Is "stimming" necessarily an ASD thing?

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My boyfriend, who has OCD and ADD among other things, does all kinds of things when he's bored or nervous. Most memorable is the time I was clothes shopping, he was bored, and... I looked over at him and he's spinning in circles and flapping his arms and humming. I told him that flapping and spinning in public probably wasn't the best idea, and to my surprise, he stopped doing it. But I guess the stress had to go somewhere... because he currently scratches his arms instead of flapping. He does lots of other things when he's bored or stressed, namely

-Scratches
-Hums
-Sings (and really badly, too )
-Shakes his leg/knee
-Does this walking/pacing/spinning/roll head thing, it's hard to describe

And when he's REALLY nervous he wrings his hands and rolls his eyes into the back of his head.

I know some of these things are def ASD behaviors... could it also be related to ADD and OCD?



~Grace

YA, non ASD'ers also can stim

I am an ADDer and I stim (of course I also strongly suspect myself of having AS)

I'm not quite sure if I have it, but yes I do stim alot

Stimming is something that the majority of people [regardless of neurotype] are supposed to do,they are just repetitive behaviors.
The reason why it gets associated mostly with autism and aspergers is because stimming is more common amongst autists and there are some stims that are more likely to find an autist doing,such as rocking.

Why the hell do doctors make big deal out of us stimming? Lot of people do it, it's human nature.

Even aspies make a big deal out of them and us doing it.

Well, I think almost everyone stims. But for most people, their stimming involves biting their nails, whistling, tapping their feet, doodling, etc. Those are "normal" stims. Autistic people get called out for it because ours are weirder, more noticeable, and probably less controlled than NTs, who tend to to it more when bored. Hand flapping is a pretty autistic thing to do - I don't know many people without some type of mental disability who hand flap to the point where it is noticeable. I've never seen anyone else look like I do when stimming.