Remember that this is just my experience. You can hear from even more autistic people by using the #askingautistics hashtag on Twitter or Instagram.

What is stimming?

According to Wikipedia, ‘stimming’ means ‘self-stimulatory behaviour… the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words, or the repetitive movement of objects’.

So, let’s break that down.

Stimming is behaviour that people (particularly autistic people) engage in to stimulate certain senses. The classic, well known methods of stimming would be rocking back and forth, flapping your hands, lining up toys, and head-banging. Basically, moving your body repetitively for the sensory feedback.

But stimming can be so many other things. Verbal stimming, for example, could be humming, making high pitched noises, or singing something over and over again. Or someone may stim visually by flicking their fingers in front of their eyes, or watching lights. Every autistic person is different, and so are their methods of stimming. Personally, I love rocking, hand flapping, and certain verbal stims.

Most people engage in versions of stimming behaviour (commonly considered fidgeting). For example, people often jiggle their leg (as I am doing as I write this), click their pens repetitively, or tap their fingers on surfaces. The difference is that most non-autistic people stim in ‘socially appropriate’ ways, rather than the less ‘appropriate’ stims commonly associated with autism. It is generally considered acceptable to click your pen whilst thinking, because so many people do it. If everyone rocked to concentrate, would it still be considered ‘socially unacceptable’? Probably not.

Consider the fidget spinner fad, or the current slime videos that seem popular. These are all ways many people stim. When autistic people do it, it’s ‘socially inappropriate’, but once it goes viral? Suddenly everyone loves it.

Autistic people also tend to stim much more than non-autistic people. I stim most of my waking hours, in some way or another (most of the time by rocking gently or jiggling my foot), whereas non-autistic people are just… still. Which seems impossible to me. Because another difference between autistic stimming and non-autistic fidgeting is our greater need to stim.

I’ll cover that next time in ‘Why do people stim?'