You Think You're Stimming?

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I read people talking about stemming here. But I think some of these people have never been around more severely autistic people to know what true stemming is. The schools I was in had many severely autistic kids. And their stemming wasn't anything along the lines of twirling hair or similar nervous habits some Asperger folks are calling stemming.

Here's a beautiful video of someone I knew on alt.support.autism, who has severe autism, showing us what true autistic stemming looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

She also shows us though a voice machine (like Stephen Hawking's) in the video, that people with severe autism can express themselves quite eloquently and articulately.

And here's some of her textual contributions to the newsgroup, alt.support.autism (user name, sggaB):
http://groups.google.com/groups/profile ... ccej3woxEQ

This is what autism sounds like when Autism Speaks.

To me, a lot of what gets called stimming on the forums sounds like physical (vs verbal ie excessive talking) hyperctivities of ADHD. Tapping, fidgeting etc.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

I have never clearly understood what stimming is. I know it's mentioned in many threads by many people. From what I read in those threads, it doesn't sound very abnormal. I believe what the OP is saying. There must be more noticeable "stimming" in more severely autistic people. I wonder if stimming is the same as tic disorder. I remember when I was at primary school, there was a girl who had tic disorder. She was repeatedly moving her hands in a very strange way very often. I thought that was stimming.

I don't seem to do anything like that though I might be doing something that I don't even notice myself.

I thought it was associated with regulation of the nervous system - certain movements and certain areas help with certain issues of regulation depending on which sensory issue you have and whether you need to arouse yourself or calm yourself in different situations.

People on the autism spectrum (and those with ADHD) have issues with regulation of the nervous system to a greater degree than NTs.

I would assume the severity required would affect the severity of the movement...

Some of the things people here call stimming may be insignificantly mild, or just somewhat different from what is normally considered a notable stimming behaviour... but there are still two flaws with your argument.

First, you can't see exactly what people are referring to when they mention a behaviour in a post. If someone mentions, say, waving their hands, you don't see how much they wave them, how often they do it, or exactly what kind of motion they mean when they say "waving".

Second, pointing out a more extreme example does not make a less extreme one false.

So although you might be right to some extent, one shouldn't be too quick to imply that all these people are clueless just because their descriptions or their ideas of what "stimming" means don't match your expectations. Not everyone is a hypochondriac... and there doesn't seem to be a really clear, objective definition of what counts as a stim and what's just insignificant oddness.

yes. I do stiming.

Yes, I do think I'm stimming.
Just because other people do it more severely or in more stereotypical ways (hey, I flap and rock too!), doesn't negate mine.

It's like saying "You think you have a bruised leg! Well you don't, because this person's leg is covered in bruises!".

I've always been somewhat envious of people whose stimming consisted of finger-tapping and twirling their hair.

I have full-body motions that I can only suppress for limited amounts of time.