mainly because I thought the term just referred to the exagerated rocking and flapping typical of low-functional autistic children. Now it turns out I have a *lot* of stims. The good news (for me) is that most of them are fairly mild and safe to do in public.

When I was very young my mom says I used to stand and bang my forehead against the wall and I used to like spinning (myself, toys, swings), but neither were persistent enough to cause worry. Now I only bang the back of my head against the seat or the wall when I'm comfortable. I also love to put the cap back on plastic pop bottles and bounce them against the top of my head. These aren't quite compulsive -- If I have a pop I'll bounce it, but I won't buy a pop *just* because I want to stim. When sitting at my desk I constantly use my left hand to play with my ear, pinch my lower lip or nose between my thumb and index finger, or rub my scalp above my left temple (which is now a small bald spot that's more or less masked by my retreating hair line). If I grow any kind of beard I end up rubbing my chin until it hurts and eventually I end up with in-grown whiskers in that one spot. When I shave I have to get every single whisker or else I'll find one I missed and rub and pick at it all day long with my non-existing finger nails. I've been eating my finger nails for 39 years now and show no sign of slowing down. When I run out of nail on all ten I just keep on chewing at them from above (like biting into an apple) or eating away at the skin around them until I'm bleeding. When I was living at home my mom used to make me dip my fingers in bleach or coat my nails with some bitter stuff she bought but it never made any difference at all. When I'm sitting I often bounce my knees up and down without lifting the balls of my feet off the floor. I also chew on my tongue.

Any one of these might not be seen as a stim in isolation, but I'm *always* doing at least one of them. My mother thought they were just bad habits, and therefore so did I until very recently.

I experience some synesthasia (sp?) at night when I'm passing through that region between awake and asleep -- if there's a small, sudden noise like the click of the thermometer contacts closing then I see a bright white flash and taste electricity on my tongue. Sometimes I even have a muscular reflex. The drone of flourescent lights only bothers me at certain light levels. It makes me tense as if I had been drinking too much coffee.

I don't want to bore you, but I saved the best for last! My favorite stim, if you could call it that, is to immerse myself in sound. Rather than trying to avoid loud sounds like most people, I try to avoid the silences between them. If I'm feeling stressed and want to "tune out" the world I put on headphones and crank the amp as far as it will go without distorting. My musical taste is varied, but it has to be a relatively high content ratio. This means that music with a strong beat has to have strong "filler" between the beats. Techno usually works well, but some classical music is surprisingly good, too (like Handel's "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba"). Sure, I like singing along to a pop ballad just like most people, but it's not the same thing. If the music is "full" enough and loud enough it overwhelms my ability to think and I sort of drift off into a stupor like someone who's had too much alcohol and is on the verge of unconsciousness. Best part: no hangovers.

Knuckle/neck/toe cracking
Stroking/twirling hair
Finding and pulling knots in hair
Rocking back and forth
Jogging in place
Nail biting
Chewing on knuckles/fingers
Twitching legs
Foot tappng
Rubbing hands together
Humming/singing
Chewing pen/pencil
Drumming fingers
Fiddling
Pace/skip/hop around
Chewing inside of mouth
Chew hair
Take apart pen/pencil
Look around, usually at ceiling
Stretching

***

chewing lips (BAD!)
tapping fingers
tapping feet
scratching head
pulling faces
playing with hair
humming
singing (no words, made-up tunes)
rubbing fists together
clapping fists/wrists (like clapping hands)
picking at skin around fingernails
rubbing fingers (like snapping your fingers, but slowly)
looking at snow
looking at sun spots (like the cat does)
rubbing table/chair/floor
echolalating funny words (or non-funny words, until they become funny)
jumping
flapping arms
pressing hand against back of neck (good against nervousness)
spinning things
spinning self
making vocal noises
doodling with glitter pen

***

WOW! I can hardly believe this stuff. I have some doubt that I am AS but I def. do stim

for example I

Shake legs
run hand through hair (I keep it short so it dosen't look to messy)
play with hands
play music over and over (first it was 1812 overture when I was 10-12, imperial march when I was 12-18 and today it is anything wagner. My family is ready to kill me if they ever hear any of that stuff again!)
Play with spring loaded pens by clicking them and making them go as high as possible
bounce mechanical pencils off the desk (erasers)
roll shoulers at reg. interverals
stretch every 15 minutes or so

when I was younger I used to skip/shuffle everywhere untill that was, well, conditioned out of me by parents/teachers.

I also would hit my head agiast walls but never got caught

It seems most people never notice this unless my leg shaking is hitting something and making a lot of noise.

I do remember one incident where I was drafting and I was trying to imagine exactly how the drawing would look that I started to put my head in my hands and massage it very throughly and moan quite loudly; I was just stiming, but the teacher and everyone else in the room saw it and thought I was dying or came down with a case of severe food poisoning. When the teacher asked me if I was ok, I quickly realized exactly what had happened and laughed out loud. I still think this is funny but some might be distrubed. . .


(edit to add following)

Cracking knuckles
rolling shoulders
pull hairs out (nose, back of arm, head)
spin coin and balance on end

Last edited by Prometheus on 11 May 2005, 2:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.