What are stimming behaviors?

Post Reply New Topic

I kinda shake my legs sometimes. I also pinch my fingers. Is that stimming?

I constantly bite and chew my lips, love to roll bits of paper and touch things, like walls and shelves. whe I was a kid I used to have the skin on my fingers torn to bare flesh from storking walls and buildings.

I had that sometimes as a kid.

Whenever I'm excited I get the leg bounce thing going on.
I sometimes imitate Motorbike throttle revving and braking with my hands.

I bounce my legs all the time. It's like a cat moving its tail; it's a signal that I'm well and alive.

I pace. I pace. And I pace. I pace.

I make my fingers touch each other. Just touch. At the joints. It's a relieving sensation.

Sometimes I need to touch the corners of solid objects with the skin around my nails.

I breathe in rhythmic patterns I sometimes try to get in synch with my walking. And blinking, if I feel like it.

When I'm trying to sleep, I need full contact between the bed and the frontal surfaces of my limbs. It's difficult to accomplish, as you can guess.

pacing and sometimes putting my shoulders back to display a false confidence when i'm feeling insecure.

I tend to scratch my head on the same exact spot to the extent that the hair has fallen out on that specific spot. I tend to do this when I'm nervous or bored or I'm thinking very intensely about a specific subject. I also tend to bite the inner side of my lips.
Other people had already noticed that I rock, but it happened only for 1 or 2 times. Maybe I do it more often, but I haven't noticed it yet.
I am almost always fidgeting with something. That's why I started to smoke, too, because it makes fidgeting seem less apparent.

I also tend to pace or walk in a very strange manner when I'm happy and/or excited. My gait is slightly weird in anyway, but in these cases it gets a lot worse. I also like to listen to music in this state. The whole state is quite strange, it's like if I were in some kind of trance or sg like that.

Do you think that my behaviours can be considered stimming?

My list of stims include:
constantly bending and cracking my fingers
tapping things
bouncing my leg or foot like mad
fiddling with/feeling things
spinning stuff round
biting/chewing things and my fingers
sometimes I clap really quickly
I make daft noises
When alone and standing up with music on I sway or sway my arms
wiggling things infront of my face
doing weird things with my eyes (like zooming in and out on things etc)

I usually do these when bored, nervous or really happy/excited

Yes, this is one of my favorites too. I do it while walking if I have extra energy or am nervous. Most of my "stimming activities" are related to my hands; I've been a piano player since aged seven and have always been very fidgety with my fingers. I've been known to practice and play when away from the instrument, usually simple rhythms and alternating motions between both hands.

Now, when I was growing up, I had more socially embarrassing stims; by far the most satisfying and long-lived was hair twirling. I would twirl my hair for hours, usually when alone, but it happened when I was relaxed and thinking about my "own world," so family members would often notice me doing this. I replaced this act during middle school with nailbiting and chewing; I would bite off protruding nails and then chew on the pieces until they disintegrated. I can't see myself doing something quite so uncleanly now, but I can remember how satisfying it was for me. I stimmed a lot with food growing up, too (I became obese by my teenager years, but now I am thin); I would eat for the sheer sensory stimulation and did so compulsively (I rarely felt hunger).

I still stim, but in different ways; I try to be productive and benign about it. I now drink a great deal of water, which can feel like indulging in something and is also good for health. I sometimes kick my legs a bit, crack my knuckles when agitated, rub my face every now and then, but I'm relatively composed for the most part. I still become very grumpy when I haven't eaten, and am very particular about what foods I eat; having exactly the right food (usually the same thing everyday or a variation of it) leaves me feeling satisfied.

Lately, I have been starting off the day with a half hour of exercise, both for health and stimming purposes; my exercises are all of my own creation, but all seem to be things that physically able Autistic and Aspie people would enjoy; they combine rocking, balancing acts, lots of back and forth motions like push ups and sit ups, all while listening to baroque music. Giving myself this half hour at the beginning of the day has helped me with relieving anxieties, and also seems to give me a greater sense of schedule (for example, I wake up at the same time naturally and get tired, with the exercises setting my day in motion). I suppose it isn't exactly a novel concept, but for me it feels new, since in the past I've always seen exercise as a chore rather than something that is one hundred percent beneficial.

I stim almost all the time, which is very annoying. Here are some of the common ones I do:
- Shake my knees and feet
- Bite skin which peels off the knuckles (a very disguisting habit, and visible too! I've been doing this for more than a year already, one knuckle on my left hand and one on my right which I constantly bite when I'm at home doing something boring, like homework, and they are so red that it looks like I've got some kind of infection on my hands)
- Rocking slightly (not like autistics do it, very slightly and again not in public)
- Walking on tiptoes
- Singing random songs while doing something else
- Clenching teeth (seldom, but since childhood)
- Rubbing palms against each other and clenching hands into fists, usually in public and/or during a conversation.
- Twirling my hair, too. When I'm talking to someone, if my hair is in a ponytail, I start twirling it, and also fiddle with my earrings when I have them on.
- Walking very fast is a kind of a stim too. It's annoying when I have to walk slow.

Speaking of stimming, I know one guy who stims a lot even though he's not autistic. Some people exhibit stim-like behaviours when they're nervous or stressed.

Yeah, I've noticed this, too.
It is also interesting that my fiancé who I live together with and who is an Aspie too, tends to copy those stimlike behaviours of mine. For example, he started do scratch the top of his head, too. (He does it inadvertently.)

We also "stim together". I also have repetitive rituals in speech. I like to repeat phrases without the intention to express anything, just for the fun of it. He also picked up some of my repetitive phrases, and we have even developed some "ritual discourses" when one of us says a meaningless phrase, and the other answers it with an other meaningless and stereotypical phrase. It comforts us, but we also find it funny.
But we do not do this when there are other NT's around -- they'd probably think that we are crazy

i do a combination finger tapping/counting thing. i will set a distance, for example this much time between point a to point b, and i will rapidly tap my first and second fingers during that space, either on my leg or steering wheel, depending where i'm at. each tap can represent 1 or 10 or 100, etc. and those numbers represent anything from money to months to miles, etc. for example if i get on an elevator (alone), i will start tapping from the time it starts moving until it gets to my floor. the amount of tapping i get in will be how much money i will get, or how many months i get to live, or how many miles closer to a far-off place i like, etc. the faster i tap, the more i get. it drives me nuts and i can't stop.

I was told I did a lot of little things before, but there is something about my medication, I think it's akathesia, that makes me move like crazy. Rocking, pacing, leg bouncing, occasional hand flapping and twisting, etc...

There were a lot of interesting comments (really), but no one has answered my original question:

I rock a lot and chew on things. People laugh at me a lot

Yes, I believe that is stimming. Any repetitive motion/action which does not constitute a part of your daily routine is considered as stimming, especially if you do it when you're nervous to ease the tension and cannot control yourself doing it.