Adults: stimming in general

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Before I read this thread, I considered my only stim to be playing repetitive snips of notes on guitars and bongos while at home, and drumming my fingers on surfaces.

Now I'll have to include:

biting my fingernails
Cracking finger and toe knuckles
Humming a ditty while I eat (picked this up from an ex)
clipping toenails
Picking at that 'almost-fingernail' material at the end of my fingernails (the anti-cuticles?) with stuff such as split-in-two soda-can stay-tab opening mechanisms
Rubbing my index fingers laterally across the tips of their accompanying thumbs
Bouncing on my toes while waiting
Touching walls while I walk
Trying to analyse the periodicities of two repeating signals (Right now: my mouse has an LED which changes color in 2 second intervals, while my wireless broadband dongle blinks 4 times a second. How often does the change in mouse color coincide with the blink of the dongle?)
Making !Xhosa click sounds
Having ludicrous self-conversations with my cats. ("my cat is made out of 15 billion porpoises." "No I am not!")
Stacking salt and pepper shakers and such at restaurants
Taking stuff apart (I have dis-and-reassembled many things I own, and also find myself trying to do so while in public)
Bending paperclips and copper wires until they lose their structural integrity and snap

Ignorance was perhaps bliss.

I'm so glad I've read all the posts on this thread. Me and my older brother have been stimming since we were kids. When I went to school I had to stop cos I'd 'come out' of the stim and all the kids and the teacher would be staring at me and I'd get teased about it.

I get this feeling of incredible pleasure arising in me, almost a religious feeling....and I put my hands together and rub them manically....and get a vision of what I'm stimming 'about'. If I'm in a situation where other people are around I just freeze my body and tightly close my eyes and the energy flows through me.....crazy....but exhilerating. Music seems to set it off as does imagining riding at some ludicrous speed on a motorbike, flying a fighter jet, having a space battle with evil aliens, etc. Thinking about the nature of reality and atomic particles and the universe, etc also gets me stimming good and proper.


All sounds like fun but it leads to a solitary life as I can't be around people too long as I need to get back home to four walls so I can have a right good stim!

I click my teeth to sound like a horse galloping or play a rhythm by clicking them. The hose one I have done for as l remember and especially in exams. I've never stopped to ask if anyone can hear or notice.

I shoogle a lot. Like jerky jumpy legs or wiggle my hands off my thigh thumb and pinkie in a Phone sign. I also rock when I'm upset.

I love rhythm so tap my fingers or nails all the time. I am a dashboard drummer but i see loads of people in their cars doing the same so don't really consider it stimming.

When I'm stressed I do a kind of incy wincy spider movement with my fingers but the squeak of the grooves on my finger tips lately means I've had to stop. Didn't notice I did this until the squeaking started.

Don't know if this is stimming in an AS sense but I enjoy it so what does it matter?

I leg bounce whenever i'm sitting, mostly just the right leg. It used to really annoy my mum when we were watching TV, and the people behind me in lecture theatres probably hate how their desks vibrate due to being attached to my chair (i try to control this as much as possible by doing something else, but it never works for long). I actually thought leg bouncing was normal, but in hindsight i don't know why since i rarely see anyone else doing it!

If i'm stressed i'll rock, and if it gets very bad i'll hum at a specific "soothing" frequency that resonates. I once told a close friend about my hum and they looked utterly baffled. I thought it was a very helpful calming technique that i had "discovered".

I used to frequently air-type the words i spoke, but have quashed that in favour of more leg bouncing (which seems innocuous enough until you share a couch with somebody!).

When i first heard of asperger's i saw the hand flapping, noises, and clumsiness as key symptoms. I had no idea that what i considered to be normal distractions were "stims"!

Edit: When my mum stopped me from bouncing my legs i would regularly click the battery cover on the tv remote. It got so bad that she ended up taping them on to either stop me (i usually broke the tape with my nail), or because they were worn out and would fall off.

Snap my fingers
Play with my hands/belt/strings
Rock back and forth when studying or really concentrating
Grab at my neck, almost like i am choking myself.
Get tattoos

I can't relate to the "flapping hands" thing (are other people with AS really flapping their hands like birds?) but I absolutely can never sit still. I'm always pulling at and pressing on my fingers as if I'm popping my knuckles, even if they don't need to be popped. I'm rubbing my hands as if I'm washing them. My legs and feet are scarcely better at staying still. I notice myself doing the stereotypical rocking back and forth when I'm sitting indian style, reading a book or watching TV, but it's not intense. If I'm wearing a belt or have a pull string on my clothing, it'll be in my hands being played with. Same goes for any small object near me. (Chap sticks, pens, coffee cups.) Lord knows what else I'm leaving out or just don't notice about myself.

EDIT: Other things I've remembered: Chewing on my lips and the inside of my mouth, making clicking noises with my tongue, running fingers or knuckles along walls, smelling my hands and other objects, curling my toes, picking fuzz or hair off things (especially my own clothing). Is talking to yourself really considered stimming? If so, I certainly qualify.

Weird. It's possible that I do it and I'm just not aware of it. The only hand flapping I'm aware of is when I've been typing or writing for a while and I shake them to get rid of the stiffness.

Rocking when nervous or watching a movie; always fiddling with fingers, rubbing them together; sometimes facial grimaces; shrugs foot tapping and shaking. Had a host of very unusual behaviors as a child, at least never heard of anyone else doing them, seem to have replaced those with compulsive electronic game playing, puzzle book working with gel or felt-tip pens, for a certain level of physical and mental release or stimulation.

While I'm bored I tend to tap my fingers against the table in time to whatever music I'm thinking of at the time. Also, when I'm concentrating very hard I tend to rock slightly back and forth. Nothing too extreme, though it was a bit more pronounced when I was younger.

I am almost 39 and stim all the time, but am able to mostly confine it to when I'm at home. I flap and "punch" the air a lot when I'm excited about something.

If I'm in public I mainly finger drum and move my fingers around. When I'm working I usually have a pen and kind of twirl it back and forth.

I probably stim as much as I did when I was a kid, but began hiding it when I reached my teen years. I know my parents thought I had "grown out of it."

I stim all the time. I'm pretty good about doing it only when I'm by myself but once in a while I "slip." I don't really care.

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