Adults: stimming in general

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i'm a musician and play classical piano but mostly js bach and i'm new to learning about AS. i was unaware of my stimming but it must be true like so many have realized...i need to think...ok, that was long enough. i use a teeter (inversion table) to help me "contain" my body like wrapping up in blankets i guess. Temple Grandin has a machine to crawl into and it must be similar to the comfort the teeter thing gives me. i am always moving my fingers because it feels good after playing hours everyday but i think it's a stim as described by others...ah well, i can think of other things to get paranoid about like being diagnosed with bi-polar disorder even though the Dr's knew i had first degree relatives with autism...i guess the bi-polar drugs pay more to doctors than dealing with a syndrome? i'm sorry i'm rambling, i'm just still processing and i'm happy to have found this place.

Speaking of playing piano, one of my most common stims is to play "piano" on a table top or just in the air... or just touching my fingers individually to my thumb as if it were a piano key.

Also:

hand flapping
walking in circles
leg-bouncing
making sucking sounds with my tongue
scraping things off my skin

I think publicly I only do the leg-bouncing and "piano" playing.

Leg bouncing
Cross one leg on top of other and foot bounce
hand flapping
Biting lip
Biting inside of cheek
Neck pull


Man put us all in a room with a couple NT's and we could drive them insane

@FredOak -

My favorite is shaking out my hands - I guess it's hand flapping, but it looks like when you quickly shake them dry. It feels sooooo good, especially the instant I stop and it tingles. I try not to do it in public.

I do tons of other things too, mostly with my hands.
tapping my fingers
making them flutter
leg shaking
moving my knee back and forth while standing
mild rocking, especially when I laugh (when it's really funny, the hands get going too )
running my fingers through my hair
twirling my hair

'keep thumbs inside my palm of my hands
sing same song over and over'

I have always held my thumbs in my hands and have only recently wondered if this is related to AS/ASD! Its funny because when I realise i'm doing it and try to stop it feels so natural that I can't stop. As with singing same song over and over I tend to do this in my head constantly. I even seem to do it when thinking about something else (my mind always goes back to the song). I also reverse words in my head constantly and have become very skilled at 'talking backwards'.

Suzi

I stim a lot. Nothing really obvious but lot's of smaller ones. Sometimes when I'm waiting on the bus stop I make stupid noises and stuff (when ALONE).
Just for an experiment I want to see if I can spend a whole day not moving anything or messing with anything and see how long I last, I have a feeling it won't last long.

i pick my fingers. they are always ripped up and cut and sore

Ah this is a fun thread!

In public I can be seen doing:
Extreme™ foot tapping or odd movements on my right foot
Hand flapping just before starting a project or typing something (helps the blood flow!)
Rocking in chairs while foot tapping in sequence
Rubbing my thumbnail with my index fingernail so it makes a clicking sound
Drumming with pens to songs, usually lose the rhythm after a few taps though for some reason
Spinning pens around in my fingers while reading or concentrating
Licking lips
Right eye closes when I enter rooms, not sure if that's a stim or just adjusting to light changes
I always cough after eating

In private I can (not) be seen doing:
Doing a half somersault and balancing myself on the small of my back with my knees on my eyebrows
Pace around in small areas and jump up and down until I wear out (haven't done this in a while though)
Keeping a pillow/stuffed animal against my chest at all times
Rocking with my right foot when laying down, sitting up I rest my elbow on my right knee and it moves my whole right side
Chewing on things like straws or toothpicks until they are destroyed (I used to have a whole drawer filled with straws, all gone now )
Always tossing things in the air and trying (badly) to catch them; lightweight table coasters are my favorite!

I did once get caught in the bathroom of a restaurant lying on my back; the man looked under the stall and made this odd face and just left the restroom without saying a thing. I quickly got up and ran out to my car to make sure he didn't come back with a manager!

I fidget a lot, but in a way that's socially acceptable, or at least the people I hang around don't give me a hard time over it. I especially like touching small metal objects like coins or keyrings, and putting them in my mouth. I've been doing this since I was 2 or 3. I used to get SCREAMED at for sucking on coins, but I guess it's not something I can help. Sometimes I'll find myself touching the zipper on my coat or change in my pocket without even realizing it.

Other stuff:
Coin spinning
Drawing
Pacing, jumping, and running
Wringing my hands and stretching my fingers
Picking at hairs and dead skin
Leg bouncing
Fingernail digging
Applying pressure with my legs so parts of my body go to sleep (ankles, back of my knees, hands)

I don't think my private and public stims are all that different. Maybe the amount that I stim in a particular way varies or I don't use one stim because I'm not in an environment where it's possible.

stims:

rocking
humming
pressing buttons on my computer repeatedly, especially to scroll up and down a webpage or spin the camera in a virtual world
rubbing my arms/hands
digging my nails into my fingers
alternately clenching muscles
tapping my fingers
bouncing my legs
staring at parts of objects
rubbing my tongue against the roof of my mouth
alternately clenching my toes
biting the inside of my cheek
rubbing my face

I have several common stims but I also have one that is a bit unique. Many years ago, my best friend was studying to become a sign language interpreter and through the course of her studies (and because one of my focuses is languages), she taught me sign--starting with fingerspelling. I eventually became very fast at fingerspelling, so much so that it became somewhat subconscious. Eventually I could just think a word and fingerspell it at the same time without concentrating on what my hand was doing.

As I got better at it, I would do it without even noticing & it became a stim. To this day, I'll sometimes realize I'm fingerspelling things people are saying (usually out of their field of vision) and have to make myself stop. Interestingly, some of my other stims that were more annoying or distracting to others were sort of displace by this more innocuous one.

never realized the leg bouncing thing was a stim. Ive had friends remark that I had ADD before and that they could tell by my Leg bouncing.
(I was also given the nickname thumpper in HS because I would do so almost constantly (thumper was the legg bouncing rabbit in disney's movie Bambi)

I also rub my feet together,(cant get to sleep without doing so, also cannot sleep without socks so maybe its a fabric thing)
flex leg muscles to rythem or thoughts
and I have had more then a few pens that click taken away from me.

I only have a few extreme stim behaviors, most of which are gone now, due to the fact that I have learned to manage my stress level better.
Used to grind my teeth, so bad in fact, I'm still trying to fix alot of the damage from it.
Hair pulling (cut my hair short so I wouldnt do it, and ended up with another stim instead
Nail biting and diging. (told everyone I kept my nails so short so I could play guitar better)
When I was a teenager I went into self harm, but instead of cutting I would stab myself with pencils/pens and things.
(I have a perm spot on my left arm where I have a blue dot from a compulsive pencil stab)

I always Talk to myself! I love it. and when I was a child, I wouldnt stop singing songs in my head (and I always have 2 or three going at the same time)

I always keep figit toys near me or in pockets, toy prefrence tends to change depending on mood, so I have lots of types around,
(used to not be able to to play roleplaying games with friends unless I was spinning a die, so I started bringing a small toy top to spin in game (quieter then the die)
and my collection grew from there.

I also recently learned a bit of basic ASL. I too, have to stop myself from signing everything a person says, because I can.

Oh, and I dont know if this would be considered a stim or not. but I have a tendancy to bow to people. (asian style) I am not asian, and I have really no idea why I do it, It has a tendancy to tick off people, and gain me respect at the same time.

thats It for now, At least those are the ones I know about.

I type too! I type out entire conversations while I'm having them. Or song lyrics when I'm listening to music.

It's hard for me to control some of these in public, especially when I'm depressed. Ones I do almost anywhere:

-trichtillomania/twisting and dreadlocking specific locks of hair
-biting my nails and the skin around them
-go deep into thought and stare into space
-wiggle my fingers as I count syllables in sentences or song lyrics to see if they're "even" (e.g. nine syllables is "even", because I start tapping with my thumb and move along all five fingers and back for a total of 9 taps. (This sounds insane written out like this)


The main one I do only at home is rocking back and forth sometimes for hours while I listen to a song on repeat. I consider it a form of meditation.

In public, I think I mostly look "normal", except when I'm concentrating at work-- I grimace and contort my face some, I think. Since I'm a librarian at a busy library, I'm usually doing many things at once and not very aware, so who knows how I look, but thankfully people are accepting of my odd animated expressions. I talk to myself a lot (and answer), and find myself picking at my face a little and rubbing/scratching my scalp, so much sometimes that I wonder if people suspect I have lice. For some reason it soothes me to fidget like this. It helps if I fidget with a stress ball or other object-- rubber bands on my wrist often do fine.

In private, I've always rocked and shifted from foot to foot when standing (still do). When I was young I loved to go outside and spin, looking up into the sky. By the time I was 9 or 10 it became painfully clear that I was going to have to stop that, because it was too weird to be acceptable. From the time I hit puberty to about halfway into my 30s I picked at my skin viciously if I was bored or otherwise experiencing anxiety, but I think I don't now simply because I'm just too busy all the time. I also think that having a husband who really loves me has made a big difference with that-- in my first marriage I knew I wasn't loved.

Now that I think about it more, I've always counted colors in things and word syllables, too, as well as arranging words in my head to make them "balanced".

I never noticed that I had stims until I came here!

I do the following:

-rock my leg back and forth when waiting in line
-push the ring on my finger up and down

When I am alone I tend to rock back and forth in front of the computer and also rock my leg.