What is stimming, examples?

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What is stimming? Can someone give me some examples of it?



I see some questions and such on here with the word stimming. I was just wondering if someone could share what it is and examples. Thank you very much!

Rocking, handflapping, pacing, covering/uncovering eyes, hitting yourself, headbanging, foottapping etc. Any kind of repetitive movements to calm yourself down.

Also-- use the search function. This has probably been brought up too many times. Just use it.

Repetitive self-stimulating behavior.. Rocking back and forth, flapping hands, making hand movements in front of oneself's face, and leg-bouncing are some common ones. I rock back and forth a lot, sometimes sway from side to side when i'm standing, bounce my legs, shake my foot up and down, shake my hands, and some other things, depending on my mood and what position i'm in at the time.

It can also be pacing, or -arguably- things like playing the same song on a cd player over for days at a time. It's a mechanism to calm, to put order on one's universe, or to just blow off excess energy. For me, when I'm sitting somewhere I almost always have one foot moving in some way. The more stressed I am, the more noticeable it is.

Thank you very much for the answers. Very much appreciated. I understand much better about it now, from what I read on a few posts. I didn't quite understand it, or what it was.

Very helpful.

I knock my fists together..I also pace in circles on my tiptoes...a lot.....
I may sing the same part of a song over and over again...There are also little strings of nonsense words that I may repeat to myself over and over...
I hand-flap..but not with my wrists so much as with my fore-arms side to side...There are a lot of little things that I do over and over again...

Would pulling out a couple dozen napkins out of a napkin dispenser in a neat stack count as stimming? I do that all the time when I eat at the cafeteria here at Job Corps.

I do two here:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5rgjiHhdRI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

The first is regarded as self-destructive behavior (along with head banging, skin picking, self-harming, or whatnot), the second is just an apparent "non-functional" motor mannerism. Both make me feel better.

Some stims can be embarrassing...

I unconsciously grab my breasts..without realizing I am doing it in front of people...

I used to always relate to the old SNL character Mary Catherine Gallager...esp. when she would say..

"Sometimes, when I get nervous, I stick my hands under my armpits and smell them....like this...."

Can be lots of things. I bounce my legs up and down, strum my fingers, tap my feet, and if I happen to have a click pen around, click it (to the annoyance of my teachers and peers.) Usually without realising it.

Those are most of mine.

They aren't specific ASD motor mannerisms though.

"Stimming" is just a better way to say "apparent non-functional motor mannerisms".

Rocking, flapping hands/fingers, spinning, head swaying, hitting, biting, screaming/singing on and on, copying mannerisms from something seen over and over again, rubbing various materials, making things spin, are all the big ones.

Personally, I'd say it's more to do with making order in a chaotic world with one's body (with some like rubbing various materials being specific sensory seeking behaviour).

I come up with some random stimmy things to do at work sometimes.. Like i'll spin something, tap something, or move something back and forth without totally thinking about what i'm doing, and then if a coworker is around they'll probably tell me to stop. Carrying a toy or something in my pocket to click and mess with helps. I usually only do things like hitting my head when i'm frustrated.. Although a few days ago my dad accused me of hitting myself when i was just kind of bouncing my hand on my head, not even hard, and wasn't thinking about it.
By the way, i love the video Daniel!

Thanks for the video Daniel.

Actually thinking about it now I do lots of repetitive stuff without knowing, sometimes it calms me down, it's energy or it's just something I just do. I repeat a song over and over, repeat noises, make noises with my mouth, tap my leg, tap my fingers on something, taking a plastic bottle hitting it on my head ( not hard but it feels good), saying LALALA kind of loudly, crack my wrists/fingers, sway side to side when standing, spin around (rarely but it happens), and sometimes i move my hands. Sometimes my hands just I have to move them sometimes a lot. I actually got this toy like things it's to calm the nerves and move it around with my fingers, though I forgot the name. Its the best thing ever. I used to cut myself daily, self-harm But I stopped that.

Stimming is a repetitive physical action that some of us do when we're feeling understimulated.

My stimming is pacing around a certain place while I wait for something or somebody, eg a train.

I didn't even realize it was an AS trait until recently, but I will make sudden movements with my head or either arm that are completely voluntary, but almost compulsive. I just have trouble sitting completely still in general, those are simply the most common manifestations of it.

I'm a picker.