Your Ways Of Stemming?

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I'm just curious what other peoples ways of stemming are on here? Ever since I can remember I've twirled Beads (The costume beads)
and I've rocked back and forth occasionally while listening to music.

I've never seen it spelled "stemming". I usually spell it like "stimming". Either way works though

-I mess with the jewelry I'm wearing (I've broken a lot of rubber bracelets lol)

-I crack my knuckles

-I bounce my legs a lot

-I do stuff with my hands, like flap them or run them through my hair

-I sing whatever song is stuck in my head(only at home or in private though)

-I click my teeth almost half of the time, usually to the rhythm of a song

-I run my fingers over different textures

I: Grind my teeth, bite my cheeks, inner lips, outer lips, chew things, tense my leg muscles, rub my face, clench my hands, move my fingers in just about every way imaginable, with a few complex motor patterns thrown in there, drum my fingers (that one's fun cause I'm good at it), tap my fingers, tap my toes, rock back and forth, etc., etc., etc. Oh, and I'm just a generally fidgety person to begin with. I don't stop moving. It troubles me to see people sitting still for more than a few seconds. Why don't they need to shift around?

I am almost always stimming in one way or another. Even when I sleep, as I toss and turn and kick all night (if you can call that stimming).

Also, I like the word "stimming". It perfectly evokes the sort of childish restlessness I think most of us experience most of the time.

I stim with phrases repeated over and over ...

It is totally embarrassing if someone hears me.

My present stim is to repeat "the power of Christ compels you ..." for a few mins over and over.
[movie quote from the exorcist]. I must of heard it and it stuck in my head. I probably said it a few hundred times
this week.

There is another one I say now but I am too embarrassed to say what it is.

I yawn a lot, twirl my nose piercing around, pick at my cuticles... nervous habit sort of stuff.

A Stim (sterotypy) is a repetitive movement done to offset autistic anxiety (you may not be consciously aware of it, if you've lived with it all your life, but autistic people are in a near constant state of anxiety). Rocking, Swaying, Leg bouncing, hand flapping - all stims. Done because they are soothing.

Hair twirling, nail biting, etc - fidgits, not stims. They may also occur due to anxiety, but are not particularly soothing to the nervous system.

Just because something can be said to be technically "self stimulating" does not necessarily qualify it as a 'stim' in clinical terms.

I have a really weird stim - my family is grossed out but they never managed to get me to stop (I was just doing it which is why I realised - otherwise I never would have remembered to think of me doing this as a stim)

So what I do is a complicated gesture involving my fingers, the flap of my nose and my lips

one part is pulling gently on one of the nostrils while at the same time puckering up the top lip and then stretching the nostril across the lip (its a very soothing silky feeling), and the next part is pressing down on the upturned lip with my thumb nail so that a bit of skin gets caught in between the nail and the skin of the thumb - that can hurt a bit and I don't always do that part. I also do a fingerless version of just rubbing the inside of my top lip on my nose. It's all totally unsexy. lol

I've done this as long as I can remember and I have no idea how I started it although it may have had something to do with the disappearance of 'blankie' which was my childhood blanket with satin edging which I used to rub inbetween my fingers before going to sleep. My aunt does this with the corner of the pillow but for me pillow cases are too rough.

I also do various finger rubs and leg bounces and hair twirls and sometimes when I am really stressed out and around people so have to do it discretely, I rub the finger of one hand very hard with the other hand's forefinger and thumb - sometimes I have to dig in and self harm a bit if the situation is really challenging.

I focus one eye on a point on the nose, then the other, and repeat ad nauseum.

I also crack my knuckles :I

-Knee Bobbing

-Push in my forehead with my finger

-Sitting on my hand

-Staring at something in a dissociating like manner

-Wrist twisting

-Putting my hands together and squeezing them

-Moving my foot in circles when laying down

I've got more, just can't think of all of them now.

My non-verbal, 4 year old also clicks his teeth together. I don't know why he does and would like to know the reason why. He also hangs off the edges of a surface - a table, a moving gate etc - so that there is pressure on his tummy.

I am clueless why. I know it must feel good or he wouldn't be doing it. I just posted about his visual stims - flicking his fingers while holding his hand in different positions and staring at lights through the corner of his eyes - and these are the ones I am worried about. Could they be due to any visual problems ?

I rock, handflap, stretch my arms out in front of me, bite my finger, shake my leg, chew the inside of my cheek, touch everything, do figure eights with my hips,pick at my skin, pace, and roll my head.

I rock back and forth 24/7. I always have a music playing in my head. Over and over and over. When I'm in a car, I'll bang the back of my head against the car seat.

Sometimes if I'm not in a car, I'll rock from side to side instead.


Other than that, I pull on my facial hair like crazy, to the point where I pull it out. Especially the random stray neck hairs. Second most picked place is my goatee.

I am in a near-constant state of motion. Leg-bouncing and shaking (up/down and side-to-side), pacing, sometims rocking, picking at my skin, playing with my hair, fiddling with objects, talking to myself (sometimes in a delayed-echoailiac manner) are a few of the stims that come to mind. I don't hand-flap, but I have some stims that involve moving my entire arm in a flapping manner (think of a bird flapping its wings).