Why cure stimming?

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If you stim while wearing headphones won't people just think you are basically rocking your foot along with the song.

Neurotypicals who have a problem with our stimming (e.g. hand flapping) need to shut up and get the hell over it. I tolerate the NT teenage boys at my school CONSTANTLY fight over insignificant things and in doing so, showing NO regard for my safety, emotional distress, or personal space, so I hardly think that having to witness a few subtle hand motions should be of ANY inconvenience to those a**holes.

I do agree with the modification of harmful stimming, though. For example, my Autistic sister made a habit of stopping in her tracks, taking three steps back, and running forward. She did this EVERYWHERE, even on roads.

I don't stim because I "want" to, I stim because I HAVE to.

My major stereotypies I can keep confined to when I'm alone, but public stimming happens, and sometimes it gets noticeable.

I wouldn't mind a cure for my NEED to stim, but merely getting rid of the movements won't cut it.

When I was at school, many of the kids at the CDU had very conspicuous stims, such as flapping, making noises, rocking, etc. It was quite disruptive, so we had to learn ways of reducing that. Sometimes we developed new, quieter, more socially acceptable coping mechanisms such as fiddling with blue tack. It didn't get rid of our stims and it wasn't easy to do, but it meant that both parties (our peers and ourselves) could benefit from the situation.

Some stims are dangerous and self destructive such as biting oneself and headbanging, so someone doing that should be taught a different coping mechanism.

I don't think stims should be eliminated. Even the more "weird" ones shouldn't be gone. As long as they don't interfere with your ability to function and they don't harm anyone, then there's nothing wrong with them.

I don't think stimming needs to be cured, more like modified, controlled, finding something else to do that wouldn't bother others. Like what if someone had a loud stim that annoyed others, they can maybe go to it out in the fields or in their own bedroom and do another stim that is quiet and wouldn't be a bother to others. I think stimming is seen as an impairment because they don't do another stim nor do they try and control it and do it in certain places only. But if someone modified their stims by doing another one that wouldn't be bothersome to others and only did the inappropriate ones privately or in a empty room, then it's not an impairment then is it because the person learned to adapt.

Even NTs do things that annoy others and they tell each other to stop. But not always because they are either too polite to tell you or they are too afraid of a conflict.

Who gets to decide what is "annoying" or "disruptive"?

I'm just going to post that blogpost I linked to earlier straight up (good thing the copyright permits it).
http://juststimming.wordpress.com/2011/ ... iet-hands/ by Julia Bascom.

TW: Ableism, abuse

Explaining my reaction to this:


means I need to explain my history with this:





1.

When I was a little girl, they held my hands down in tacky glue while I cried.

2.

I’m a lot bigger than them now. Walking down a hall to a meeting, my hand flies out to feel the texture on the wall as I pass by.

“Quiet hands,” I whisper.

My hand falls to my side.

3.

When I was six years old, people who were much bigger than me with loud echoing voices held my hands down in textures that hurt worse than my broken wrist while I cried and begged and pleaded and screamed.

4.

In a classroom of language-impaired kids, the most common phrase is a metaphor.

“Quiet hands!”

A student pushes at a piece of paper, flaps their hands, stacks their fingers against their palm, pokes at a pencil, rubs their palms through their hair. It’s silent, until:

“Quiet hands!”

I’ve yet to meet a student who didn’t instinctively know to pull back and put their hands in their lap at this order. Thanks to applied behavioral analysis, each student learned this phrase in preschool at the latest, hands slapped down and held to a table or at their sides for a count of three until they learned to restrain themselves at the words.

The literal meaning of the words is irrelevant when you’re being abused.

5.

When I was a little girl, I was autistic. And when you’re autistic, it’s not abuse. It’s therapy.

6.

Hands are by definition quiet, they can’t talk, and neither can half of these students…

(Behavior is communication.)

(Not being able to talk is not the same as not having anything to say.)

Things, slowly, start to make a lot more sense.

7.

Roger needs a modified chair to help him sit. It came to the classroom fully equipped with straps to tie his hands down.

We threw the straps away. His old school district used them.

He was seven.

8.

Terra can read my flapping better than my face. “You’ve got one for everything,” she says, and I wish everyone could look at my hands and see I need you to slow down or this is the best thing ever or can I please touch or I am so hungry I think my brain is trying to eat itself.

But if they see my hands, I’m not safe.

“They watch your hands,” my sister says, “and you might as well be flipping them off when all you’re saying is this menu feels nice.”

9.

When we were in high school, my occasional, accidental flap gave my other autistic friend panic attacks.

10.

I’ve been told I have a manual fixation. My hands are one of the few places on my body that I usually recognize as my own, can feel, and can occasionally control. I am fascinated by them. I could study them for hours. They’re beautiful in a way that makes me understand what beautiful means.

My hands know things the rest of me doesn’t. They type words, sentences, stories, worlds that I didn’t know I thought. They remember passwords and sequences I don’t even remember needing. They tell me what I think, what I know, what I remember. They don’t even always need a keyboard for that.

My hands are an automatic feedback loop, touching and feeling simultaneously. I think I understand the whole world when I rub my fingertips together.

When I’m brought to a new place, my fingers tap out the walls and tables and chairs and counters. They skim over the paper and make me laugh, they press against each other and remind me that I am real, they drum and produce sound to remind me of cause-and-effect. My fingers map out a world and then they make it real.

My hands are more me than I am.

11.

But I’m to have quiet hands.

12.

I know. I know.

Someone who doesn’t talk doesn’t need to be listened to.

I know.

Behavior isn’t communication. It’s something to be controlled.

I know.

Flapping your hands doesn’t do anything for you, so it does nothing for me.

I know.

I can control it.

I know.

If I could just suppress it, you wouldn’t have to do this.

I know.

They actually teach, in applied behavioral analysis, in special education teacher training, that the most important, the most basic, the most foundational thing is behavioral control. A kid’s education can’t begin until they’re “table ready.”

I know.

I need to silence my most reliable way of gathering, processing, and expressing information, I need to put more effort into controlling and deadening and reducing and removing myself second-by-second than you could ever even conceive, I need to have quiet hands, because until I move 97% of the way in your direction you can’t even see that’s there’s a 3% for you to move towards me.

I know.

I need to have quiet hands.

I know. I know.

13.

There’s a boy in the supermarket, rocking back on his heels and flapping excitedly at a display. His mom hisses “quiet hands!” and looks around, embarrassed.

I catch his eye, and I can’t do it for myself, but my hands flutter at my sides when he’s looking.

(Flapping is the new terrorist-fist-bump.)

14.

Let me be extremely f*****g clear: if you grab my hands, if you grab the hands of a developmentally disabled person, if you teach quiet hands, if you work on eliminating “autistic symptoms” and “self-stimulatory behaviors,” if you take away our voice, if you…

if you…

if you…



15.

Then I…

I…

.

I´m so angry and sad about this article: http://ican-do.net/articles/information ... nsory-play

Yeah. They don't have a clue. Why don't they listen to autistic people when we talk about stimming? It does plenty of positive things. It can calm me when I'm anxious, help me think more clearly, help me keep track of where I am and how I'm moving. It can be a form of meditation or daydreaming. It can help me pay attention more effectively. I often stim while I process information.

Just because we don't look like we're "all there" when we stim doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Sometimes you have to withdraw. I can't process the flood of data from the NT world as quickly as it's expected of me. It's just easier when I take it little by little. If I don't, I just get overwhelmed and nothing gets through at all.

If a child is constantly stimming, doing little else, then it'd make sense to try to figure out what is going on. Yeah, it could be a habit, too much of a good thing (and it IS a good thing). Or it could be an attempt to deal with overload, to deliberately zone out away from unpleasant sensory input. It could just mean that this kid needs a lot of downtime. The knee-jerk "stop the stimming" reaction is misguided. Every behavior has a reason and fills a need. If you just remove the behavior, you leave that need unfilled, and that can be very harmful.

[quote]Repetitive sensory play creates endorphins, “happy,” “feel good” chemicals in the brain, much the same as the “runner’s high.” These chemicals become addictive, causing the individual to repeat the activity in order to renew the good feeling. Thus, the child becomes trapped in a compulsive behavior. Development stops progressing, becoming more and more delayed, and for many children actually begins regressing.


[quote]
I´m scared of what if this may be true. I´m scared that this may be the reason why my mental development may have regressed, why I´m immature, IQ 82 and don´t feel much like an adult. It would be too cruel if this was true that it was my stimming what actually damaged me.

I see no point in curing stimming.
It's not harmful
It's not dangerous
And every human being stims to a certain degree.

Stimming can be a wonderful thing when used appropriately. It helped me develop a very "flow" like movement. When walking down a crowded street, I can "flow" through the human traffic in a way that feels like I'm a stalk in the wind (sometimes it's just too much weird fun for many "mundies" to bear ). For the most part try to hide it and express it as necessary. As you grow older and your peers along with you, they will grow wiser and start to appreciate your quirkiness as an expression of your personality. My NT friends tend to treasure my advice and insight and do enjoy my odd and eccentric behaviour as long as it doesn't cross some boundaries (it's up to you to discover and respect those). People who are not your friends, are that for a very specific reason. Just be polite to them, but maintain your distance.

My friendly wife told me the other day that my stimming (leg bouncing) looked like I had Parkinsons and it was embarrassing to her... we were sat out the back of hungry jacks with nobody else in sight. God forbid if I ever actually get Parkinsons......

In South Asian culture stimming is well appreciated in both religious and cultural context. Kathak and Shiva tandava dances/rituals are good examples of that. It is well understood there that "wise" men have their oddities and eccentricities and they should be respected. Western society tends to cull any signs of otherness for fear of stigmatization. Hypocrites and damned psychopaths. Soon enough people will see through the veil of tyranny and history will be able to repeat itself