Lately my wife has gotten into a habit of mentioning whenever I'm rocking. She'll look over and casually say something like "By the way, you're rocking again." Half the time I'm unaware of it, and I end up immediately stopping myself, which leads into leg jiggling or rubbing my feet together, which doesn't really bring as much satisfaction. But I get embarrassed about the rocking. I'm not even sure why.
It's not really because I do it publicly, which I do. No one normally mentions it except my wife, and to be honest I'm not even sure why she does. She knows that I probably have some kind of autism of some sort, but she seems to take note of my more garish stims and points them out. I felt pretty self conscious about it, because the way she would point them out almost made it sound like I need to stop what I'm doing, even though stopping is nearly unbearable. For instance rocking back and forth usually helps me with concentration, as does wiggling or rubbing my feet together. I also nod my head a lot, too, while working on projects, because it's a movement to help me concentrate. When I stop doing one of those things, it makes it nearly impossible for me to focus.
I did get back at her yesterday, though, and told her that her constant random meowing she's been doing for the past week is a stim. XD She meows whenever she's bored, so I explained to her what stims really are and how not just autistic people stim. They're coping actions. Everybody stims to a certain degree. She's starting to find some compassion in it, now, and hasn't mentioned my rocking at all since. Perhaps she's realizing just how necessary stims can be to me?
Has anybody ever made it a goal to constantly point out some of your more intense stims? If so, where were you, what stim were you doing, and how did you feel?
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~Lu
15 Jun 2016, 3:05 pm
