Stimming at work

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Do you stim at work?
Which stims if you want to say?
Reactions to stimming?

I rock when standing.
A raised eyebrow, I smiled back, and then we just proceeded with the meeting.

The 3 jobs I had all involved cleaning; dish-washer, floor care, custodian & I was busy most of the time. I looked for extra work to do when I finished what I had to do. I wasn't really able to or had the focus to stim.

Stimming is not a universal trait for aspergers/autism.

I started a new job ~3 months ago after being self-employed for a couple years. Needless to say, I had let my stimming habits become more pronounced over that time period.

I've always been one to stim, but try to do it as discretely as possible while I'm at work. I've reduced my public stims to eyebrow raises, knuckle cracking, hand rubbing and fidgeting with stuff in my area.

The other day I got called out on rubbing my chest and the back of my neck. God only knows how long I had been doing that before someone pointed it out to me. I try to be cognizant of it because I know it can weird some people out.

@ichinin. Yup, very true. Everyone stim. Not just us.

No, i don't stim.

I've never had any stims that I do in public. I don't think staring into space is a "stim", but I do it pretty much everywhere.

IMO, that is what we call "thinking".

@ichinin That is surprising that you don't stim. A rare breed!

No, if you do a little research on these forums you'll know that it is people that are diagnosed with traditional autism that stim, and people who are more HFA/Aspergers don't.

No, that is not my understanding of how stims work.

Babies stim. Blind people stim-- in their case, those particular stuns are called blindisms.

Not all people who have sensory processing deficits are autistic and even the ones who aren't autistic stim.

Some people dx'd as having adhd stim. Anxious people stim as well.

And people with no labels stim. Some examples of stimming (that non-autistics do) are masturbation, flexing muscles, rocking (a blindism as well as something associated with autism), movement rhymes like "ring around the rosie", staring off into space or a few other forms of dissociation, chewing on fingernails, hair twirling, playing with a pen or doodling during a work meeting. And all self-injurious behaviors, or SIBs are stims. We autistics do not have the monopoly on that either.

When I as an autistic stim, my stims tend to have a bit of rhythm. ADHD stims tend to be more random. Some stims done by non-autistics look like our stims and some don't.

Stimming is a natural primate behavior.

What gets autistics into trouble is having stims that are unacceptable to whichever society we happen to live in, self-injurious stims, unsanitary stims, stims that cause others to be distracted.

Stimming is not useful as a distinction between autism and Aspergers. The single marker is language delay. Language delay, autism. No language delay, Aspergers.

(I am ignoring the relationship of intelligence on purpose since testing for intelligence in non-verbal people does not give a clear read of intelligence.)

It may be that Aspies stim less than Auties. I don't know if that is true or not. Anecdotes on a forum are not the basis of solid evidence for or against this idea.


I won't get into Loovas and ABA here with that desire to make us into conforming little robots superficially resembling NTs.

My point is that we all stim, starting as babies. Auties stim. Aspies stim. Humans stim. Stimming is natural.

[Edited because my processor does not recognize words.]

Well, lets take another misconception: Echolallia.

Some do that - and some don't. Just because some do doesn't make it a trait that is implicit for autistics. It's not even a diagnostic trait, it is just something that is associated with autism because the low functioning autistics do that. I've seen an extreme case of echolallia right in public, i thought "what was wrong with that guy"? (This was during my time in college at a buss stop), i felt so distanced away from the man doing it and wondered what was up with him.

Today i know, but just because me and him obviously are both on the spectrum (if he is alive today), it does not mean that i have echolallia.

As i have said a billion times on these forums: The only traits we share are the ones defined by ICD and DSM. Nothing else.

I keep reading threads like "Uh, are all autistics <so and so>". The answer is NO. We are all individuals first - we're not our diagnosis. It's like NTs think of us all being like rainman that can barely function in society, and while that may be true for SOME autistics, it is not true for me.

I wish that there would be stickies explaining all this in the generic forums so we get away from these generalisations, it's the same topics over and over, year after year, on and on - it never stops....*RIPS HAIR OFF AND GOES CRAZY*

I agree with you about echolalia.

I ran out of time the other day.

I agree with you about echolalia to a point.

It is not only "low-functioning" [functioning labels are not okay] autistics who use echolalia.

Babies use it during the process of language development.

Some Aspie do it too.

I understand your frustration with "do you do this? do autistics do that?" threads. These threads are also valuable for people who are in the process of discovering their own autistic traits.

Actually, both echolalia and stimming ARE including in diagnosis under "repetitive behaviors" in the DSM.

I do not know anything about the ICM or other forms of classifications or diagnostic manuals.

Yes, there are "high functionung" Aspie who employ echolalia. Some use scripting in social situations. Others may engage in repetitive singing of a phrase of a song or have a word that they use when doing certain tasks.

I have my reasons for asking about this.

Thank you.

First of all, babies are not high functioning and that makes a pretty crappy argument for echolallia.

Secondly, since Aspergers got lumped up with Autism in general, yes, labels are perfectly fine. Do not delude yourself that there is no difference.

High functioning is pretty much almost indistinguishable from an NT, but with some traits that cannot be seen.

High functioning is not sitting on the floor screaming because stuff got displaced, or that they remove their clothes because the texture does not feel good, or having no understanding how to read people because they didn't spend one day in their life considering that other people - are people and tried to observe and learn human behavior to fit in more in society.

Again - do NOT delude yourself that there is no difference. I'm not saying that high functioning is "uber" people with superpowers, but i am saying that there is a difference in functionality, and that high functioning in the autism spectrum usually means stuff like: being able to live on your own, being able to hold a job, finding love, starting a family - stuff like normal people do, function in society without "training wheels" on a kids bike - that is high functioning.

It usually means Aspergers or what was called HFA.

This is the main reason why i am against throwing every diagnosis under Autism spectrum disorders in a blender and making a gray generic paste, or a "one size fits all" diagnosis.

Some Aspies stim. Some use echolalia. That is my point. I am withdrawing from this conversation with you.