Why do people stim?

People stim for a variety of reasons. Everyone is different, so some people may stim in different ways for different reasons. People may stim in different ways depending upon how they feel and why they are stimming.

For example, many people flap their hands when they are happy (a popular phrase for this is ‘happy flappy hands’).

One reason for stimming is for emotional regulation. Some autistic people experience emotions extremely strongly, and some are extremely emotionally empathetic (autistic people usually lack cognitive empathy, not emotional empathy. We can often struggle to understand what non-autistic people are feeling and thinking, but that doesn’t mean we do not emphasise and feel the same once we do understand how they feel. Sometimes it may be hard to tell from a non-autistic perspective since many autistic people display emotions in different ways to non-autistic people, so many non-autistic people struggle to read our emotions).

This means that autistic people can be overwhelmed by strong emotions, and stim to cope with the strong feelings. Experiencing a strong emotion can feel like energy is bubbling up under your skin (in my experience) and stimming gets the energy out so you can process your emotions.

Another reason people stim is to communicate. Stimming can be a form of non-verbal communication for some people. For example, when I flap my hands and hum in a high pitched tone I’m usually anxious (often I react like this if there is a wasp in my room). However, I’ll also flap my hands, spin around, and laugh when I’m happy or excited. As you can see, flapping hands means different things in different situations (in the same manner as non-autistic non-verbal communication means different things in different contexts, such as a raised eyebrow meaning disbelief, surprise, doubt, or cautiousness).

Just like autistic people often struggle to read non-autistic body language, non-autistic people often struggle to understand communication via stimming. Stimming is vital for communication for me when I am too overwhelmed to communicate, because people around me who know me can read the stimming as me being overwhelmed, and help me get somewhere quiet.

The most well-known reason for stimming is to cope with sensory overload. Stimming is SO important when experiencing overload.

Sensory overload is often extremely uncomfortable if not painful. I did not know until relatively recently that most people (apparently) do not feel like they have a needle shoved into their ear when an ambulance goes past. I just assumed everyone felt the same but put up with it for due to some weird unwritten social rule.

High, sharp noises cause me physical pain. Light touch does too. The best way I can explain why light touch hurts but firm touch doesn’t would be to compare it to lying on a bed of needles. When you are poked by a single needle, it’s gonna hurt! Yet when you lie on a bed of needles it apparently feels fine.

Anyway, stimming helps with sensory overload by providing a sort of lifeline. Stimming is repetitive, so we can predict what will happen, and it is controlled by us, so we feel less out of depth. Stimming allows you to focus on a single, controlled sensory input and helps tune out other inputs. Whilst non-autistic people can filter out background noise more easily, I need something to focus on (stimming) to reduce the extra inputs. Stimming can also help me concentrate on other inputs because it calms me down enough to zone back into one uncontrolled sensory input (such as a teachers lecture).

This aspect is hard to explain, and very individual, so if I make a mistake in explaining please leave a comment.

Finally, stimming just feels amazing! Honestly, I’ve felt sorry for non-autistic people who will never feel what stimming feels like. Different stims feel different; some instantly make you calm, some make you happy, and some are just awesome. This one is nearly impossible to explain other than ‘stimming feels amazing!’.

I will try to explain in the next post, ‘What does stimming feel like?’