A lot of people on the autism spectrum are notorious for their stimming. Stimming is actually, if you ask me, one of the most obvious "symptoms" that people on the autism spectrum may have and gives them all that "crazy" reputation. And this is merely because a neurotypical mind cannot perceive the pleasure received from repetitive behaviours and the endless benefits of it for the autistic brain. Most parents of children on the spectrum I have met (and teachers, let's not forget those) actively try to do whatever is possible to prevent people on the autism spectrum from stimming, especially in public, in an effort to avoid being considered crazy and getting weird looks. I even remember seeing a parent once telling to their autistic child, "Don't do that, Jack, calm down!", when they were stimming. I had to laugh, because they didn't get the oximoron of their statement. Jack was doing that BECAUSE he needed to calm down...
For people on the autism spectrum, stimming of whatever nature is a way to externalise anxiety and generally emotions that have been piling up. It's a way to decompress the brain, calm the nervous system, organise thoughts, etc. It doesn't really matter what it is or how it looks like, as long as it helps the person feel better. And as long as it's not dangerous to them or to others. Stims are something that others need to help the person on the autism spectrum towards developping, not suppressing. This is very, very, very important.
People on the autism spectrum are often seperated into "low-functioning" and "high-functioning" and an important part of this differentiation as I have come to understand it, is actually stimming. Technically the professionals differentiate between the two according to IQ levels, but personally every day I start believing more and more that we cannot efficiently measure a person's IQ level with the current tests available, especially if that person is on the autism spectrum. I think I'll have to come back to that to another post though. So what usually happens, and, admitedly, amongst mostly not very well-informed professionals, is that they will see a child, or a person in general, stim and that behaviour alone will be enough to almost form the image of a "severly challenged" person in their mindset. They do not always, sometimes they do but not always, stay on that observation alone and they do run a number of other tests on the child to assess their speech, their social skills, cognitive skills etc, but their mindset most of the time is set by the time they encounter the stimming: the person is challenged, disabled, needs help, has low IQ. This only worsens when the person/child they "assess" does not communicate with them, appears in their own world and all the other lovely things we autistics do sometimes and are constantly misunderstood.
The ones that are considered to be "high-functioning" on the other hand, are often (again, not always, but often) able to suppress their stims, at least on public places or in front of other people. That, in return, makes them look more normal, so in the eyes of the uneducated, less challenged or "high-functioning". What these people don't realise, however, is the harm that "high-functioning" people do to themselves by trying to hide the stims from the public eye. By not stimming, and this is just a personal observation but I'd like to get other autistics' view on that, your IQ drops. I am not kidding. You become dummer if you don't stim. Because when you don't stim, your anxiety levels go up and I firmly believe that nothing harms the brain more than anxiety. You are not able to function, because all your thoughts are clouded by the anxiety you experience. I have read a few studies here and there that have made such observations and shown some results (in terms of the link between anxiety and intelligence), but it's not really rocket science anyway if you think about it. Try to remember the times you were more stressed in your life. Were you able to think clearly and make the right choices? Unlikely. Some people do cope well under stress, but only because they have found ways to push through it and pile it up and explode later. I have yet to meet a person though that admits that is stressed all the time and it's good for him/her, makes them feel great that they are stressed. And I doubt that anybody else has either.
People on the autism spectrum are likely to experience more stress than anybody else on the planet. Because not only are they stressed about the things everyone is stressed (schoolwork, homework, relationships with others, the future etc.), there are also other numerous reasons that contribute to their stress, such as sensory inputs (sounds, lights, fabrics etc), a lot of information coming at the same time from a lot of different sources (leading to overload), unspoken rules they need to abide with that noone's ever explained to them or they don't understand why they are there, constantly failing other peoples' expectations etc, I could probably go all day. What is also happening to a lot of children on the autism spectrum is that for a lot of reasons (and to be fair, usually not related to their parents' intents), they are exposed to huge amounts of stress very early on in their lives. Their brain at the time needs bits of information little by little to be able to process it and what happens instead is that people overprovide input in every which way and constantly overload them. As a result they experience shutdowns, meltdowns, start to stim and that's when their autism becomes obvious.
Imagine then, if you will, how tortuous is for a brain to always, always, always be exposed to stress. Little by little the brain becomes less and less functioning and loses skills that have been obtained in the past. Then the only way to regulate the stress, the stims, are taken away from the person and the damage becomes permanent. Not because of the autism, but because of a) the stress and b) the lack of understanding of the causes of stress and of effective techniques to deal with it.
Having said that, I believe that not all people have the same sensitivity to stress. Some people are more stress-sensitive (thus appear more challenged), some are able to metabolize stress easier and get rid of if faster and more effectively. Hence the damages of the constant stress exposure are less obvious to them. I don't know or have a theory as to why, I just think that this could be what's happening.
These things are not written in a book (that I know of). These are purely my personal thoughts and observations I have done by talking to people on the autism spectrum, working with people on the autism spectrum, observing people on the autism spectrum and being on the autism spectrum. And maybe I am wrong. Maybe stress is not really the cause of everything in autism and there are tons of other factors as well. To be fair, there probably are other factors, but I have come to the conclusion that stress is the main one. Maybe I am wrong. But even so, what's the harm in helping a person to live a stress-free life? And why not ACCEPT the fact that different people have different -not less- ways of dealing with stress? You like venting about your day. I like venting about my day too, after I have locked myself in my room with my anime, my stuffed animal and my spiky balls, stimmed all the excess of stress out so that I can actually have a productive conversation. Doesn't harm anybody, so just let me be! ;-)
And with that in mind, parents, carers, teachers, please, please, please don't stop the kids from stimming. In fact, teach them how to stim! If you think that a stim is harmful for them physically, do not stop it completely. Try to find another stim that is not hurting them to replace it. And please, don't judge someone's intelligence level or functionality level on the way or the frequency they stim. Repetitive behaviours are a way of coping and nobody can tell another how to cope. Suggest maybe, but certainly not tell. If it's not harming you and it's not harming them, leave it be. It's not bad. It's something that society will have to learn to accept as a part of each person's character, or even quorkiness if that makes you feel any better. I am a master's student, I work, I earn my own money, I live indipendently, I am considered good at what I do by the people in my field and I still stim. Stimming hasn't prevented me from anything. Neither has autism.
And with that in mind, I publically acknowledge an autistic person's right to stim and present to you a list of some of my stims. Enjoy! :-)
I do this with my lips whenever I want to think or feel like I am in a difficult situation and it really helps me focus:
I don't know how other people perceive it, or even if they notice it when it happens, but for me, it's very helpful. I do it when I am alone most of the time, but if I am in a situation where I have to think, I have to, HAVE TO do it. I have tried to stop myself from doing it, firstly because I was too self-concious and embarassed and another time as a sort of experiment with myself and it just doesn't work. It doensn't work! If I stop myself from stimming, I stop myself from thinking. As simple as that. Even as I type this, I have to stop every once in a while, do it for a few seconds to organise what I have to write next. It's necessary for me, otherwise my brain doesn't work.
Another stim I do is this:
(which, for some reason, I would only record upside down, but you get the gist)
The first part of the video is what I do pretty much all the time when my hands are not occupied by something else, the second is what I do when I get very intense emotions of any kind, but especially anxiety. I don't know if you can tell from the video, but it's basically what I do in the first part, just more intensely and with more of a hand movement rather than just the fingers.
These are not all the stims I do, I also rock from time to time, the way I like to rock is putting my foot against the wall and moving the chair back and forth with my foot when the chair's standing on its two back legs (a bit dangerous, I know, but I am careful when I do it so I've never fallen off), I jump when excited, I've been known to have my happy dance and a lot of other things that come and go from time to time. Another thing that really helps me with my sensory input, is my personal collection of spiky balls:
Words cannot describe how much I LOVE these balls. I love them so much that I've actually named them: The red one is Wallie the ballie, the yellow one is Wallie's big brother and the blue one is Wallie's dad. I want to get Wallie's aunt from Amazon at some point (which looks like this)
as well as the twin cousins:
and generally have a neat little collection of spiky balls. The reason that only Wallie has a name, is that Wallie is the one I have the most emotional attachment to. Wallie goes everywhere with me. As he is the smallest, he is always in my purse, I always hold him in my hands when I go out and I always, always, always fiddle with Wallie when I am alone. I cannot go to sleep unless I have Wallie on my hand and if I relax during the night and let go, I may actually wake up and look for it. Especially when I am not having good days. The brother is the one I hold when I need something bigger, usually when I am watching anime and need something to hold with both hands and the dad is always on the floor, as I like to rub my foot against him when I sit down. They really really help me focus, relax, concentrate and generally not lose it when things get hard.
So go team stim!!! Stim it away aspies! Stims rock! Autism does too!!! :-D
