Stimming

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What are your most common stims? Do you stim more in private or in public?

I stim by putting my hands together and tapping the sides against my face, clicking and highlighting text when on the computer, flapping my hands, and doing other hand movements. I stim both in private and public, though I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed about stimming when people are looking at me.

As an adult out in public, my stims can pass for me being seen as a nervous NT.
I try to watch myself and not stim at work.

As a child, I had more of the classical autistic stims ...
my dad gently put a stop to me rocking in the car because it was becoming a safety issue,
and once he saw me doing a stim at home that the general public would see as weird,
so he simply told me that if I wanted friends, I should not do that in public.

As an adult in private, I may rock from side to side while sitting.
Or I may pace if I get good news and have no one to tell at the moment.

In public the most I do is put my hands together in front of me and tap my thumbs together, sometimes I will do other stuff with my fingers if I don't pay attention.

In private, my leg will bounce or I pace, a lot.

As a child I used to to stim by wagging my foot while sitting, or rocking forward and back some, or making little rhythmic motions almost like dancing while standing or sitting, but those made me the object of bullying in school and I repressed those. Now as an adult I find just tiny motions, invisible to others, help almost as much - things like rubbing thumb and forefinger back and forth in very tiny rapid motions or running my tongue rapidly up and down over a front tooth. They're small motions, but they sort of fill up my mind and make me feel internally connected and help me focus. I definitely stim more when I'm stressed and this happens more often when I'm in public - especially if I'm sitting down in a group of people, like in a class or lecture or at dinner.

Usually, I tend to wiggle my fingers back and forth shortly if focusing in a store, hand-flap, chew, lightly bump my lips in order focus for a short time and move my legs/toes when sitting, say one-syllable sounds if happy. There is definitely more stimming in public places for me because there is more stimulation going on, a place might be new, etcetera.

Which stims come out the most in more stimulating situations or new situations?

I wonder if my habit of moving my fingers back and forth on my lower lip classifies as stimming. My mother says, I've been doing this since she stopped breastfeeding me. Except for this remark, nobody seems to pay attention, so I do it both in private and in public.

I've been wondering about this. I don't know if I stim or not and I can't remember if I did when I was younger or how that might look like.

I've been observing many Aspies on meetups for years now and I usually don't see anything I would recognize as stimming other than shaking their legs when sitting down. Sometimes I can see and feel the vibrations around me. And I do that shaking myself from time to time. Usually I do it because there's some restlessness in my body and I just have to do it for some reason I don't understand. I think it happens when I get exited or as a method of coping with stress or just when there have been too much input from around me in a social situation, at least that is the situations I can remember what I felt like when doing it.

A particularly intense instance of what could be interpreted as stimming happened to me some weeks ago at a non autistic meetup. I did not know anyone there and for all I knew all of them was NTs. The meetup was very intense for me and lasted for a long time. After awhile my body felt weird and restless like I had to release some kind of pressure to cope. I moved my leg as I usually does but also other parts of my body like flapping my hands. It got so bad I had leave before anyone would notice. I did not feel negatively bad in the situation, just very exited and tired as I had a lot of impressions to digest and think trough. Walking home the restlessness lasted for some hours until I went to bed and it finally stopped. This happens to me occasionally, but is that stimming?

Is it possible for someone on the spectrum to not stim at all? Do everyone stim? even NTs or animals? I've seen people I know probably is not autistic shake the leg like that so it has to be common I guess.

I asked the question of stimming at one of the last aspie meetups, trying to get a discussion going and figuring it out. But I did not feel like I got any clear answer. Some did not even know what it was so others had to explain it. So maybe I'm not the only one a bit confused

My GF said this is my biggest stim when in the house , I've never considered it as stimming.

I just don't see the act of using a mouse as stimming especially when it's serving a purposing. If I was just randomly clicking I'd probably agree.

Edit: I just told my GF about this post and she said I randomly click all the time

Yes, NTs stim.

I think some stereotypical NT stimming behavior includes
chewing on pencils or pen caps, twirling or flicking their hair,
chewing their nails, drumming their fingers on a desk.

I've only been called out a few times for shaking my leg in public,
so maybe that stim is on the borderline of autism and NT.

That's the thing. It doesn't really serve a purpose for me. I don't need to highlight text, I just do.

I just tried that , it's quite satisfying I sometimes use the on screen keyboard to type out posts as it's more clicking

Flappy hands, rolling wrists, spreading fingers, wriggling fingers in a certain sequence, picking at scalp, nails or skin, clicking nails together, flicking fingers, rocking, leg bouncing, hair fondling...to name a few.

I stim wherever, public and private.

In public, I keep my stimming to something that NT's do such as chewing on a pen cap or twirling my hair. In private, I bounce my knee when I'm sitting. It's what I've learned when trying to blend in, ever since the second grade after the teacher I had briefly got on my case for "fidgeting" when I was really stimming. My parents pulled me out of that class, and had me go to another class, and for the rest of my school career, no other teacher complained about me not sitting still in class.

Rocking and moving my hands and arms a lot and making sounds. When excited or upset also slapping/swatting my legs, chest and head.