Do You Always Know That You're Stimming?

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this is also my experience. i did not realise utnil researching this over the past 6 months, that i am virtually always stimming. Occasionally after strenuous exercise i am at peace - but the amount of exercise i have to do to reach that point is just plain frustrating. (it would have to become a full time job.)
i hand flap when i am agitated and overhwhelmed. i flap my hads around my face at those times.
I have tics in my face - a nose thing i do. scrunch once until the next "have to" do it.
i am always tapping, or rocking, swinging on my chair. i have tics in my shoulder and i do a complex back twist frequently.
I cannot stand for any length o ftime, and i am rather "floppy" and languid. I am the kid at school who was chewing the pen(cil) down to the ink or lead, and swinging on the back legs of my chair. (balancing until whoop-lah - i came a tumbling down.)

i have not been dx'ed for mild tourettes, but i am actually wondering. My presentation on dvd is very similar to non-expletives tourettes presentations that i have watched on you tube.

all my tics and stims make me feel relieved.

occasionally i have peace. no movement. it feels nice. but it is rare.

i am 46 now, and i present like a big kid because of these tics and stims.

Last edited by millie on 05 Jan 2009, 6:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Probably not, no. But my stereotypical mannerism are vastly hard to identify anyway. Even ASD professionals miss most of them. They're naturally well hidden. My luck, I guess.

I know of the most obvious ones, but I have no idea if there are others that I do not now about. Probably. I'm drawn to various things that make noises or that can be moved somehow. No idea where that fascination comes from.

I have some vocal stims that are easily noticeable to others. I have to hide these obviously, but that set of repetitive behaviour just shows up when I'm distressed anyway. I found that even when I have vocal stims of the not so nice kind, I just got to smile and laugh good-hearted and people will not even remember that I said something frightening.

The funny thing is, though talking is something you probably consider easy to notice - I mostly do not notice it until I notice people reacting to it. Then I check and notice... oops, I'm talking!

I do not remember more than my last sentence/noise/whatever even then.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, if i dont notice i seem to stim more lol

Me too. Now that I finally know more about what stimming actually is, I realize that I do it pretty much constantly. If I notice that I´m doing one stim, and stop, it won´t be long before I go into another one! They start unconsciously (I don´t "decide" to stim, they just happen), but since I´m more aware now of all I do, they are more in my consciousness (most of my stims are smallish, like finger and foot movements) And, of course, there were those stims that my mother complained about all the time- (but I didn´t know back then that they were stims).

But I´m really glad to know that others stim a lot too, I was wondering about that and was going to ask about that sometime...I guess now I don´t need to!

Well, I think almost the only time I´m not stimming is when I´m dancing....but then again, dancing is like one big, all-around body stim for me.

Funny, as I was re-reading my post, I caught myself rubbing my face. Now I realize that I do that quite a lot, too. I didn´t realize that that counted as another stim, until I read this thread, where some of you mentioned it....hmmm....one more to add to the pot, I guess.

lol omgosh my bf does that too, he hand flaps now also, i'm a huge handflapper lol too funny

Sometimes I'm aware of my stimming and sometimes I'm made aware of it.

When I first read about stimming I didn't recognise it in myself at all, but later I began to notice a couple of things I'd overlooked:

There's a muscle somewhere in the head that opens and closes the airway between the nasal cavity and the mouth or throat. I often repeatedly open and close that airway. If you say the word "Edna," you'll perhaps notice yourself using that muscle. It's a silent stim, nobody would know I was doing it. Similarly I might chew the inside of my mouth or wiggle my toes, including moving my little toe away from the other toes in a lateral direction (surprisingly easy once you've found the muscle that does that). More visibly, I might stroke my hair back, fiddle with a button, run my fingers against the line of growth of the stubble on my face, or tug at my socks.

I see how stimming might go by unnoticed, like with any nervous tic, it could easily be completely unconscious unless somebody points it out. It's not a thing that many people would make a conscious decision to do, is it? More like something you find yourself doing one day, if you're not too focussed on whatever stress is causing it in the first place.

All of this got me wondering why my tics are so hard for others to notice. One thing's for sure, as a gut reaction I don't like it when anybody stims too near to me. Not that I think any worse of them for it, I know they're not doing any harm. I suspect that I was firmly bullied out of any obvious stimming when I was quite young. My mother objected strongly to pretty much anything I did that could be construed as strange in any way, so it's pretty unlikely that she'd have tolerated that. She would have taken the view that I was just doing it to annoy, and she'd have shouted at me and slapped me round the head till I stopped. It was like that with most things. So I guess the stimming had to go underground.

The only visible thing I remember was waggling my leg while talking to kids in the classroom while we were sitting at our desks, which I was embarrassed about when I noticed it, and stopped doing it, which took quite an effort. Oh, and I smoke also, and I chew gum. And I can hardly resist the temptation to shave my face using scissors, especially those little hairs that the regular shaver has missed. Don't know if that's stimming or some kind of compulsion though.

Would rubbing one's eye be considered "stimming"? It's the closest thing I have to a stim.

It depends. Generally, not right away. Like for visual stims, I tend to just get caught up in what I am looking at (generally I am moving my head back and forth to watch a reflection or patch of light change) and I will be doing that for a few minutes before I realize what I was doing and come back to myself. When I am in public, I try to stop stims when I notice them. Other times my mom will notice what I am doing, and stop me.

If you do it frequently and repetitively for no obvious reason, then probably yes.

A few minutes can pass before I become aware of a stim. My stims aren't as bad as when I was younger. I didn't flap but I did wave my arms, move my legs up and down and make noises. I got scolded back then by teachers and parents and laughed at by kids, that I slowly put a stop to them.
Now I just have hand and feet movements. I don't try and stop them.

I rock back and forth subconsciously all the time. So does my mom but she is NT.

Yup, NTs stim as well. It's just that autistics are more likely to have stims which are less socially acceptable, like hand-flapping or vigorous rocking (and probably also do it more often). For some reason, playing with a pen, tapping your finger, and jiggling your leg is okay, but flapping your hands is weird.

I usually only know it when someone points it out.

like others here I never really noticed my stims until I found out about AS. at work its usually something with my hands, although I wouldn't call it flapping more like stretching. I try to stay busy with projects at work so my hands will always be busy. other times I'll find myself swaying or pacing. if I'm really agitated I'll walk in small circles. I don't think they're bothersome to other people, or if they are no one has let me in on it.