Spinning Circles/stimming

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I spin circles when I try to calm down and someone told me this is a stim. Is it?

I do it before I go to sleep, when I'm nervous, over-excited, stressed, or bored. It feels really good. When I first start, I feel excited and then I start feeling calmer. I often do it for 5-15 minutes. Do you feel like that when you stim?

The way you describe it makes it sound like a stim to me. The vestibular system is something I don't often hear people talking about when it comes to stimming, but I don't see why it wouldn't be a sensory system that people use to stim. I feel like mine is oversensitive--I get so incredibly nauseous if I spin just slightly, or even if I just sit facing sideways instead of forwards on a bus or train.

My diagnostic report mentioned spinning tops in childhood and said that the behavior is stereotypical.

You and the OP have opposite vestibular sensory systems; allegrorules has a hyposensitive system that almost "over-balances" her body, meaning that she needs a lot of movement to get the sensation of really moving. You on the other hand have a hypersensitive system, as you said, that struggles to keep you balanced when you're moving, so any sort of odd or novel movement is sickening and/or frightening because it takes so long for your vestibular system to register that you have changed positions, that you may have fallen over or gotten hurt before it registers the movement and corrects your balance. My vestibular system is very bizarre. I love the feeling of intense movement, spinning, swinging, etc. and yet such movement makes me feel sick quite quickly, so even though I want to, I can't stay on swings or carnival rides for very long.

I joke that my DS5 should probably become an astronaut because he can spin and spin and spin and seemingly never get dizzy or sick.

My lemniscate (∞) swaying pattern is more compact version of the spin and it's certainly a calming stim.

This is completely off the subject, but I love your profile picture.

I spin on my office chair a lot at work. Sometimes I get funny looks. Many times I do it without thinking. I have always looked at it as a stim, ever since I knew there was such a thing as a stim.

You make some interesting points here. While I do have trouble maintaining balance sometimes, I don't feel like there is any delay between movement and feeling like I moved, but rather I know immediately that I am moving and sometimes the sensation is just too much for me and I feel disoriented. I read that motion sickness (which is a big problem for me) is caused by discrepancies between what the eyes see and what the vestibular system feels, and the nausea response is actually an evolutionary trait that causes people to throw up because they may have ingested a poison that impairs the senses. If I have no or few distractions, and I focus very carefully with my eyes on the direction I am moving in, I actually maintain pretty darn good balance and don't get sick (hence why I need to face forward on the bus). Start talking to me all of the sudden and I'll spill my coffee and fall over backwards.

I avoid roller coasters big time, but I love mild vestibular sensations when I'm completely in charge of the activity and don't have any distractions. I'm in love with snowboarding because of this--put on some headphones, some category S4 goggles, and go into the trees where everything is monochrome and still, and it's like I'm flying (not like in an airplane though, I hate that).

Last edited by PowderHound on 01 Nov 2013, 6:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks! Yours is awesome top! Harry Potter is awesome.

Wow that's interesting! We seem to be almost opposites. Although I don't like airplanes or roller coasters either but that is because of all the people and loud noises.