Callista wrote:
It may be a difference in the definition of stimming. When I said "basically all the time" I meant mostly in the background--finger-tapping, leg-swinging, slight rocking, rubbing fingers against clothing... It's not exclusive activity, not like the times when I'm doing almost nothing but--enchanted by blinking lights, smelling a new book, curled up under my blanket (yep, pressure's a stim)....
If you consider stimming to be only the things you do exclusively, like when I sit there and flap because I'm so excited over something new I just learned, then you're going to count a lot less unless stimming is really a very strong trait for you. If you're a basically fidgety person--people see "fidget" in me but they don't see blatant autism unless they know what they're looking for--then you're probably going to mark "6+" even if you're not very autistic. I bet some of those really energetic people--maybe ADHD, maybe a little hypomanic, maybe just high on life--would put 6+ without being autistic at all.
Yeah, that is a good point. The more I think about it, the harder I think it is to have an accurate poll about this subject because of all of the different behaviors or things that could be classified as a stim. Also, people may “stim” in some ways that they are still completely unaware of, including myself, which would further skew the accuracy of these numbers.