Stim in public?

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For my own part, classifying rocking as a "stim" is a conscious choice; for my own part, I believe this to be an accurate classification.

There are a few reasons I consider my rocking to b a "stim".

First amongst these is the level of need. There are times, every day, when I really just need to sit down and rock. If someone happens to be in my rocking chair when I need to sit down, I'm well known for just walking up, and saying, rather sternly, "Move!" When I need to stim, I don't have time to explain or be nice; I just have some need in me that needs to be satisfied, and when it is not satisfied, I become very irrational and tetchy very quickly. Note my previous story here. That experience sucked, but it helped highlight this very serious need I have. Swinging in swings on a playground also seems to relieve this need to stim; I still enjoy swinging to this day, and when I take my son to the park, I do not hesitate to hop into the swing next to him and swing away. (Ha! Another example of stimming in public - a 34 year old man swinging in swings at the playground!) And, if I'm really in dire straights and need to stim, banging my head into a pillow while lying in bed on my stomach also works. I did this obsessively, every night, when I was growning up.

Second is my interesting history as a rocker. I began rocking when I was very young, 3, 4, around that age. Here's the kicker: the first several chairs that I rocked in, that I started rocking in, were not rocking chairs - they were just easy chairs that I started rocking in. I could also rock on a non-rocking couch, or in a real pinch, up against a wall with a pillow behind me. I mean, how strange is that, that the need to rock is so deeply engrained in me that I started rocking before I knew what a rocking chair was? For me, rocking is intimately tied with music; I always listen to music when I rock, often on headphones, and in lieu of anything else music will just play in my head. If the music is playing in my head, it may be music I've heard, but I often just improvise. I'm known to start humming the music I hear in my head, very loudly, without realizing it.

Third is that I observe these same obsessive rocking needs in my LFA/MFA son. He always seems to have had that "need" to rock, just like I do; he will find a way to rock even if there is no rockier available, just like I used to; he seems to associate the action with music, just like I do. And, as I mentioned, he's autistic, which is closely linked to that need to stim; I see in him one of many reflections of myself...

I find the existence of rocking chairs to be a very interesting thing; the same is true of playground swings. Is everyone who likes to rock/swing stimming? Is this a type of stimming that spans NT and AS? If someone who is otherwise "neurotypical" enjoys rocking, does that enjoyment encompass satisfying the same "need" that I exhibit? I do not have the answers, but I think these are interesting questions.

Good fortune,

- Icarus is going to go rock and think now...

I do some in front of others

Smoke (Bad stim, bad bad stim)
Pace
Shake my leg like I am trying to shake out a cramp or adjust some equipment.
Play with my pen. I have to have a clickable pen. No caps for me. I am a lot like the guy in the Die Hard movie.
Run my forefinger over my mustache in a c motion. Kind of hard to explain, but I will hold my finger parallel to my mustache and start on the right side and move it over to the left and down.


Some I try to not do in front of others.

Add on my imaginary adding machine. I add numbers up to see if they are divisible by 5 on it. In my mind the perfect numbers are divisible by 5. This one can get you some really weird stares.
Rapid leg bouncing. I tend to setup vibrations that others can feel.
Bite the ends of my fingers. I bite the skin off with my teeth sometimes.
Chew my fingernails. I chew them off and then use the file on my penknife to smooth them.

Usually by rocking back and forth on the soles of my feet or gnashing my jaws up and down.

I bounce and shake my legs, rub objects against my face, click my fingernails, drum my fingers, bob my head like a parrot and snap my fingers.

If I hear a sound, such as a ticking clock, I am compelled to move part of my body (feet and hands, usually) in time to it, like a metronome.

Is anyone able to answer my question?

Foot tapping very well could be a stim.

Here is a link to a brief article that describes stimming over at the autism wiki.

http://autism.wikia.com/wiki/Stimming

That's fantastic. I can't say I've heard of someone who touched things in anyway similar to the way I do, and then interacted with that sensation in any way.

For me, I've long since lost the battle of Imagination vs. Short Term Memory... but like so many things, I compensate:

Five minutes down the road to work on any given day, I can't be certain if I locked the house or not after I left... The more I think about it, the less likely I am to know for sure.

Reflexively, stimming, I squeeze any small thing I'm holding, or move it around in my hand, pushing the edges of them into my palms or fingers, tracing edges with my fingertips.

And my sense of Tactile Memory is WAY better than my short term memory, I can 'remember' the shapes of whatever has been in my hands for an hour after I've held them.

I can identify which key I had in my hand last, or (based on the shape and pressure against my thumb and the side of my index finger) if I turned a key in a lock recently, and what key that might have been.

As for my own stimming, I bounce one, or both legs, almost constantly. When I do both legs, I am vaguely aware that they bounce at slightly different intervals, so every five seconds or so the rhythm gets synchronous for one or two bounces, creating kind of a sin wave of sympathetic vibration. It amuses me that this reflexive action isn't identical between my two legs, that the neurons are on different clocks. It also amuses me that my flatline associates don't "get" my bouncing leg at all, but the idea that I think about the comparative rhythm would probably leave them completely dumbfounded.

I also flick my index and middle finger rapidly back and forth across each other...

I also touch things, with my fingertips or my lips (which is only less common because its substantially less practical... but the intensity of my senses is so much higher... anytime I'm holding something, [pen fork credit card] you can bet I'll be poking it casually into my upper lip).

I just discovered while writing this that not only does one stim usually causes another to dissipate in me, (like when I was tracing the keyboard keys with my finger... or resting my coffee cup on my lip, my pertpetually hopping leg rested peacefully), that THINKING about one or another will actually calm my leg as well for a short time.

I usually get this far and then my response gets less precise:

Me: "Uhmmm..."

People tend to like that even less, particularly if you don't imediately stop (I mean, why do something you can't even say why you're doing... lol)

Over time you can figure out socially acceptable of socially unobservable stimming methods that work very well.

Errr... yes... yes I do read forums backwards... and magazines to... which is less noticeable what with you not posting replies to a magazine... I will try to curtail that.

Is stimming voluntary? I thought it was, so I thought I stim, but I've read stuff to say it's not.

I avoid very big/obvious stims in public unless I'm in a strong mood (eg. really happy or really freaked out), so I don't often do things like run around on tip toes flapping when I'm in public but littler things I'll do in front of people, like just the walking on toes by itself.

I do, they're usually subtle ones so I think it doesn't look too weird, I'm more likely to stim around people I feel comfortable with because I don't need to supress it to impress them.

I like to scratch my head or pass my fingers through my hair =/ That's actually a primate reflex i think.

Now i only play with my curls, but i try to avoid it as much as i can. In the past i used to do a lot of things, but as i saw people laughing at what i did, i quit little by little.

I crack my fingers, tap my feet and run fingers through my hair in public and pace around in private.

I don't really do anything that is considered unacceptable in society.

I drum my fingers or tap my feet in public. I try not to do the other ones in public, though.