List of Stims?

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I would like to know if there's a list of stims that I could look at, so I can say whether I stim or not. I don't think I do, however I would like to make sure since it seems pretty common for people with Aspergers, and I have that

I suspect that the notion behind stimming is less about what you do, and more about relieving some innate need that seems to drive one to whatever the "stimming" action is.

Rocking is a good example; someone might rock just because he or she happens to be sitting in a rocking chair, and I might not think it a stimming exercise; for my own part, I need to rock sometimes, and if I don't I can get terribly agitated; I was quite suffering when my rocking chair broke and it took a week for it to be fixed a while back; there is a driving need behind my rocking, and the rocking relives that need, calms and soothes me, so I count it as a stim.

Generally speaking, if you being prevented from whatever you might be thinking is a stim causes you some serious difficulty, agitation, meltdown, a general sense of "something is wrong", I'd tend to consider it a stim. I believe it is similar for people with OCD; what the compulsion at hand actually is varies widely, but generally OCD folks get some "relief" from satisfying their compulsion, and can get to a rather painful place if something interferes with satisfying that compulsion.

This is just my humble opinion on the whole stimming thing. And all that said, there do seem to be certain stims that are more popular or common (like rocking); I'm sure someone will post a list...

Good fortune,

- Icarus is a serial stimmer...

I stim for pretty much the same reason a cat sometimes purrs, either to express a feeling of well being when
I am calm or to obtain a feeling of well being when I am stressed out.
This is from Wikipedia:

Kaleido wrote:

MasterKron wrote:

Kaleido wrote:

Since I have found out about my Aspergers, I have noticed that I love thinking deeply, but I enjoy it so much that I seem to get over excited and will suddenly get up out of the chair and pace off into another room and wonder why I am there;

Quote:

I do this quite a lot myself. Often I find myself getting up and going to an empty room to pace around while thinking...usually not productive thinking either But it helps me get my space, particularly when I feel "people-d out."

I am so relieved that someone else does this too

I do this often when I am not doing anything but thinking. Other times I "stim" by rocking
back and forth. Another thing I sometimes do is stim in sync with some external stimulus,
ie: tapping my fingers in sync with a car's turn signal.

You could make the longest list possible and still someone would find a new stim in the next 5 minutes.

Everyone stims to some extent with NT stimming being considerably less than aspie stimming.

The important thing about stimming is not what you do (unless it's dangerous) but how often and why.

from a post in another topic: http://www.ican-do.net/stim_list.htm