hitting my face

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I have been
hitting the area
right under my lower lip
with ping pong balls
and anything
that is hard.
I like it.
it feels nice.
it does not hurt.
do you do this too?

Is your post
a poem?

I am now

I sometimes do things like that. If I happen to have a pencil or ruler in my hand I might tap my head lightly. I never thought much of it, but it occurs to me now it might be a kind of stimming.

Yes, definitely stimming. I'll do things like that... rapping my fingers against my collarbone, for example. Hitting repetitively, slapping or punching oneself... all kinds of things. Sometimes frustration, sometimes because I've got a lot of energy with nowhere to go.

If you have a stim like this, remember that autistic people's nervous systems sometimes do not register pain correctly, which means that you may do damage to yourself without realizing it. Make sure to check yourself for any injuries. Superficial bruises are okay if you don't mind having bruises; scratches are okay if you keep them clean and let them heal. I often find bruises I can't remember getting when I take a shower (and, no, I don't have a bleeding disorder; I'm just clumsy and don't really notice getting hurt).

By the way, NTs often freak out about stims that cause injury or even things that look like self-injury but aren't--like punching yourself without leaving a mark, or chewing on your skin without causing bruises or breaking the skin. If they see you, they might worry, or they might put you on medication. Some NTs understand, but most of them haven't got a clue, and some of them actually get scared that you're going to really hurt yourself. They're usually wrong, but they don't really understand, and they don't know that they don't understand. So you might have to deal with some of that.

I do the rapping my fingers against my collarbone thing and I bite my fingers and get bruises on them. The cuffs of my jackets are frayed from scraping my fingernails against them.

I hit my cheeks when I'm hyper and bored.

It's more like a slap.