From 10:32 to 14:52, I talk about stims that can be undesirable/harmful. I do also touch on replacement stims that might be useful, but do look after yourself. If you’re not in the mood for that today, feel free to skip over to the next second at 14:52. If you missed my latest video, I discuss certain celebrities who are frequently cited as autistic (Messi, Taylor Swift?)...but have actually never been open about a diagnosis. Some of them even appear on numerous listicles (particularly on ABA websites??!!) and the only evidence is 'they look a bit socially awkward'! I'd love to know your thoughts!: ua-cam.com/video/HDK2miTzTTA/v-deo.html Hope this one is helpful! I realised I stim in more ways than I’d originally thought, thanks to that community post! Thank you so much for your input as always 💛✨ If you haven’t seen my video about the theory of Monotropism: ua-cam.com/video/3mBbOOzhoGQ/v-deo.html I’ve also just posted an hour-long reading vlog style video over on Patreon, discussing Ellie Middleton’s ‘Unmasked’. You can access it even on the lowest tier. You can watch a preview here: www.patreon.com/posts/unmasked-reading-109837953?Link& See you soon!! 💛🍋
I have a stim I try to avoid doing in public where I lift my breasts up and down with my hand. This one is weird but it feels good on the hands and breasts. Maybe like a rubber ball?
this is the one thing that i think is common in all autistic people, they really care about how others are experiencing their 3 dimensional reality, the fact you pinned a warning and timestamp to skip the heavy content is what i consider typical of an autistic person and really what puts Autistic people at odds with most of the virtual realities that 'normies' impose on our actual, liveable 3 dimensional reality...
I agree with the usefulness of pain stimming but also very much agree with just overall taking good care of yourself. As to the pain stims; sometimes difficulties are just too much for normal stims to handle. If you(anyone) haven't experienced that, I'm happy you were spared the experience. As to self-care, I consider pain stims part of my mental first aid package. Mostly I just knock my knuckles or back of my fingers against corners of things. Quick sharp pain, doesn't need force strong enough to cause damage aside from some light skin contusion if the only corner available is something like brick. Or like the lady in the video clip, I'll tightly grip or press the pads of my fingers onto something. I'm very strict with the use of pain stimming. I'm aware it can become addictive and habit forming. I manage it all by problem solving my choices. Does this reduce overall damage or just create more problems? And if my brain isn't currently able to process that properly, I'll just go through my normal routine of Stop, Safety and Recover. That being said, not everyone is able to manage things in a healthy manner all the time or on their own, so some compassion is certainly called for. Healthy coping is a collection of skills that require developing.
It's almost painful to realize this lol. And as I've been watching this, I realize that I kind of go head-to-toe in this cycle for some reason 😂 Becauses I thought, "I wonder if I just stop [what I now know is cricketing] and go back up to rolling my hips back and forth" and my brain was like, "NO--NOW WE HAVE TO START OVER!" 😂😂😂😂😂
@@themallster3193 That's so cool that she supported you. Too many parents just try to make their kids stop. Like when Megan said she used to get complimented for having a straight posture, how could no one see her face was miserable? It baffles me. Good job, your mom!
Same here! I never got my drum kit until I asked for one (I also wasn’t diagnosed with any neurodivergence until I was 18), but I was always drumming on everything, and now I see it’s a stim but back then I just didn’t get it. It’s awesome that your mom was so supportive!
Literally same! I just self diagnosed myself with Autism and ADHD after months of research and finding out more about the things I do that fall under these two categories, but stimming was one thing that I didn’t really think I did much of. Turns out, I do so much stimming and I didn’t even know 💀💀💀
@@pastaboiman06 Now the fun of getting something official? I had to for work to support me. Do check if your insurance will cover it. You might get lucky (mine was 100% covered)! :D
@@jennybrown5302 I was thinking I’d get to check off maybe 7-8 of the 70 stims, and then all of a sudden I’m just repeating “**Thats** a stim?!” like a meditation mantra 🤣 I was diagnosed with trichotellimania when I was like 9… I didn’t realize that the hair selection process and then the small sharp pain to focus my brain out of spiralling is a stim… and tbh I was even having some imposter syndrome feels about my crocheting as a stim. The self harm stims made me angry though, because I was doing a lot of those as a kid and **still** didn’t get diagnosed as a child… because I was a girl.. they diagnosed me with almost literally everything else except autism: depression, General anxiety disorder, bipolar (not sure about what flavor, since my mom never told me about this one until I was like 30), schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder, CPTSD (this one is a valid diagnosis), and trichotellimania (also a valid diagnosis)
@@pastaboiman06 I started getting suspicious about my autism when every single one of my kids were diagnosed with autism and my mom kept saying “they all act just like you when you were a kid” And my brain finally just started clicking things together… like how I used to stack things for fun and how I never really played pretend with my toys, I just “used” them. Like, my Barbie’s were never put into any situations where they had to interact with each other, I would just dress and undress them and brush and style their hair.
aging myself here, but Windows Media player from back in the day had visuals that would sync to the beat of whatever song you played. I would get so entranced by that!
Do you remember disk defragmenter in the 90s? The boxes would slowly convert other boxes to colors in a specific order and then start at the top again, and you could scroll down to see all of the sections that had colored boxes in the wrong place… I hope you know what I’m talking about because that is a terrible explanation. BRB going to see if there are UA-cam videos of it.
@@ellieu.6575 I remember. I loved defragging my drives just because of the visuals. Now it's just a boring progress bar, and it's handled automatically in the background.
ooooo i think i do something similar! its more me counting beats with my fingers to songs(like tapping your foot but with four fingers and a thumb in succession) , might be from playing the flute lollo
I honestly attribute this to why I was so hyper-focused on learning how to type. I can type at over 130 wpm when I'm in a high-stress state, even if it's complete nonsense because there's no reason for it.
As an ADHDer I feel so seen by the intro. So many people overlook us when it comes to stimming. I've even had people call me autistic because I stim, even though I'm not.
I like seeing it as Autism and ADHD being like "sibling" conditions. One might be mistaken for the other because some of their traits are also seen in the other. The same way sometimes siblings look very similar to each other while still being two different people.
@@tomrio9152Yeah I see what you mean. I’m autistic but not ADHD, while my boyfriend is AuDHD. People often guess our conditions in conversations and are always wrong because we have similar stims
I didn't think about it as stimming, but looping the same song over and over is much better than hearing random sounds; a nice reliable repeating series of noises versus jarring random noises.
Oh my freaking god. Whenever I'm on tiktok I stay on the same one for minutes at a time just to hear it repeat and I didn't know why. Tysm for pointing this out😭
I near constantly listen to audiobooks. Over 500 books in my library but there's about 10 I listen to repeatedly over 15 years when feeling overwhelmed or have a migraine because of the narrator's voice
I didn't even realise it's not a usual thing to be listening to the same song for like. hours. (potentially weeks or months if I got REALLY fixated) until one time I let a song repeat for about 15 mins and a friend asked why I have it on loop and not shuffle. I was like: "huh you don't do that?" 😭 no one at that table did it, apparently 💀🫠
Yup, i just use playlists to group songs together under a specifoc trait to be able to find them better but i almost NEVER listen to anything but one song on loop bc the change in the sound coming through my headphones will instantly distract me, but the world in general is an easier to manage place with something repeating in my ears
The crickets rubbing their legs to make a sound IS A MYTH! We were all lied to! They actually have hard nubs on the backs of the front wings and they rub it againts the back wings and THAT is actually what makes a sound! (I've been obsessed with animal facts and clearing out myths like that ever since I was a kid, I saw this one on a short of a channel that goes over insect anatomy with close-ups and everything)
as someone with a biology special interest i agree with this comment (they do rub their legs together to CLEAN them, but that's something other insects do) and yes, they have wings! not all species of cricket have wings, but there are those that are fully capable of flight (like grasshoppers, we don't often think of them as flying animals but most species of grasshoppers have functional wings in adulthood)
My wife has a lot of verbal stims, and they’re happy that I have an auditory processing disorder because I literally don’t react to them whenever they make their noises. My brain just disregards them because it doesn’t register it as something I should be bothered by. 😂 love it when disabilities work together for happiness.
It’s the same with me and a close friend with Tourette’s! They have a lot of verbal tics but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest because I either think the noise is interesting or don’t notice at all lmao
@@yfa6244 ; True that. But the big questions are ; # 1. Do you have a particular set of these “nervous habits” that you engage in every day, or virtually every day? … and, # 2. How frequently do you engage in these stims/ habits each day? Is it a lot throughout the day, or is it only once or twice a day? 😯❓🤷🏻♀️❓😯
i recently got a genuine diagnosis on autism and i feel like since then ive been trying to unmask more because ive realized i hide a lot of my actions and tendencies or try to not act how i want to so i seem normal. This video just makes me feel less alone and embarrassed, so ty for that
My family has told me before that I don't stim when I do. I just used to try a lot harder to not be obvious. Now I will straight up hand flap around them
i let myself rock back and forth while waiting in line at an overstimulating store recently and i felt so liberated. person who cut in front of me in line was a bit perturbed though. i'm unmasking more and more in public lately as long as it seems safe to do so. i stim in front of my family and friends all the time but now i'm taking it to the streets!
I refuse to mask any longer. Especially cos I have a mum who's told me to mask forever - only to join my idiot brother to claim I'm "faking" autism for attention. They're both horrible people.
Not a to stimming, but I have a stutter. People used to comment on it all the time, so I would barrel through it. Most people told me they didn’t realize I had one. Until a friend told me I shouldn’t be ashamed, and that I need to slow down. My stutter is a lot more obvious, but now I’m around a lot of people who are patient and kind about it, and it just feels really good to be unapologetically yourself around others. Quirks and all ❤
You mentioned the sound of crunching leaves when one walks in dry leaves in the autumn, but walking in the snow in the winter can have a similar effect.
I have such a hard time staying on hard pathways, because they aren't variable enough. I'm either on the curb, in the grass, in the dirt, in the gravel on my toes, skipping. Crunchy leave and snow is the best, but I will settle with the swoosh sound and drag of grass.
One of my favorite lesser known stims that I do is I do ASL. I constantly finger spell my thoughts, my words, what others are saying, signs that I see, I do it all the time.
I went to a psychiatrist for an autism diagnosis last year and she was walking through the most basic checklist. I remember her asking me if I flapped my hands. I said no, and after she said “Well since you don’t stim, that’s a good sign that you’re not autistic.” But… there’s more than one way. This video helped me so much. I love your channel. (And your matching dress/earrings/nails is *amazing*. It makes me ridiculously happy.) @9:54 When I realize I’m doing this exact thing right now.
@@gloomy_glamour Yeah. She told me I didn’t have ADHD (despite having been professionally assessed) and that I didn’t *seem* to have had trauma. OH, and I can’t be autistic because I made eye contact with her. I was like “….my sister in christ, I’ve worked retail/customer service for two decades. I don’t *like* it, but it was literally a point deduction on our mystery shops for a long time, and I can force myself to do it.” But I’ve done a lot of screening tests, and I was reading a ND blog that listed a ton of autistic traits that are common in women, and as I was reading it, so many things started just… clicking into place and making sense for me. (The same thing happened when someone explained what asexuality was years ago)So, she can pound sand. At the time, I had a friend who was also a psychiatrist, and he was *livid* at the bullshit diagnosis she gave me. It just sucks because I waited a year for that psych referral and it was pointless. (Kind of like how I waited a year for a psych referral for my ADHD diagnosis and got diagnosed as ADHD but also fat.)
@@DaroTheDragon Yeah, my former friend told me about someone who has ‘reasonable’ prices for autism assessments and it was still like $1500 CDN. It’s brutal how difficult mental health help is.
I find it really calmng and soothing to hug a stuffed animal, but it makes me feel really self-conscious because as a grown woman I feel like people will judge me.
Hugging stuffies (especially Squishmallows) helps me feel better too! In my home, me and my roomates can and will hug stuffies at any time we want! We all appreciate and respect our adoration of the cute fluffyness! I hope you find a group who enjoys the stuffed animal hugging too!
I've learned this about myself recently. I used to hug stuffies a lot as a kid to fall asleep and then stopped doing it as most kids do when they get older. I'm now in my 30s and my niece gave me a Squishmallow and hugging it is *so* comforting, especially if I'm particularly sad or upset.
@@Green_Roc Squishmallows during COVID is what made me ultimately seek a diagnosis because I wanted to know why I NEEDED to squish them. My therapist had asked before, "Has anyone asked you about an autism diagnosis?" but I kind of just like blew it off. But I bought (no joke) 15 different Squishmallows because Costco kept putting them on sale and I was like, "Y'know, I probably should mention this" and my therapist was like, "Yeah, remember when I asked you about if someone talked to you about an autism diagnosis?" 😂😂😂😂😂
I have a daytime house bear to hang out with me during game/tv/reading time. And 2 bears for sleep that i cuddle with. On bad days, all 3 bears are house bears & sometimes i wake up also cuddling my house bear on accident.
I'm almost 44 and still occasionally sleep with a stuffed critter. My husband just got me a crow and I love him. The crow. Though I do love the husband, too.
Pacing has always been my biggest stim. I walk in planned circles over and over again for hours while thinking about stuff. My parents comment on it all the time but were still surprised when I said I might be autistic.
@@alidaaaaa7160 I normally can’t be playing music and thinking, too much stimulation. I do like listening to music and pacing but I’m normally just thinking about the music.
@@alidaaaaa7160this is EXACTLY. WHAT. I. DO. Walk in circles playing one part of a song over and over again while thinking about stuff. Want to know if i significantly affected the “most replayed” parts on some videos
I am really glad you talked about harmful stims. I have struggled with trichotillomania and went to therapy way before i've got my autism diagnosis and it was just then that i understood WHY i've been picking at my hair all those years. i'm doing much better now but i wish it could have been less taboo than it was, so i could actually get the help i needed back then.
sometimes for me, petting my cats can be a stim, I love feeling the softness of their fur, and also running my fingers specifically my ragdoll cat's fluffy fur
Likewise - does it ever overstimulate you? My father also loved cats, and sometimes he would sort of squint-grimace when he pet them. I do that now too, and I’ve realized when I do it feels like my pleasure center is overloading. (My nervous system is a wreck these days, and various traits are much more pronounced)
Same. I have a ragdoll named Mochi and a Russian Blue named Sushi. Cats are very easily overstimulated too though. They have very sensitive "whiskers" all over their body, so I just learned where, how, and for how long they each like to be pet. They both have their preferences. They both LOVE to be brushed. Sushi will actually grab the brush in her paws like a little monkey and rub her face with it. Lol It's definitely a stim for them. Mochi also has a stim from being abandoned by her mother before she was weaned. She "makes biscuits" on my plush blanket while sucking on it. We have a ritual every night where she'll curl up next to me on the blanket and do her stim while I pet her on the back of the neck. My cats are SO empathetic too. If I'm having a meltdown or my PTSD is worse than normal, they'll take turns staying with me until I feel better. ...even if it takes a couple days.
About “digital” stims: am I the only one who scrolls to the bottom of a page, but keeps scrolling to make interface “bounce”? Or when you slide pages back and forth to just see animation? Also, am I the only one who LOVES old skewmorphic design in older versions of IOS/android. I even bought myself used iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.3 on it, and I use it like a digital fidget toy. I can spend hours just launching some default apps and scroll through system. It feels like perfect mix between nostalgia and stimming and I just enjoy it soooo much!
@@sumgirl720 Not sure if this is referring to the same thing, but I'm constantly selecting/deselecting large blocks of text with my mouse when reading online (like I'm doing with these comments), and on some pages this causes me to accidentally click on barely-visible links several times before forcing myself to stop.
I didn’t know that picking at my skin is a stim. I do it all the time, at scabs and little bumps. I find it soothing in the moment but then I realise my face is bleeding and I constantly have new scabs which is annoying.
Scab picking! I grew up in a very buggy place. I constantly picked my scabs. Now I live above 4000 feet and there are practically no bugs. What’s relief. No scabs to pick.
Here's a list for anyone who wants/needs it! _(apologies for any typos I missed)_ *Movement Stims:* - Flapping - Finger flicking - Rolling skin on thumb with fingers - Finger tapping - Face/body tapping - Rocking - Swaying - Spinning - Clapping - Jumping - "Galloping" on toes - General toe-walking - Rocking back and forth on heels - Rolling ankles side to side - Pacing - Knee bouncing - Leg kicking when sitting/lying - Running when you don't need to - Shrugging - Flexing muscles - Buttock clenching (lol) - Repetitive blinking - Squeezing eyes shut - Rubbing eyes - Scrunching up face - Scratching arms - playing with hair, hair "cracking" - Rubbing eyebrows - Nail biting - Touching nails to lips - Playing with jewellery - Playing with fidget/stress toys - Doodling/writing with no purpose - Scrolling on your phone - Phone games - "Talking" with your hands (gesturing a lot while speaking) - Drumming on something/air drums/fake piano playing - Crocheting/knitting - Sitting on your hands - Rubbing your feet on things/each other (cricketing! 🦗) - Toe wriggling - Rubbing nails together *(Potentially) Harmful Stims:* - Smoking - Lip chewing - Over-biting nails - Trichotillomania (hair plucking) - Dermatillomania (skin-picking) - Head hitting - Teeth grinding *Replacement Stims:* - Deep pressure - Squeezing something - Pressing fingertips together - A bear hug - Loud music (NOT so loud you actually hurt yourself/damage your hearing!); esp repetitive with a heavy beat - Spinning - Swinging on a swing - Strong movements - Cold shower/washing hands in cold water - Sensory/chew toys *Vocal Stims:* - Repetitive noises/words/phrases - Echolalia (repeating someone else) - Humming - Whistling - Singing - Sound effects - Laughing - Throat-clearing - Counting *Auditory Stims:* - Listening to the sounds you make - Songs on repeat - Music in general - Soothing sounds - ASMR - Crunching leaves *Visual Stims:* - Spinning objects - Watching water - Watching nature in general - Watching the same bit of a film/show again and again - Sparkly/glittery things - Sunsets - Falling leaves - Dancing *Oral Stims:* - Some things already mentioned in other categories, such as nail and lip biting - Biting the inside of you mouth - Clacking teeth together (maybe to music) - Rubbing tongue over teeth - Eating - Drinking fizzy drinks - Using lip scrubs (or chapstick/similar) - Chewing nonfood items *Olfactory Stims:* - Plastic smells - Bath and body products - Just generally smelling things lol *Touch-based Stims:* - Hugs - Weighted blankets - Soft clothing/whatever texture you like - Soft fabrics/whatever texture you like - Soft toys - Running fingers over buttons on a remove - S**ual things with others/alone (censored so this comment doesn't get deleted by UA-cam hopefully lol)
i say ‘bonk’ when putting an item onto a surface. tossing my phone on my bed? bonk. gently placing a cup onto a counter? bonk. replacing an item on a store shelf? bonk.
I ended up doing the pop cat "pop" noise 😂 Issue is it pisses my relatives off and I get super self aware when I make noises now because I tell them not to make some noises due to annoyances and I don't want them to have the same issue..
I do a similar things but I say “beep beep” when I’m doing something or trying to get someone’s attention. I think it started as a “beep beep, coming through” kind of thing when trying to squeeze past people? But now I say it in situations that make no sense at all lmao
I sometimes make the different sounds of what a variety of objects must sound like moving around as well. 😋😎😋... Or if an item makes a sound I find interesting when being moved or whatever, I repeat the sound sometimes... I also have "sound tics" (I tic more sounds than words, but it's easy for me to tell the difference between the two most times)... So basically, I understand what you are saying and I can relate. 😊
*no offense whatsoever is intended.* Her: talking about stimming and stimulation and the differences between ticks and seizures and stimulation Me with ADHD & Autism: lemon earrings. 👁stare👁 👁👁 👁👁
(AuDHD here) Totally understandable. :) If this sort of message appeals: Spend as much time as you want. Rewind the video as many times as you want, to catch the other stuff when you're ready for a break from the lemons. Repeat as desired. ❤ Also thanks for pointing out the earrings. In one of the comments, Meg posted a link to the Etsy shop where they came from.
@@resourceress7 I just put the warning up there because I didn't want to seem as if I wasn't listening to what was in the video as a sign of disrespect.
The weird part of this is that even neurotypicals stim, for example in extreme emotional distress...it's weird that they picked the most normal, adaptive and relatable part of autism as the part that apparently doesn't exists
I suppose that’s why it’s not, actually. In theory, the things they are looking for as criteria would be stuff that is clearly distinguishable from “normal” behavior. It makes sense in concept, but it’s easier said than done, because it’s pretty hard to find a behavior that only exists in a particular condition. To employ a cliched example, people without OCD wash their hands, but not nearly as much as people for whom it’s a compulsive behavior. (I chose that example because I have struggled with somewhat obsessive hand washing.) Given that, I would agree that stimming ought to be in there as a commonly seen behavior. I’m starting to think that one of the ways to deal with some of the “identity war” issues that have come up since ASD 1-3 was introduced would be to employ a 2-tier system, one level that assesses for a basic cognitive profile, and another that assesses for traits that are or have become pronounced enough to be disabling. It would offer a more nuanced way of looking at who someone is and how they are doing, and opens the door to the idea that someone’s profile might change over time, depending on their health, their level of stress, etc. it might also make it easier to focus on individual areas of impairment or non impairment, rather than a binary impaired/not impaired, which is part of how we get to things like “you can’t be autistic, you have friends.” ADHD, with its three possible presentations, at least hints at these possibilities. (Thinking out loud here)
It's probably exactly because it is relatable that neurotypical people don't see it as an autistic behaviour. Autistic people are just far more prone to being overwhelmed and having to stim to sooth themselves. And they often have far more obvious verbal and/or motor-based stims.
7:57 I have to stop watching this because it’s making my body feel itchy and I have to do the stims as you say them, whether they’re something I do commonly or not
I love playing games on my computer. When my brain isn't being an asshole and making me feel guilty it's otherworldly. Reality melts away and I always feel so relaxed after.
@@aotmr1604 it's absolutely not wasted time it's essential to mental health. Several hours of stim significantly lowers time spent ruminating and depression induced energy drain.
I relate to this alot. Especially as a sensitive individual that struggles with existential depression. Video games take my mind off of this chaotic world.
This channel was the reason I had the confidence in my own neurodivergence to self-diagnose, so yeah it's great to remind myself of that whenever I convince myself I'm just attention-seeking. 😂
One of my favorite stims is typing. I customized my mechanical keyboard to tweak the sound, the texture of the keycaps, the weight of the press of the keys... It's so satisfying.
Yes! I also have a typing stim and made my own mechanical keyboard. I plan on making another one at some point in the future because I was much poorer when I made my first keyboard and could not afford the creamier sounding switches that I find so immensely satisfying. In a way, building keyboards can be a fun stim too. I remember when I was lubing and filming my switches, I was actually a little disappointed when I'd finally finished. It kept my hands busy for days.
as teen i got into writing stories with a keyboard in word and then google docs. I wrote...long stories, almost books even, mostly fantasy. I realized one day that the thing that i liked most about it was the typing itself. I often go onto written rants about any topic just because it is so soothing to feel and hear the keys clacking. Friends in Voice Chat know me as the one with the angry typing, its not angry though i will just put my soul into every clack because i love the sensation XD
I type in my mind. Like I know where every letter is on the keyboard and I mentally "type" out words. This can be done along with clenching muscles in relation to the locations of different keys.
Oooh Ooo I have one more! Untying large knots!! I've legit thought about offering services for yarn barf because I can sit for hours and undo big piles knotted yarn and string as a stim.
❤ please be my friend lol. I hate doing it so much. It stresses me out and frustrates me to no end. Needles and yarn is my go to fidget device of choice and yarn barf just kills it.
Singing is my most satisfying stim. I was in choir every year of primary school and after I graduated I noticed how my mood shifted because I wasn’t singing every day. I sing when I’m alone but it’s not the same feeling as being in a big group of people. The harmony’s and feeling it in my voice is unmatched
yesssss singing in a group feels so good! Especially when you hit those slightly dissonant harmonies. I also love blasting choral music in my headphones XD
@@margaretcummings4146 yesss dude!! My choir teacher had us singing so many fun songs from different eras! My favorite is ergen deda. It’s a Bulgarian folk song i definitely recommend listening too. The genre itself has such rich dissonance
Chewing a wet cloth! Not just texture! The small burst of bathroom tap flavored water, feeling the water come out. Thanks for helping me understand my husband's throat clearing. We are both on the spectrum. I have to wear ear defenders when he works from home because I don't do well with that noise. I knew he can't help it and have said nothing, but him being male and drawing attention to his presence in that way is activating for me, sensory issues aside. But he's so gentle. Now I can remind myself that this is like the flapping and noise making that comes from me when he's in quiet mode. Truly appreciate this insight. Funny note, we both watched star trek, 2nd Generation on repeat to self sooth. But because he does that every night, I can't anymore. He also eats Ramen for lunch every day, endearing. I'm higher support needs than him, so it's nice to learn new compassion. He does so much for us. Thanks!
I constantly smell my stuffed animal like when I’m just like relaxing on the sofa I’m holding my stuffed animal. I randomly smell it and my parents seem concerned that I constantly smell things. I do most of these things that you’ve mentioned in this video.
As a fiddling, fidgeting, picking, rocking, humming & jiggling person ALL my life I finally found that weaving baskets is a marvelous way to calm everything down a bit
Is it possible to train yourself to make anything a stim? All mine are useless and I'd like to get the same satisfaction from doing something useful. Crochet is a good example but it just doesn't hit the same spot that twirling my hair or ankles does.
Another common stim, especially as a kid, that wasn't mentioned here, is picking your nose. This one is embarrassing to admit but was definitely a huge stim for me as a kid, and it was super embarrassing to be called it for it by parents and teachers lol... It is still a stim for me but for obvious reasons i now only do it when I am alone and have tissues with me. I just couldn't get rid of this stim even though it is quite embarrassing!
I'm right there with you. I definitely try to be more covert about it now that I'm an adult but it's so satisfying I don't think I will ever be able to stop
I feel u 100%! As an adult I do it most of the time in private. But it's a huge stim for me since childhood. I've got memories of me as a child asking my parents for help to get rid of this behavior cause I couldn't stop and my nose was bleeding often. Also the same with chewing the skin on the inside of my mouth and my tounge. I thing the last ones became even more in the last years. I really wish to replace those stims (in particular the chewing) with alternatives! maybe someone has an idea...
The stims i never hear about are stims that involve smelling, when i was a kid i was constantly smelling my hair, to the point people made fun of me for it, now that i have short hair i smell my hands to calm me down and I also try to get all my bath products into lavander smell since it's what I like the best
Yeah I smell all my food before I eat it and if I've just eaten crisps I like to smell my fingers, but I get I bit self-conscious when I can see people notice it
Omg I do the same thing!! Luckily nobody has ever called me out on it or noticed me doing it in public. But sometimes I'll smell my hands or my arm too. I think it's just comforting because it smells like me? And the texture of soft hair or skin against your face and lips is nice
I use to do that too, then I cut my hair off to be short because I realised the long hair gave me headaches, but the consequence was me rubbing my finger into my scalp, as though I was scalp picking and them pressing my knuckles to my mouth to smell it. It so weird I hate it, but it helps when I need a different smell and I can't get anything else, because it makes me concentrate on if I can still smell my shampoo.
Lavender! All of my soaps for everything are lavender! What is it about that scent?!? And I used to get "talked to" or outright smacked as a child because I loved to smell people's hair - As a little I'd be up on my feet or knees on the seat, facing over the back of it, almost burying my face into a perfect stranger's hair, trapped in its scent until mom or dad yanked me away and apologized to them for my bad behavior.
8:35 And I thought my only stims were cracking my knuckles and twirling my hair if it’s long enough. This part helped me remember that my mother would say that I would talk with my hands. Not flapping, just gesturing in the air. I’ll keep watching to see if other reminders come up.
Rainstorms bring a LOT of stimulation for me ☺️☺️ I love it everytime. I love it so much. The lightning strikes (I always wait outside to see them), thunder, rain, and the smell of the muddy ground. I usually stand and squeal outside watching the sky for lighting strikes ^_^
I hope this isn't ignorant in anyway or insulting but that is actually so cute 😭 And I too love the smell of rain and the sound it's very comforting :)
My favourite stim growing up was spinning around in a chair for hours, or in school recess i would spend the entire break using the swing. That and also copying pokemon cries while playing the games. Somehow I didnt get diagnosed until my 20s.
I have a very similar experience to that! I love spinning in office chairs, swings and marry-go-rounds are my favorite playground equipment, and I love repeating after pokemon (although I only watched the anime, and never played the games)
i used to LOVE spinning id steal my dad's office chair and spin in it for minutes straight, but as i got older i stopped cause i started getting REALLY sick afterwards XD
@@MSAWCartoonist SAME!!!! my favorite playground equipment has always been swings and carousels/merry-go-rounds (and i used to love flipping over on those standy bars you could do pull-ups on) and i would literally just spin on my own axis while staring straight up at a light for tens of minutes while waiting for art classes but now i get so motion sick so quickly from any of it, its horrible ;-;
Not to mention, if I can't stim, or I'm stopped from stimming, or have to alter my stim because public/other people, it's not as satisfying and causes me to be anxious. That anxiety also makes things worse, because people don't understand the need.
I'm not officially diagnosed, but I strongly suspect I might be autistic. When I go on vacation while I'm excited I also dread it at the same time. Because since I will be in public or in someone else's company I can't do the certain thing I do when in private. Which is I can only describe as full on body movement/flailing about. It's an almost stifling feeling. Like a pop bottle slowly building up pressure. But I have absolutely no where to go to release that energy. It's always a huge relief when I finally get back to my private/safe space to release that energy. I knew what I did wasn't normal at all until I started to really research what it could mean. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has not one, but multiple ways stimming can manifest in one's self.
You can try incoperating some more socially acceptable stims, also do them just at home and stuff. That way. Those will also actually feel like stims in public. Like wearing any normal jewelry you rub your fingers over. One of the hand things. Chewing gum instead of other oral stims. Using a pen or whatever or a rubber band. Bottle cap. If you want an ultra silent toy you can also opt for a worry stone. These can be used inside your pocket.
It feels weird watching a video about stimming when many of my stimming behaviors have been so heavily pathologized. When I was in school, the stims I used to perform would get me into so much trouble that one school (some Catholic one) threatened me with expulsion, and the other (a public one) suspended me for a few days. And the truth was, I never even really noticed it; I was trying to cope with stress. And here, watching this, I feel a sense of anomie after years of trying to fit in. It’s so surreal, and yet, Megan makes me feel like I am at home. Thank you, Megan. You are the best. You are doing good work for autists everywhere.
•o• What were the stims you did? I only got nagged by another student to stop making my pencil bounce side to side like a seesaw, she probably said to “stop doing that” idk. I was just like no why? Stimming helps me think, but I didn’t realize it was stimming back then. I just knew I liked it and felt comfortable with it vs restless without. I tend to have more misophonia and this stim was completely silent, so I just don’t get why it bothered her. I also flex my muscles in my toes and legs. I readjust my shoulders as well, especially when I’m wearing a bra or sports bra. Most of my stims are quieter and subtle, so I doubt people saw it. Maybe I’m wrong? 🤷
My stimming consisted of playing with my hair and fidgeting with other body parts, some of which are social taboos. They weren’t what people thought they were; it was more of a way to ground myself in the world. However, Intersubjectivity, neurotypicals did not understand that, so they judged before they investigated. Now, after those humiliating circumstances, I just carry a blitzableiter (stimming device) with me in the form of a dictionary since it is socially acceptable.
@sarahc5608 the irony is that people with ADHD can have trouble filtering out irrelevant details, so everything is distracting. I have this, and insofar as my ADHD side makes louder, more seemingly extroverted, and an impulsive talker, I’m also unfortunately good at annoying autistic people. It’s lonely. Which is not to say that this is why quiet stimming is objectively a problem, or you shouldn’t do it. Everyone has a cognitive profile based partly in physiology, and basically everyone has to figure out how to get along as best we can. IMO, it is not a simple matter of “right behavior/wrong behavior,” as it gets defined in schools. That’s more about enforcing uniform behavior in order to manage large groups of people, crowd control if you will. Even if sometimes necessary, it should always (again, IMO) be looked atcas a cooperative exercise, NOT as a moral “tight way/wrong way” thing. That approach can do terrible emotional damage to kids (I’m referencing my own second grade experiences here!)
I'm diagnosed with ADHD and thinking of getting an autism assessment one day. My partner isn’t diagnosed but we share so many neurodivergent traits that we kind of stim together. We're always making noises at each other, patting each other's backs and hugging while rocking from side to side (honestly the best stim with someone you’re comfortable with) and we tend to echo each other's casual sound effects, it’s beautiful.
My mum only just found out she has autism and she likes to randomly hug me and I usually turn it into a rocking hug, it is fun! We also meow or make noises to each other (which usually gets us weird looks from my dad lol). I'm not diagnosed with anything but I'm happy I can understand my mum and the "weird" things she does
@@mhenderson7673 That is so sweet! My mum is very similar and she’s definitely going through some kind of self-discovery since I was diagnosed with ADHD hahah. My partner and I visited my family recently and while we were playing a board game we started making noises. Slowly everyone joined in and it became an endless cycle of echolalia
Most of my siblings plus my mom and dad are neurodivergent in some way including me and we tend to make weird noises at each other poke each other stuff like constantly I get a lot of weird looks from people when I do these things
Aww that's cute and wholesome 🥺 that sounds like an amazing experience to be able to mutually stim and find comfort in each other doing it, also sounds like a wonderful bonding experience.
Not autistic, but ADHD, is where steel boned corsets because I liked the tight pressure all along my torso. And then I would catch myself tapping on the steel boning. Something about how the boning carried the tap over my belly was just such a mesmerizing feeling!
There are corsets with less curve or tailored more towards the male body type. I don't have hips or curves so finding one that fit was a bit of a trial but the pressure is really nice for anxiety and grounding
@@shane5535There is a market now for masc bodies, it’s entirely up to you to change the status quo and wear what you want (if you can afford it and feel safe doing so).
My stimming behaviour is so contradictory. I am most sensitive to sound, it’s the input that distresses me most, but I also require constant auditory stimulation through my headphones to get anything done. And when there’s loud noises I can’t block out, I stim by humming/moaning in time, like if I can be the one making the noise it’ll be okay.
As someone who’s also sensitive to sound but likes listening to loud music and such to get things done, I don’t think it’s super contradictory! It’s the difference between uncontrollable noise that’s often comes from multiple sources and a sound that you yourself control and that only comes from one source! If I get overstimulated by my loud music, I can turn it down or turn it off. Can’t do that with loud crowds!
From my own experience, a lot of it is what the noise triggers. If it’s fight of flight, it’s bad news. If it’s excited adrenaline, it can feel good. I think that’s the deal with loud noises vs loud music, anyway. The vocal stims I do are different, I don’t think they trigger adrenaline. The crappy thing that I think happened to me is that I leaned hard on adrenaline for some years in a high pressure job, in a company that I think is historically ADHD. I was unaware of my own neurology at that time, and because I was already predisposed to high stress hormones, which the adrenal glands also produce, using adrenaline to focus all the time drove up my anxiety and irritability. I could feel it happening but didn’t understand what it was. Now I just plain can’t listen to loud music, and my nervous system is really overwrought.
I tell people "I don't like loud noises unless i make them. Like...loud music is bad unless it's from my own earbuds and I control the song." And I thought that was NORMAL.
Just for "why not?", stims that you listed that I do: 4:31 - Finger rolling 4:45 - Tapping (mostly taping other stuff, but yeah) [probably more like the drumming one mentioned later] 4:52 - Swaying 4:53 - Spinning (probably one of the first parts of my shoes to wear down is probably the sole because of this) 5:31 - Snapping (not what was listed here, but similar enough) 6:12 - This thing (I don't think I do this one that much anymore though, but I immediately recognised it) 6:22 - Leg shake (also foot shake when I have one leg on the other) 6:36 - Muscle flexing (especially in my face, feels like they always need to stretch) 6:47 - Glute flexing 7:05 - Rapid blinking 7:14 - Squeezing eyes shut 7:16 - Rubbing eyes 7:27 - Playing with hair (especially after dying my hair, but that's probably more for seeing it more) 8:06 - Doodling (I have many school/homework papers that I've kept just for the doodles, or at least what I could get away with without my parents making me toss them 😒) 9:00 - Drumming (one of my pockets in my work vest is full of hanger tags that I originally collected to reuse them but I've never felt like going through them to find the size I needed, but I eventually found out I can drum on them and now it's kinda hard not to 🤣) 9:26 - Sitting on hands (don't do this one anymore I don't think, but I used to get whatever those imprints are called after sitting on them) 9:39 - Foot rubbing 10:20 - Toe wiggling (also toe stretching) 10:47 - Lip chewing (more like scratching/scraping my lips with my teeth, but sometimes I do bite off loose pieces of lip) 15:20 - If I knew how to whistle I bet that would be one of my more common stims 21:47 - Teeth grinding (don't know about during my sleep, but I definitely do it while awake) 22:18 - Rubbing tongue against teeth 22:36 - If I don't chew on the right side of my mouth with one bite and chew the next bite on the left side and so-forth ending with chewing food on my left side, then it feels really off. This was an issue whenever I had something that made it so that chewing on one side was painful. I still _had_ to chew on that side though. 24:05 - Chewing non-food items (don't do this anymore, but I used to chew on my metal jacket zipper) 18:11 - I also find random background noises like that very distracting to the point I had to take tests in a separate room. It's not as bad when everyone's not trying to be quiet though, probably because there's a more consistent background sound that all those blend into. 18:30 - I don't really watch ASMR, and one of the few times I've done it recently was because it was one of the few tutorials I could find for something. The whispering turned me off immediately, and since there were a few other tutorials I went to those instead (of course trying to find what videos there were after the fact I end up finding way more) Some that weren't mentioned (or I didn't recall during the and forgot it was when I remembered) that I do: Knuckle cracking (even when they don't crack, which they usually don't because most of the time I try cracking them not long after cracking them) - Sometimes I do this with individual fingers Toe cracking (basically if I move either of my big toes in a certain way it cracks like a knuckle crack) Wrist cracking (same as with toes) Neck cracking Fidgeting with beard and boobs (though I understand this one as not everyone has either and most don't have both, and the beard one can probably fall under hair fidgeting) Don't know what to call this one, but spinning my chair but not by much back and forth, kinda like rocking - This can be paired with using one of my feet to push against the side of my desk kinda like I'm bouncing, but horizontally instead of vertically Toe curling (big toes doesn't curl up with the rest though) Sometimes when listening to music (whether actually or in my mind, but this happens mostly doing actually) I like to conduct Wiggling and stretching my fingers Dancing Wrist rotating (to the point I wish I could just rotate them 360 degrees) Pulling on my fingers Bouncing (I only really do this while sitting, and they're small bounces) Nose rubbing Thigh squeezing Rubbing my thighs (either after a fresh shave or shortly after my leg hairs regrow when they're still stubbly) Rocking (like with bouncing) Just flicking the cursor wherever, sometimes just off to one side and then to the other Spinning the scroll wheel (sometimes I move the cursor to where scrolling won't affect what I'm seeing, but other times I just let it happen) Head nodding (as in the kinda mini-dance, not as in nodding my head yes) Pushing myself back while in my chair Playing with my skirt Lip syncing to whatever song is playing in my head Fidgeting with my stomach flab (probably just gonna end there for now since it's past when I should be in bed 😅) (fun fact: many of these I only remembered because I was doing them trying to figure out what other ways I stim)
One that I rediscovered is that I used to pick up leaves or pull out bits of grass and pick them apart, I completely forgot I did it until a video of a dad who made a garden so his autistic daughter could do it came up!
@@imautisticnowwhat Can I ask what the sparkly stuff in your hair is and where you got it? I've only ever seen you and one other UA-camr that have it. I always want to put sparkly stuff in my hair, but all the stuff I find is either something sticky that makes my hair crunchy (and most of the glitter sticks to my hands anyway), or a clip that's hard to put on right.
I've struggled with head hitting, self punching, self harm, and skin picking for my whole life, and only just recently got a lot better with it. It would get to an explosive point because I was trying to mask too much and push myself too far, not allowing myself to be myself and soothe myself the way I needed to. When you feel forced into masking and you're never allowed to release any of that pressure without being called a freak, from how overwhelming everything is by rocking, flapping, humming, tapping, or any other 'socially unacceptable' stim... it will all come out at once eventually. Being a DV survivor didn't help with that either, I learned it from my parents. Allowing myself to stim in all the ways I want, as hard as I want, and as much as I want, around people who accept me, changed my life. No more skin infections, scars all over my arms and lumps on my head. I also love learning new ways to stim that I've never tried or thought of before. Keeps me too preoccupied to do the bad stims.
I appreciate you sharing that. It doesn’t get talked about a lot, even on ND channels. I get why but it can feel lonely. Paige did a thing on SIBs and SH a few months back, and it was really helpful to hear from others who’ve struggled with this as an adult.
I skin pick and bite...I never thought it was stimming or a tic - I just thought it was a thing I did. It's kind of funny I never put that together before now.
the bit about trichotillomania as a stim made me feel so seen-I have PCOS and grow a lot of facial hair for an AFAB person, and I obsessively play with it and pull it out whenever I notice some growing in. when I was a kid I would pull out hair from my scalp, too, but got yelled at a lot so eventually I stopped until I picked up the facial hair stim in adulthood. I think it's good to acknowledge stims that aren't healthy as long because it helps destigmatize them and makes it easier to find alternatives. thanks for the lovely video 💖
I also have PCOS and I often have to pluck my chin hairs because if i dont and my finger brushes against a thicker hair when i run my hands along my jawline, i will obsessively wiggle the hair back and forth with the tip of my finger. Just typing this has me resisting the urge to look for new chin hairs to play with! 😅
@@LilChuunosuke 🤝 I'm the same way!! either I will play with them endlessly or obsess about pulling them out regardless of whether or not I have a means to do so at my immediate disposal. I hate that I do it but I really can't help it, either.
@@SunIsLost I'm also trans, and honestly growing even more facial hair is what keeps me from starting T because this particular stim drives me nuts and is probably not healthy (the way I do it, anyway). hearing about other people who arrived at the same stim from different backgrounds makes me feel better about it, so thank you for sharing ❤️
For the intro, I have Tourette’s syndrome and Autism *(also possibly ADHD and Dyspraxia)* and so people can confuse stims with ticks, it doesn’t happen often though, because I usually tick around my family, which mostly know me in and out Edit: also at 12:22 reminded me of another tick where I would shake my head quite vigorously for about 20-30 seconds, and at one point it got so bad to the point where I was doing it every 10 seconds after the previous one, I had a really bad headache constantly for about 2 days during it and one day after and begged to my parents to miss school, which they were hesitant about, but luckily let me for one day, this was also paired with vigorous hand shaking lasting about 5 seconds which also stopped the rest of my body from moving at all, and cost a tonn of energy from my body Luckily I don’t do this as often anymore, it’s been a long time since, I usually do it every 10 minutes or so, and a lot less vigorously thank you SO SO much for reading the entire thing, you really are very patient!
Yeah, I'm formally diagnosed with autism and I get both stims AND tics. The easiest way to separate them is that tics are always unpleasant, (they feel bad, they are uncontrollable in a violent way and after tics I feel worse than I felt before) whereas stims, even the painful ones, are pleasurable in either a direct or a roundabout way. (Physical pain relieves mental pain = pleasure from relief. etc.) Does that sound about right for you too?
It was probably so hard to have Tourette's in school for you. I also have autism and adhd. I don't know why but when I cant handle with the amount of stres I'm in I start to speak nonsense like I don't say them they are just irrelevent sounds my mouth make and I start thighten my muscles all over my body, and sometimes pull my hair to the degree it is damaged. And I live in a dormitary. So sometimes other kids see me during this thing. But I experience it five times a year or so. I can't imagine having Tourette's in school. Kids can be really mean sometimes. They don't understand the nature of disorders. I hope you are doing ok.
@@sevgilikitaplarm4364 I do still get bullied even after years of them seeing this, I thought they'd be used to it now, but nope! (It’s gotten better though, thankfully)
Here's a few goodies that you hadn't mentioned: singing along with the songs that are playing in my head, regardless of where i am. I often find myself doing this when i have to go shopping, and the bright lights, the crowds and the odd humming noises bother me. I feel overstimulated and overwhelmed, then i tend to start rocking as well. I go through the clothing department, touching the various fabrics. I love velvet, soft cotton, plush like and velvet like fabrics. I love playing with my gemstones and crystal collection, making grids, looking at them, through them, shining light through them, feeling the cool flat, glass like surfaces, the roughness of some stones. I used to love hearing the rain on a ton roof, also the sound of a thunderstorm. I used to love dangling my legs and feet in the river, feeling the water flowing over my legs and feet, the softness of the silt between my toes and the minnows nibbling on my skin; the way it tickles. I love lying down on the grass watching the clouds and the light playing through the trees, the sound of birds singing. Sky watching during a meteor shower. Playing with a hand drum or a tibetan singing bowl.
Earlier in the video, when you mentioned playing with hair, I literally thought to myself “I don’t let myself do that. I just end up pulling it out. I wear hats so that I don’t pull my head hair and my glasses keep me from pulling at my eyebrows and eyelashes too much.” And then you mentioned it later on and I went “Oh. That has a name?” So. Thanks for teaching me I guess? Time for research!
crocheting, doodling and SO much more. It has been such a HUGE thing for me to realize that I can watch tv or whatever else if I am crocheting/fidgeting . I am usually way more hyper when I have to sit still and just take in information so this my brain has to do two things in at once is just such a nice way I can hack my brain.
For me, my major stim is head scratching, but only by other people. When I was a child, I would go to my mother's room everyday and ask her to give me a head scratch because the sensation was phenomenal, it also helped me get sleepy. I still love to ask friends or bfs to give me a head scratch if I feel comfortable because it's just so nice.
I self-diagnosed myself and am waiting for the opportunity to actually see a professional, I keep getting crazy imposter syndrome constantly because "what if I'm just pretending" or "doing it as an excuse" but like there's no way me relating to most of these are all just coincidences, for example, I didn't know galloping around was a type of stimming, I do it CONSTANTLY at home, or tapping your fingers on your thumb which I noticed myself frequently doing recently. Leg shaking is a gigantic one, I've been doing it almost constantly for around 2 years at this point, I've always just thought it was stress.. it was probably influenced by stress but still. Also when she started talking about moving your toes I noticed myself doing it already which was like a weird wake up call I'm sorry for venting I just need some kind of validation
Plus side: you may find it helpful to take notes, and when you are able to see a professional, you'll have specific examples to give them. 👍🏻 When I got my diagnosis, I found myself unable to remember specific examples many times when I was put on the spot in the diagnostic 1-on-1 conversation with the evaluator. (I know it's why I was there, and they were just doing their job, but it was still stressful to me -- I wish I had brought notes.) I still got diagnosed, and you probably will too, but taking notes with you might help with the stress of the actual diagnostic process? Just an idea of course, do what is best for you.
I'm ccurrently in tears. You can´t imagine how much these videos help us understand our weird minds and also lets us know we are not alone and we are not that otherwordly. Thanks a whole lot for everything you do.
I've been on the waiting list for about 20 months for an ADHD assessment, but this video called me out on so many things (like I do a good 75%+ of the things mentioned, plus things not mentioned) that it's making me wonder 😅
Usually my ‘harmful’ stims show up when I’m in distress usually in a crowded plays and I always get weird looks because I’m all stiff, my eyes are darting everywhere, I scratch my neck, pull my ears and I have to constantly assure people I’m fine, I’m just stressed 😭😭
Me and my brother do something we call crowing sometimes when our parents are gone and it’s exactly what it sounds like we just go AHH AHH AHH repeatedly at eachother
Me and this friend I had in HS used to screech like raptors at each other sometimes. His parents were great too. We were doing it at his house one day and his mom walked in, made a noise at us, smiled, then walked into her room. Now that I think about it, pretty sure they both may be on the spectrum taking in a lot of other factors lol
Every once in awhile, my daughter will start this with me and I respond in kind, repeating random loud sounds at each other for a full minute - the rest of the family looks at us like we’re nuts!
I have adhd, and i think we’re working on a diagnosis for autism. My stims tend to be Drawing. Random vocal sounds (ex: meowing, saying “rawr” or other random sounds) Leg bouncing Pencil tapping Finger tapping Jumping blinking Playing with my hair Ring twisting Talking with hands Cracking knuckles Drumming Then ones i dislike: Skin/scab Picking Skin Biting Scratching Lip chewing So. Yeah..
I wonder if drawing was/is a stim for me? I spent most of my childhood drawing, and I’ve thought it was mostly because I could do it alone in my room. There is something about a freehand drawing that comes out the way I wanted (rarer than I would like), and when I manipulate a drawing tool well it feels good. I miss the old brush and ink days.
I wildly gesticulate with my hands when I speak, most of the time I don't know I'm doing it! I also play with jewelry that I've got on if I'm wearing it, usually when I'm nervous.
I also have ADHD and probably autism. I have a lot of very similar stims. Only ones I don't have are drawing and blinking. Jumping is only when I'm really excited, though.
I have autism and ADD and i realized i have a lot of stims like, I often walk on my toes at home, tap my leg, click a pen or flap my hand while i walk, biting or picking my skin, and doodling also a lot more, this video really made me realize all the different type of stims that can be with autism and so on, thank you for making this video
When I was a kid I used to run the hose so I could watch the water flow like a tiny river, and then I would dig channels and lakes for the river. I'd do the same thing with puddles and dig them out and get them to flow. I loved those water tables at children's museums and I still want to go to childrens museums to just play with them as a young adult. I get so excited when it rains, especially heavy rain that flows on the ground and over the streets to storm drains. I'd never thought about watching water being a stim but it totally makes sense.
Tell myself before the video "I don't think I really do much stimming". proceeds by thinking "yeah I usually do that" to basically every example in the video and remember how satisfying those things are to do.
*Vocal* *stimming* is another one that people tend to overlook (especially in the form of singing) since "everybody does that" and I vocal stims A LOT. I also dance as a stim, but It's soooo difficult to not to sometimes ESPECIALLY when I'm in a public space and I hear some music lol. I just want to dance immediately. (> w
I used to dance a LOT when younger, at minimum tapping my foot to a tune. Even now I often listen to EDM (an autistic saviour, especially kick-focussed versions) so I have a steady, predictable boom boom boom in my ears instead of random noise from outside, but in my past I've been a big raver
Just received my ASD diagnosis an hour ago and wanted THANK YOU for all of your videos, they have been an invaluable resource during the diagnostic process.
The bit about harmful stims was sooo validating. I actually cried. I’ve been looking into autism for the last couple years and think I am autistic, but I thought that my harmful stims were just me having something wrong with me. I didn’t realise that some of those are so common and I feel so much better now!! Also hello from South Africa 💗🇿🇦
i have real issues with skin picking and only recently realised it was because of my adhd/autism!! there's definitely not something wrong with you and you can 100% replace those stims with something more healthy for you
I've never been tested nor diagnosed, and I'm very hesitant to "self-diagnose," but holy crap I've done so many of these my whole life! I had to learn how to "be still" when I was young, but even now at 50 I don't always succeed for very long - I compartmentalize and create an imaginary me. That me can get away with my action, while everyone else sees a perfectly behaved person. I don't have any idea what that says about my mental state/health.... My song is One Tin Soldier, used to be a cutter, still a skin picker, still smoke like a chimney, randomly realize I'm rocking, on and on.... So many things you mentioned here, I plummet head-first into doing over and over and over until something outside breaks me free. I'm a smeller and toucher, too - now *that's* lead to some awkward times when I was a kid! Thank you so much for what you're doing :)
@@LieseFury self diagnosis is fine, self *medicating* isn't. Even if you are 1000% sure it's right for you, getting the right dose can be a very precise process with a lot of trial and error. Please don't ever self medicate.
I wish I could get an official diagnosis, but I'm afraid it might be way out of my price range 😥. But these last few years have led me to self diagnose myself because there were a lot of "weird" things I was doing that I knew was not normal. It really does explain a lot of my behavior and the way I choose to tackle certain situations. It would also explain my dad's own behavior over the years. But unlike me it would take an act of Congress to get him tested.
I have a massive stim of BLASTING certain songs on full volume and then imaging full on scenarios (usually I’m trying to act out some of it sometimes, it looks kinda like dancing) featuring stuff I’m fixated on, the music is usually a lot of Vocaloid (example: Hatsune Miku), Video Game Music and/or Remixes, Tame Impala, or anything that catches my autism randomly! Although I blast the music a little TOO loud as I’m always trying to “tune out everything.” And even then, I’m usually listening to some chill Synthwave if I’m listening to music while doing something else in the forefront, like gaming or reading a book. My dad got me these super comfortable noise canceling headphones years ago, (that aren’t bulky) they’ve saved me SO many times, I love them so much and I don’t go anywhere without them! 💖
THAT'S A STIM?????? I've been doing that since forever bc concentrating on a specific line of thought helps me tune out the rest of my brain, i often do this to sleep 💀
this type of stim is so fun its like so good for musicals or anything that sounds similar!! just earlier i was dramatically acting out avenged sevenfold songs. For over a year every night, id sing the entirety of doomstar requiem and pickles' rehab saga from metalocalypse before bed and i still havent gotten sick of them. i do like some good calm songs as have a constant need to listen to different genres, but usually the heavier the better for me (i know im not the only one who gets calmed down by heavy metal, i saw dying fetus live and so many people in the crowd were happily swaying back and forth!) and i am always listening to music while in public and doing things. also speaking of vocaloid :3 i thank utsu-p's contributions to the metalhead vocaloid community daily.
Wow! I am aware of some of my stims, but some I never really thought about until now! I also really like how you explained things in detail / showed the examples, so we had a clear idea of it. Incredibly informative video 😁👍
Funny thing about listening to music: the first time I worked from home with my parent in my apartment they commented on the fact that I wasn’t listening to any music during work. I was confused why they would comment on it but they reminded me that I basically used to listen to music 24/7 growing up, always when doing homework and any other time as well. Somehow I had unlearned this during university and forgotten about it. I’ve started listening to music at work again sometimes and it’s lovely.
I could only do homework if I had the radio on (it was the 1960s). My nosy, boundary-less would come into my room and turn the radio off, assuming that it was "distracting" me. I would turn the radio back on as soon as she left my room
Echolalia is so fun- I love to mimic the sounds my cats make, especially when they chirp. I do it so much that I think I can do a pretty solid cat impression XD
I can't tell if I have echolalia or if I just have big ambitions to impersonate bird calls XD I love to bother the seagulls on our neighbours roof, they look at me so funny
I'm Audhd and an elementary sped para and accidentally mimic my students all the time. One friend hates it. "Don't copy me!!" I feel so bad every time and I try to explain that I just really liked how it sounded. 😭 Then he'll mimic me 10 minutes later, and I'll call him a copycat as he giggles lol.
I did(had?) echolalia when I was younger, someone in my kindergarten class pointed it out and I got embarrassed and stopped. Same thing happened with hand flapping, someone told me I looked autistic when I flapped my hands and because I didn’t want to appropriate it or be seen as something I wasn’t (I am autistic, but little me didn’t know that) I stopped, I only just started up again a few years ago
As an adhd-er with tourettes; the tics and stims intertwine but also; stims keep the tics away. For the outside world it is all perceived as one, as wrong, as a sign of me not being calm,focused and in control even though half of the time I actually am (because i'm stimming) and the other half I can function fine regardless of tics. So I've learned to mask it all, ending up forcing a stiff posture and secretly playing piano etc. All of it causes physical pain. I am now 37 and unlearning So Normalize it please! Tysm r making this vid!
Most hilarious thing in the world is when you realize that neurotypical people also got really subtle stimming behaviour that's self soothing. And it's nothing to be ashamed or awkward about. People say anything about it? Just watch them. See how often they jiggle with their keychain, or how often they click their pen, chew their lips, scratch their hair. It's cause our monkey brain is anxious and patterns are soothing. Extremely so for people on the spectrum. But also for regular people.
9:27 nobody has ever acknowledged this as a stim before for me, but when I was little I remember teachers telling someone (whether it was me or my siblings or my classmates, I don't know) that we need to keep our hands down and not distracting, keep our hands to ourselves, and the adult said to sit on your hands, it could have been my mom talking to my brother. But I remember hearing that, and for a solid 5 or 6 years, I did that because I loved the pressure on my hands. I still do it occasionally, but it's just so funny to me because nobody's ever spoken about it before that I've heard.
I had completely forgotten I used to do this at school, I can still remember the texture of the plastic chair. I would try and hide my hands sometimes afterwards because I didn't want people to notice my hands were all red and lined from the pressure!
I have NEVER heard about "cricketing" before, ...and I've been doing it as long as I remember. I thought I was the only one having this "problem", and I didn't know why I do it. Nice to know it is a thing people do. Well, at least some people...
12:24 yeah, i was forced into a pep rally at my school and did this while i was overstimulated and overwhelmed. My mom said to scream LOUDER with the people but that 1: makes it worse 2: overstimulates my friends i sit next to sometimes, so i told the person who takes people who are noise sensitive to a different room then the loud gym to never put me in that again, so now o think im good
I finally made my own stim toy. I've owned a stuffed animal since I was 9 months old (I'm in my 30s now), and ever since I can remember, I've run its tail between my fingers. It helps me focus, it makes me feel better, and it's stuck at home because I'm an adult and carrying around a 13in stuffed animal isn't really conducive to my job. I also tend to slide my fingers up and down on the stiff fabric of a zipper (the tape), running it under my nails. Jacket season is my favorite. I went in for an ADHD screening appointment, and the lady brought up autism. I'm not yet diagnosed, but I'm seeing so much of myself more clearly now, and I'm so much happier and forgiving of myself. I made a bracelet with a stiff fabric that comes together with two magnets. I can run it between my fingers or under my nails, and I can click the magnets together as a bonus. It's subtle, it's quiet, and I can wear it. Being able to stim throughout the day instead of having to wait until I get home and have access to that stuffed animal has been life-changing.
I've been looking for this stim forever! I had a stuffed animal and now I have a jacket where I would run part of its fabric under my fingers and I always thought I was the only one who did that. So thank you for commenting!
Watching this right now and just noticing, I’m chewing on my cheeks and wiggling my toes at the same time. I’ve been bedridden for quite a few months now and this video is really helping me a lot to pass the time since I haven’t been able to get out to do anything or go anywhere or spend very much time with friends or family without getting exhausted this is reallycomforting and it’s made my evening so much more soothing and validating and I want to thank you so much for your videos!!
Me, too! I've been rubbing my feet together. I also play with my hair, and I'll do BOTH things when thinking of an answer to a question. I have a callus on my thumb that I will pick at or bite. I also have chronic pain and spasms that I can avoid by keeping absolutely still (impossible, and eventually this causes spasms, too). I will go over trigger points that might be helpful to me, though most are dangerous. I chew gum bc my meds cause dry mouth, but it also makes me look like a ruminant animal! Just a few bedridden friend things, with some embarrassing ones omitted 😅. ❤
My personal most common stims are what my friends and I dub "puppy taps": Basically when a dog is super happy they tend to tap their feet, one to the other, and when I myself am happy I also do that too. I also do a form of Echolalia: I grew up around a lot of cats, so I tend to do the "Mrrp" sound cats do, or do a realistic type of meow. It's probably the one I do thats the second most common after the tapping. New to your channel, and loving all the stuff here! It's nice to find some cool content like this around, so I'll probably be here a while :3
For painful stims, I've replaced them by sort of digging my thumb nail into a fingertip. Fingertips are sensitive so it's sufficiently painful, but it only leaves a small mark that disappears after a little while and it doesn't do any actual damage
@@maliniatb for me personally it took some conscious effort, but it was doable. Maybe it was easier since I was replacing scratching at my forearm with a thumb, which is kind of a similar movement?
I've had dermatillomania for YEARS and now at age 26 I am looking for an autism diagnosis! Thank you so much for this video. Writing down all of the stims I experince is helping me understand why I do these things :)
thank you for this video! I’ve been doing a stim where I rock back and forth aggressively since I was literally a baby in a crib. Nowadays we know how harmful it is on my spine and my legs. I’ve been trying for a while to find something that could help me replace it with something less harmful, but it’s SO HARD. so again, thank you so much for this video!!
this almost made my cry because literally all of them are so relatable and a weird sort of comfort to know i'm not the only one I push down my cuticles till they bleed as a pain stim 🥲
I learned that I have way more stims than I was crediting myself for! This also reminded me that when my child was 4 and before they were diagnosed, they did the head banging during one particular epic meltdown after being overstimulated by the intensity of the sun that day. It was scary for their caregivers and it wore the poor kiddo completely out. I went to pick them up and they crawled into my arms and fell right to sleep. Even though it’s been over a decade, it helps to realize this was a stim to help them get relief from the pain of the sun in their eyes.
i have both autism and ocd. this video was so interesting because it really highlighted how hard it is to delineate exactly which behaviors come from which (and how to refer to them). like, i do a lot of these behaviors, but some of them i've always referred to as ocd compulsions (i used to call them "tics" when i was a kid, but i recognize that it's probably not quite the right vocabulary), while others i've identified as stims. it was just really fascinating to me that i never thought about some of the things i do as stims, and how much overlap there is between autism and ocd (which i actually didn't realize, but wow it makes so much sense). thanks for talking about this !
16:58 nothing wrong with hearing your favorite song or sound on constant loop. It's relaxing and everybody loves hearing relaxing songs and sounds. It's just hard to find someone that loves the same song or sound in repeat.
Oh my gosh this video made me soooo validated! I think some of my commonly used stims at the moment are hitting my thigh, finger tapping on literally anything (especially if it’s something I’m holding), and snapping (singing is a big one too)
From 10:32 to 14:52, I talk about stims that can be undesirable/harmful. I do also touch on replacement stims that might be useful, but do look after yourself. If you’re not in the mood for that today, feel free to skip over to the next second at 14:52.
If you missed my latest video, I discuss certain celebrities who are frequently cited as autistic (Messi, Taylor Swift?)...but have actually never been open about a diagnosis. Some of them even appear on numerous listicles (particularly on ABA websites??!!) and the only evidence is 'they look a bit socially awkward'! I'd love to know your thoughts!: ua-cam.com/video/HDK2miTzTTA/v-deo.html
Hope this one is helpful! I realised I stim in more ways than I’d originally thought, thanks to that community post! Thank you so much for your input as always 💛✨
If you haven’t seen my video about the theory of Monotropism: ua-cam.com/video/3mBbOOzhoGQ/v-deo.html
I’ve also just posted an hour-long reading vlog style video over on Patreon, discussing Ellie Middleton’s ‘Unmasked’. You can access it even on the lowest tier. You can watch a preview here: www.patreon.com/posts/unmasked-reading-109837953?Link&
See you soon!! 💛🍋
Do you have OF?
I have a stim I try to avoid doing in public where I lift my breasts up and down with my hand. This one is weird but it feels good on the hands and breasts. Maybe like a rubber ball?
For the one where you pinch your neck, maybe a choker necklace you can fiddle with would be a good replacement stim?
this is the one thing that i think is common in all autistic people, they really care about how others are experiencing their 3 dimensional reality, the fact you pinned a warning and timestamp to skip the heavy content is what i consider typical of an autistic person and really what puts Autistic people at odds with most of the virtual realities that 'normies' impose on our actual, liveable 3 dimensional reality...
I agree with the usefulness of pain stimming but also very much agree with just overall taking good care of yourself.
As to the pain stims; sometimes difficulties are just too much for normal stims to handle. If you(anyone) haven't experienced that, I'm happy you were spared the experience.
As to self-care, I consider pain stims part of my mental first aid package. Mostly I just knock my knuckles or back of my fingers against corners of things. Quick sharp pain, doesn't need force strong enough to cause damage aside from some light skin contusion if the only corner available is something like brick. Or like the lady in the video clip, I'll tightly grip or press the pads of my fingers onto something.
I'm very strict with the use of pain stimming. I'm aware it can become addictive and habit forming.
I manage it all by problem solving my choices. Does this reduce overall damage or just create more problems? And if my brain isn't currently able to process that properly, I'll just go through my normal routine of Stop, Safety and Recover.
That being said, not everyone is able to manage things in a healthy manner all the time or on their own, so some compassion is certainly called for. Healthy coping is a collection of skills that require developing.
Before watching this video: Sure, I've got a couple of stims.
After watching this video: Oh god, my whole life is one long series of stims.
It's almost painful to realize this lol. And as I've been watching this, I realize that I kind of go head-to-toe in this cycle for some reason 😂 Becauses I thought, "I wonder if I just stop [what I now know is cricketing] and go back up to rolling my hips back and forth" and my brain was like, "NO--NOW WE HAVE TO START OVER!" 😂😂😂😂😂
Right...! xD
HELP SO REAL 😭
I read that as sims for some reason lol😂.
THIS 👆
I'm a drummer who is also autistic, the drumming stim is how my mum got me a drum kit for my seventh birthday. And I have played ever since then.
@@themallster3193 That's so cool that she supported you. Too many parents just try to make their kids stop. Like when Megan said she used to get complimented for having a straight posture, how could no one see her face was miserable? It baffles me. Good job, your mom!
Nice. I have a pair of drumsticks from an old Guitar Hero drum kit that I’ll beat on the side of my bed from time to time.
Luckyyyy
Now your stimms have noise!!
Same here! I never got my drum kit until I asked for one (I also wasn’t diagnosed with any neurodivergence until I was 18), but I was always drumming on everything, and now I see it’s a stim but back then I just didn’t get it. It’s awesome that your mom was so supportive!
Me reading the title and clicking on the video: “I know I stim, but I don’t stim very much”
Me halfway through the video: “oh no”
Like half the people here, including me, yes 😂
Literally same! I just self diagnosed myself with Autism and ADHD after months of research and finding out more about the things I do that fall under these two categories, but stimming was one thing that I didn’t really think I did much of. Turns out, I do so much stimming and I didn’t even know 💀💀💀
@@pastaboiman06 Now the fun of getting something official? I had to for work to support me. Do check if your insurance will cover it. You might get lucky (mine was 100% covered)! :D
@@jennybrown5302 I was thinking I’d get to check off maybe 7-8 of the 70 stims, and then all of a sudden I’m just repeating “**Thats** a stim?!” like a meditation mantra 🤣
I was diagnosed with trichotellimania when I was like 9… I didn’t realize that the hair selection process and then the small sharp pain to focus my brain out of spiralling is a stim… and tbh I was even having some imposter syndrome feels about my crocheting as a stim.
The self harm stims made me angry though, because I was doing a lot of those as a kid and **still** didn’t get diagnosed as a child… because I was a girl.. they diagnosed me with almost literally everything else except autism: depression, General anxiety disorder, bipolar (not sure about what flavor, since my mom never told me about this one until I was like 30), schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder, CPTSD (this one is a valid diagnosis), and trichotellimania (also a valid diagnosis)
@@pastaboiman06 I started getting suspicious about my autism when every single one of my kids were diagnosed with autism and my mom kept saying “they all act just like you when you were a kid”
And my brain finally just started clicking things together… like how I used to stack things for fun and how I never really played pretend with my toys, I just “used” them. Like, my Barbie’s were never put into any situations where they had to interact with each other, I would just dress and undress them and brush and style their hair.
aging myself here, but Windows Media player from back in the day had visuals that would sync to the beat of whatever song you played. I would get so entranced by that!
Do you remember disk defragmenter in the 90s? The boxes would slowly convert other boxes to colors in a specific order and then start at the top again, and you could scroll down to see all of the sections that had colored boxes in the wrong place… I hope you know what I’m talking about because that is a terrible explanation. BRB going to see if there are UA-cam videos of it.
omg i loved those !
Winamp too.
@@ellieu.6575 I remember. I loved defragging my drives just because of the visuals. Now it's just a boring progress bar, and it's handled automatically in the background.
My version of this is the Nintendo DSi music player, those visuals - all of them - were top-tier
“Playing the piano” on the desk or your leg even though you don’t know how to play, is soooo relatable
i do play piano and i will do finger exercises on my desk, like thumb, middle, second, fourth, middle, pinky, fourth, second, middle, thumb, etc.
ooooo i think i do something similar! its more me counting beats with my fingers to songs(like tapping your foot but with four fingers and a thumb in succession) , might be from playing the flute lollo
I do that too!
I honestly attribute this to why I was so hyper-focused on learning how to type. I can type at over 130 wpm when I'm in a high-stress state, even if it's complete nonsense because there's no reason for it.
I do it all the time I was even doing it as it was mentioned in the video then just like looked down and was like BUSTED!
As an ADHDer I feel so seen by the intro. So many people overlook us when it comes to stimming. I've even had people call me autistic because I stim, even though I'm not.
I am autistic and adhd. Best combo 😂
I like seeing it as Autism and ADHD being like "sibling" conditions. One might be mistaken for the other because some of their traits are also seen in the other. The same way sometimes siblings look very similar to each other while still being two different people.
@@tomrio9152Yeah I see what you mean. I’m autistic but not ADHD, while my boyfriend is AuDHD. People often guess our conditions in conversations and are always wrong because we have similar stims
@@tomrio9152 yes!
People really need to go back to school and learn about the Venn Diagram
I didn't think about it as stimming, but looping the same song over and over is much better than hearing random sounds; a nice reliable repeating series of noises versus jarring random noises.
Oh my freaking god. Whenever I'm on tiktok I stay on the same one for minutes at a time just to hear it repeat and I didn't know why. Tysm for pointing this out😭
I near constantly listen to audiobooks. Over 500 books in my library but there's about 10 I listen to repeatedly over 15 years when feeling overwhelmed or have a migraine because of the narrator's voice
I didn't even realise it's not a usual thing to be listening to the same song for like. hours. (potentially weeks or months if I got REALLY fixated) until one time I let a song repeat for about 15 mins and a friend asked why I have it on loop and not shuffle. I was like: "huh you don't do that?" 😭 no one at that table did it, apparently 💀🫠
Yup, i just use playlists to group songs together under a specifoc trait to be able to find them better but i almost NEVER listen to anything but one song on loop bc the change in the sound coming through my headphones will instantly distract me, but the world in general is an easier to manage place with something repeating in my ears
'Elevator music', of the brain
Songs on repeat until I've squeezed the last bit of dopamine out of it. LOL! OMG....I'm SO called out.
The crickets rubbing their legs to make a sound IS A MYTH! We were all lied to! They actually have hard nubs on the backs of the front wings and they rub it againts the back wings and THAT is actually what makes a sound!
(I've been obsessed with animal facts and clearing out myths like that ever since I was a kid, I saw this one on a short of a channel that goes over insect anatomy with close-ups and everything)
WHAAAAAT?!?!?!
was the channel named odd animal specimens?
as someone with a biology special interest i agree with this comment (they do rub their legs together to CLEAN them, but that's something other insects do)
and yes, they have wings! not all species of cricket have wings, but there are those that are fully capable of flight (like grasshoppers, we don't often think of them as flying animals but most species of grasshoppers have functional wings in adulthood)
@@F0xR0t13 That's the one, exactly ^^
This is like how i always have to correct people that 'panthers' are not an animal, panthera is a genus of certain felines, but not a specific animal.
My wife has a lot of verbal stims, and they’re happy that I have an auditory processing disorder because I literally don’t react to them whenever they make their noises. My brain just disregards them because it doesn’t register it as something I should be bothered by. 😂 love it when disabilities work together for happiness.
Nice
That's cool 😂😅. Me and my friend both speak quietly and we also both have auditory processing disorder - that doesn't work so well.
@@naomiparsons462 oh nooo! That happens sometimes. The wife decides they want to be quiet and I’m like. Help I can’t understand lol.
❤,❗❗😃
It’s the same with me and a close friend with Tourette’s! They have a lot of verbal tics but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest because I either think the noise is interesting or don’t notice at all lmao
Don’t call out everything I do. Difficulty: Impossible 😭
I feel the same 😂
The entire population does some of this!
Even the Hair pulling 😅 beard Hair is the best.
@@ultracookie1386 I hair and eyelash pull, didn't even know that was considered stimming till this video 🥲
@@yfa6244 ; True that. But the big questions are ;
# 1. Do you have a particular set of these “nervous habits” that you engage in every day, or virtually every day? … and,
# 2. How frequently do you engage in these stims/ habits each day? Is it a lot throughout the day, or is it only once or twice a day? 😯❓🤷🏻♀️❓😯
i recently got a genuine diagnosis on autism and i feel like since then ive been trying to unmask more because ive realized i hide a lot of my actions and tendencies or try to not act how i want to so i seem normal. This video just makes me feel less alone and embarrassed, so ty for that
My family has told me before that I don't stim when I do. I just used to try a lot harder to not be obvious. Now I will straight up hand flap around them
I try to unmask my stims too. So hard even in front of my families
@@Agnes_B96 Yeah, I'm gradually becoming more visible about it. Still haven't told the in laws that's what I'm doing.
i let myself rock back and forth while waiting in line at an overstimulating store recently and i felt so liberated. person who cut in front of me in line was a bit perturbed though. i'm unmasking more and more in public lately as long as it seems safe to do so. i stim in front of my family and friends all the time but now i'm taking it to the streets!
I refuse to mask any longer.
Especially cos I have a mum who's told me to mask forever - only to join my idiot brother to claim I'm "faking" autism for attention.
They're both horrible people.
Not a to stimming, but I have a stutter. People used to comment on it all the time, so I would barrel through it. Most people told me they didn’t realize I had one. Until a friend told me I shouldn’t be ashamed, and that I need to slow down. My stutter is a lot more obvious, but now I’m around a lot of people who are patient and kind about it, and it just feels really good to be unapologetically yourself around others. Quirks and all ❤
You mentioned the sound of crunching leaves when one walks in dry leaves in the autumn, but walking in the snow in the winter can have a similar effect.
Wholesome crunchy snow sound yessssss
I love crunchy snow!
I have such a hard time staying on hard pathways, because they aren't variable enough. I'm either on the curb, in the grass, in the dirt, in the gravel on my toes, skipping. Crunchy leave and snow is the best, but I will settle with the swoosh sound and drag of grass.
the crunching sound of snow is one of my favorit sounds.
i personally HATE crunchy snow. the crunch is just...eww...I don't know how to explain it, but it reminds me of the feeling of potato starch
One of my favorite lesser known stims that I do is I do ASL. I constantly finger spell my thoughts, my words, what others are saying, signs that I see, I do it all the time.
They taught it for one semester in my 7th grade, and now I fingerspell random things or the alphabet when I am bored
Same! Just my native sign language :)
I did that all the time in middle school! I would have conversations from one hand to the other
You should study to be a professional ASL interpreter. Hone in your strengths!
I do this too but never thought of it as a stim
The clip of you as a little girl 2:33 standing out in front of your peers stiffly, still and being "so quiet", you looked so terrified! Heartbreaking.
I went to a psychiatrist for an autism diagnosis last year and she was walking through the most basic checklist. I remember her asking me if I flapped my hands. I said no, and after she said “Well since you don’t stim, that’s a good sign that you’re not autistic.” But… there’s more than one way. This video helped me so much. I love your channel.
(And your matching dress/earrings/nails is *amazing*. It makes me ridiculously happy.)
@9:54 When I realize I’m doing this exact thing right now.
A psychiatrist saying that is crazy
I think that psychiatrist was a bit confused
@@gloomy_glamour Yeah. She told me I didn’t have ADHD (despite having been professionally assessed) and that I didn’t *seem* to have had trauma.
OH, and I can’t be autistic because I made eye contact with her. I was like “….my sister in christ, I’ve worked retail/customer service for two decades. I don’t *like* it, but it was literally a point deduction on our mystery shops for a long time, and I can force myself to do it.”
But I’ve done a lot of screening tests, and I was reading a ND blog that listed a ton of autistic traits that are common in women, and as I was reading it, so many things started just… clicking into place and making sense for me. (The same thing happened when someone explained what asexuality was years ago)So, she can pound sand.
At the time, I had a friend who was also a psychiatrist, and he was *livid* at the bullshit diagnosis she gave me. It just sucks because I waited a year for that psych referral and it was pointless. (Kind of like how I waited a year for a psych referral for my ADHD diagnosis and got diagnosed as ADHD but also fat.)
😢 i will eventually try to get a diagnosis. My school psychologist thought i had mild autism when i was in high school (last year)
@@DaroTheDragon Yeah, my former friend told me about someone who has ‘reasonable’ prices for autism assessments and it was still like $1500 CDN. It’s brutal how difficult mental health help is.
I find it really calmng and soothing to hug a stuffed animal, but it makes me feel really self-conscious because as a grown woman I feel like people will judge me.
Hugging stuffies (especially Squishmallows) helps me feel better too! In my home, me and my roomates can and will hug stuffies at any time we want! We all appreciate and respect our adoration of the cute fluffyness! I hope you find a group who enjoys the stuffed animal hugging too!
I've learned this about myself recently. I used to hug stuffies a lot as a kid to fall asleep and then stopped doing it as most kids do when they get older. I'm now in my 30s and my niece gave me a Squishmallow and hugging it is *so* comforting, especially if I'm particularly sad or upset.
@@Green_Roc Squishmallows during COVID is what made me ultimately seek a diagnosis because I wanted to know why I NEEDED to squish them. My therapist had asked before, "Has anyone asked you about an autism diagnosis?" but I kind of just like blew it off. But I bought (no joke) 15 different Squishmallows because Costco kept putting them on sale and I was like, "Y'know, I probably should mention this" and my therapist was like, "Yeah, remember when I asked you about if someone talked to you about an autism diagnosis?" 😂😂😂😂😂
I have a daytime house bear to hang out with me during game/tv/reading time. And 2 bears for sleep that i cuddle with. On bad days, all 3 bears are house bears & sometimes i wake up also cuddling my house bear on accident.
I'm almost 44 and still occasionally sleep with a stuffed critter. My husband just got me a crow and I love him. The crow. Though I do love the husband, too.
Pacing has always been my biggest stim. I walk in planned circles over and over again for hours while thinking about stuff. My parents comment on it all the time but were still surprised when I said I might be autistic.
Omg me too, I have to be listening to music tho. I find that I can't develop things and get ideas without doing it
@@alidaaaaa7160 I normally can’t be playing music and thinking, too much stimulation. I do like listening to music and pacing but I’m normally just thinking about the music.
@@Lionfrog13 Oooh I see, interesting!
I'm literally of pacing right now, I feel so seen. I'll do it for hours at a time and at this point I eat almost all my meals while pacing
@@alidaaaaa7160this is EXACTLY. WHAT. I. DO. Walk in circles playing one part of a song over and over again while thinking about stuff. Want to know if i significantly affected the “most replayed” parts on some videos
I am really glad you talked about harmful stims. I have struggled with trichotillomania and went to therapy way before i've got my autism diagnosis and it was just then that i understood WHY i've been picking at my hair all those years. i'm doing much better now but i wish it could have been less taboo than it was, so i could actually get the help i needed back then.
How did you stop? I do this
sometimes for me, petting my cats can be a stim, I love feeling the softness of their fur, and also running my fingers specifically my ragdoll cat's fluffy fur
Likewise - does it ever overstimulate you? My father also loved cats, and sometimes he would sort of squint-grimace when he pet them. I do that now too, and I’ve realized when I do it feels like my pleasure center is overloading. (My nervous system is a wreck these days, and various traits are much more pronounced)
I also like how my cats smell
Same. I have a ragdoll named Mochi and a Russian Blue named Sushi. Cats are very easily overstimulated too though. They have very sensitive "whiskers" all over their body, so I just learned where, how, and for how long they each like to be pet. They both have their preferences. They both LOVE to be brushed. Sushi will actually grab the brush in her paws like a little monkey and rub her face with it. Lol It's definitely a stim for them. Mochi also has a stim from being abandoned by her mother before she was weaned. She "makes biscuits" on my plush blanket while sucking on it. We have a ritual every night where she'll curl up next to me on the blanket and do her stim while I pet her on the back of the neck.
My cats are SO empathetic too. If I'm having a meltdown or my PTSD is worse than normal, they'll take turns staying with me until I feel better. ...even if it takes a couple days.
Rubbing my face between our assistance dog's ears.
Also I feel like their purring is a kind of auditory stim (at least for me)
About “digital” stims: am I the only one who scrolls to the bottom of a page, but keeps scrolling to make interface “bounce”? Or when you slide pages back and forth to just see animation? Also, am I the only one who LOVES old skewmorphic design in older versions of IOS/android. I even bought myself used iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.3 on it, and I use it like a digital fidget toy. I can spend hours just launching some default apps and scroll through system. It feels like perfect mix between nostalgia and stimming and I just enjoy it soooo much!
I constantly highlight and unhighlight when reading on my desktop computer, too.
@@sumgirl720 omg, I also do this! It can be soooo satisfying…
omg i LOVE doing the first one (scrolling past the bottom of the page) its so nice seeing the page just kinda like look bouncy :)
@@sumgirl720 Not sure if this is referring to the same thing, but I'm constantly selecting/deselecting large blocks of text with my mouse when reading online (like I'm doing with these comments), and on some pages this causes me to accidentally click on barely-visible links several times before forcing myself to stop.
i LOVE the old skeuomorphism designs apple used. its just so comforting
I didn’t know that picking at my skin is a stim. I do it all the time, at scabs and little bumps. I find it soothing in the moment but then I realise my face is bleeding and I constantly have new scabs which is annoying.
Scab picking! I grew up in a very buggy place. I constantly picked my scabs. Now I live above 4000 feet and there are practically no bugs. What’s relief. No scabs to pick.
Does picking your nails count?
It's called dermatillomania, I have it
They make picky pads now, but they trigger my trypophobia so 😟
Essentially it's a silicone pad with beads and such stuck inside
Do this too
Here's a list for anyone who wants/needs it! _(apologies for any typos I missed)_
*Movement Stims:*
- Flapping
- Finger flicking
- Rolling skin on thumb with fingers
- Finger tapping
- Face/body tapping
- Rocking
- Swaying
- Spinning
- Clapping
- Jumping
- "Galloping" on toes
- General toe-walking
- Rocking back and forth on heels
- Rolling ankles side to side
- Pacing
- Knee bouncing
- Leg kicking when sitting/lying
- Running when you don't need to
- Shrugging
- Flexing muscles
- Buttock clenching (lol)
- Repetitive blinking
- Squeezing eyes shut
- Rubbing eyes
- Scrunching up face
- Scratching arms
- playing with hair, hair "cracking"
- Rubbing eyebrows
- Nail biting
- Touching nails to lips
- Playing with jewellery
- Playing with fidget/stress toys
- Doodling/writing with no purpose
- Scrolling on your phone
- Phone games
- "Talking" with your hands (gesturing a lot while speaking)
- Drumming on something/air drums/fake piano playing
- Crocheting/knitting
- Sitting on your hands
- Rubbing your feet on things/each other (cricketing! 🦗)
- Toe wriggling
- Rubbing nails together
*(Potentially) Harmful Stims:*
- Smoking
- Lip chewing
- Over-biting nails
- Trichotillomania (hair plucking)
- Dermatillomania (skin-picking)
- Head hitting
- Teeth grinding
*Replacement Stims:*
- Deep pressure
- Squeezing something
- Pressing fingertips together
- A bear hug
- Loud music (NOT so loud you actually hurt yourself/damage your hearing!); esp repetitive with a heavy beat
- Spinning
- Swinging on a swing
- Strong movements
- Cold shower/washing hands in cold water
- Sensory/chew toys
*Vocal Stims:*
- Repetitive noises/words/phrases
- Echolalia (repeating someone else)
- Humming
- Whistling
- Singing
- Sound effects
- Laughing
- Throat-clearing
- Counting
*Auditory Stims:*
- Listening to the sounds you make
- Songs on repeat
- Music in general
- Soothing sounds
- ASMR
- Crunching leaves
*Visual Stims:*
- Spinning objects
- Watching water
- Watching nature in general
- Watching the same bit of a film/show again and again
- Sparkly/glittery things
- Sunsets
- Falling leaves
- Dancing
*Oral Stims:*
- Some things already mentioned in other categories, such as nail and lip biting
- Biting the inside of you mouth
- Clacking teeth together (maybe to music)
- Rubbing tongue over teeth
- Eating
- Drinking fizzy drinks
- Using lip scrubs (or chapstick/similar)
- Chewing nonfood items
*Olfactory Stims:*
- Plastic smells
- Bath and body products
- Just generally smelling things lol
*Touch-based Stims:*
- Hugs
- Weighted blankets
- Soft clothing/whatever texture you like
- Soft fabrics/whatever texture you like
- Soft toys
- Running fingers over buttons on a remove
- S**ual things with others/alone (censored so this comment doesn't get deleted by UA-cam hopefully lol)
i say ‘bonk’ when putting an item onto a surface. tossing my phone on my bed? bonk. gently placing a cup onto a counter? bonk. replacing an item on a store shelf? bonk.
I like tiny bonk. That just sounds adorable.
I love it!!
I ended up doing the pop cat "pop" noise 😂
Issue is it pisses my relatives off and I get super self aware when I make noises now because I tell them not to make some noises due to annoyances and I don't want them to have the same issue..
I do a similar things but I say “beep beep” when I’m doing something or trying to get someone’s attention. I think it started as a “beep beep, coming through” kind of thing when trying to squeeze past people? But now I say it in situations that make no sense at all lmao
I sometimes make the different sounds of what a variety of objects must sound like moving around as well. 😋😎😋...
Or if an item makes a sound I find interesting when being moved or whatever, I repeat the sound sometimes...
I also have "sound tics" (I tic more sounds than words, but it's easy for me to tell the difference between the two most times)...
So basically, I understand what you are saying and I can relate. 😊
*no offense whatsoever is intended.*
Her: talking about stimming and stimulation and the differences between ticks and seizures and stimulation
Me with ADHD & Autism: lemon earrings.
👁stare👁
👁👁
👁👁
visual stim 🎉😊
😂😂😂
(AuDHD here) Totally understandable. :)
If this sort of message appeals: Spend as much time as you want. Rewind the video as many times as you want, to catch the other stuff when you're ready for a break from the lemons. Repeat as desired. ❤
Also thanks for pointing out the earrings. In one of the comments, Meg posted a link to the Etsy shop where they came from.
@resourceress7 there was no problem with the lemons I just found them visually appealing and interesting.
Thanks!
@@resourceress7 I just put the warning up there because I didn't want to seem as if I wasn't listening to what was in the video as a sign of disrespect.
The weird part of this is that even neurotypicals stim, for example in extreme emotional distress...it's weird that they picked the most normal, adaptive and relatable part of autism as the part that apparently doesn't exists
Maybe because they do it, and they're neurotypical, so it must not be a sign of ASD.
I suppose that’s why it’s not, actually. In theory, the things they are looking for as criteria would be stuff that is clearly distinguishable from “normal” behavior. It makes sense in concept, but it’s easier said than done, because it’s pretty hard to find a behavior that only exists in a particular condition. To employ a cliched example, people without OCD wash their hands, but not nearly as much as people for whom it’s a compulsive behavior. (I chose that example because I have struggled with somewhat obsessive hand washing.)
Given that, I would agree that stimming ought to be in there as a commonly seen behavior. I’m starting to think that one of the ways to deal with some of the “identity war” issues that have come up since ASD 1-3 was introduced would be to employ a 2-tier system, one level that assesses for a basic cognitive profile, and another that assesses for traits that are or have become pronounced enough to be disabling. It would offer a more nuanced way of looking at who someone is and how they are doing, and opens the door to the idea that someone’s profile might change over time, depending on their health, their level of stress, etc. it might also make it easier to focus on individual areas of impairment or non impairment, rather than a binary impaired/not impaired, which is part of how we get to things like “you can’t be autistic, you have friends.” ADHD, with its three possible presentations, at least hints at these possibilities.
(Thinking out loud here)
It's probably exactly because it is relatable that neurotypical people don't see it as an autistic behaviour. Autistic people are just far more prone to being overwhelmed and having to stim to sooth themselves. And they often have far more obvious verbal and/or motor-based stims.
7:57 I have to stop watching this because it’s making my body feel itchy and I have to do the stims as you say them, whether they’re something I do commonly or not
I love playing games on my computer. When my brain isn't being an asshole and making me feel guilty it's otherworldly. Reality melts away and I always feel so relaxed after.
I wish I were better at wasting time doing things I enjoy, as opposed to things that I feel mid about
@@aotmr1604 it's absolutely not wasted time it's essential to mental health. Several hours of stim significantly lowers time spent ruminating and depression induced energy drain.
@@aotmr1604 Doing something you enjoy is never time wasted.
I miss doing that.
I relate to this alot. Especially as a sensitive individual that struggles with existential depression. Video games take my mind off of this chaotic world.
Every time I question my AuDHD diagnosis, I come back to this channel and my whole life is explained...
same
Yep
This channel was the reason I had the confidence in my own neurodivergence to self-diagnose, so yeah it's great to remind myself of that whenever I convince myself I'm just attention-seeking. 😂
the opposite for me. these videos make me question my official autism diagnosis sometimes ;-;
@@jellylemonade1655Why? /genq
One of my favorite stims is typing. I customized my mechanical keyboard to tweak the sound, the texture of the keycaps, the weight of the press of the keys... It's so satisfying.
I’ve always loved the sound and feel of typing too. So satisfying
Yes! I also have a typing stim and made my own mechanical keyboard. I plan on making another one at some point in the future because I was much poorer when I made my first keyboard and could not afford the creamier sounding switches that I find so immensely satisfying.
In a way, building keyboards can be a fun stim too. I remember when I was lubing and filming my switches, I was actually a little disappointed when I'd finally finished. It kept my hands busy for days.
Yes to mechanical keyboards!
as teen i got into writing stories with a keyboard in word and then google docs. I wrote...long stories, almost books even, mostly fantasy. I realized one day that the thing that i liked most about it was the typing itself. I often go onto written rants about any topic just because it is so soothing to feel and hear the keys clacking. Friends in Voice Chat know me as the one with the angry typing, its not angry though i will just put my soul into every clack because i love the sensation XD
I type in my mind. Like I know where every letter is on the keyboard and I mentally "type" out words. This can be done along with clenching muscles in relation to the locations of different keys.
I went into this video like "I only have a couple stims, five max."
...
I may have more than five.
Oooh Ooo I have one more! Untying large knots!! I've legit thought about offering services for yarn barf because I can sit for hours and undo big piles knotted yarn and string as a stim.
as a crocheter who absolutely despises knotted yarn barf, i'd pay for this service lol. ur doing the lords work 🙏
OH MY GOD I LOVE UNTYING KNOTS ITS SO SATISFYING AND YOU JUST PULL EVERYTHING APART IN THE RIGHT WAY
I ALSO LOVEE UNTYING KNOTS!!!
Oh damn I love untangling necklaces and strings
❤ please be my friend lol. I hate doing it so much. It stresses me out and frustrates me to no end. Needles and yarn is my go to fidget device of choice and yarn barf just kills it.
Singing is my most satisfying stim. I was in choir every year of primary school and after I graduated I noticed how my mood shifted because I wasn’t singing every day. I sing when I’m alone but it’s not the same feeling as being in a big group of people. The harmony’s and feeling it in my voice is unmatched
Ikr. I grew up in a musical background and even was part of a choir, so i am always singing, lyrics of instrumental parts
yesssss singing in a group feels so good! Especially when you hit those slightly dissonant harmonies. I also love blasting choral music in my headphones XD
@@margaretcummings4146 yesss dude!! My choir teacher had us singing so many fun songs from different eras! My favorite is ergen deda. It’s a Bulgarian folk song i definitely recommend listening too. The genre itself has such rich dissonance
As a 53 year old recently dx ADHD person..breaking out into random singing and dance routines is apparently 'stimming'...who knew! 😅
I don't even care if anyone sees me ...that's how 'umasked' I am these days 😂
Chewing a wet cloth! Not just texture! The small burst of bathroom tap flavored water, feeling the water come out. Thanks for helping me understand my husband's throat clearing. We are both on the spectrum. I have to wear ear defenders when he works from home because I don't do well with that noise. I knew he can't help it and have said nothing, but him being male and drawing attention to his presence in that way is activating for me, sensory issues aside. But he's so gentle. Now I can remind myself that this is like the flapping and noise making that comes from me when he's in quiet mode. Truly appreciate this insight. Funny note, we both watched star trek, 2nd Generation on repeat to self sooth. But because he does that every night, I can't anymore. He also eats Ramen for lunch every day, endearing. I'm higher support needs than him, so it's nice to learn new compassion. He does so much for us. Thanks!
I used to do that wet cloth thing in the bath, I also used to chew the collars of my shirts a lot haha
yeah, I used to chew on my shirts a lor
Ommggg must have been a while ago that I did that last time but yeah that's so true!! With the water squeezing out... 😮😮😮
I used to chew on my wet hair compulsively.
I did chew on wet flannels as a little kid.
I constantly smell my stuffed animal like when I’m just like relaxing on the sofa I’m holding my stuffed animal. I randomly smell it and my parents seem concerned that I constantly smell things. I do most of these things that you’ve mentioned in this video.
As a fiddling, fidgeting, picking, rocking, humming & jiggling person ALL my life I finally found that weaving baskets is a marvelous way to calm everything down a bit
I know people who crochet in meetings
@@howareyou857I was going to mention crocheting for that.
Knitting for me. It works great
@@sik6694 spinning fleece into yarn
Is it possible to train yourself to make anything a stim? All mine are useless and I'd like to get the same satisfaction from doing something useful. Crochet is a good example but it just doesn't hit the same spot that twirling my hair or ankles does.
Another common stim, especially as a kid, that wasn't mentioned here, is picking your nose. This one is embarrassing to admit but was definitely a huge stim for me as a kid, and it was super embarrassing to be called it for it by parents and teachers lol...
It is still a stim for me but for obvious reasons i now only do it when I am alone and have tissues with me. I just couldn't get rid of this stim even though it is quite embarrassing!
I'm right there with you. I definitely try to be more covert about it now that I'm an adult but it's so satisfying I don't think I will ever be able to stop
I feel u 100%! As an adult I do it most of the time in private. But it's a huge stim for me since childhood. I've got memories of me as a child asking my parents for help to get rid of this behavior cause I couldn't stop and my nose was bleeding often. Also the same with chewing the skin on the inside of my mouth and my tounge. I thing the last ones became even more in the last years. I really wish to replace those stims (in particular the chewing) with alternatives! maybe someone has an idea...
@@GesaJonderko have you tried using gum to help with the chewing stim :)? Or chewable jewelry?
oh thank god im so glad someone else has this
You're not alone 💖
The stims i never hear about are stims that involve smelling, when i was a kid i was constantly smelling my hair, to the point people made fun of me for it, now that i have short hair i smell my hands to calm me down and I also try to get all my bath products into lavander smell since it's what I like the best
Yeah I smell all my food before I eat it and if I've just eaten crisps I like to smell my fingers, but I get I bit self-conscious when I can see people notice it
Omg I do the same thing!! Luckily nobody has ever called me out on it or noticed me doing it in public. But sometimes I'll smell my hands or my arm too. I think it's just comforting because it smells like me? And the texture of soft hair or skin against your face and lips is nice
I use to do that too, then I cut my hair off to be short because I realised the long hair gave me headaches, but the consequence was me rubbing my finger into my scalp, as though I was scalp picking and them pressing my knuckles to my mouth to smell it. It so weird I hate it, but it helps when I need a different smell and I can't get anything else, because it makes me concentrate on if I can still smell my shampoo.
Lavender! All of my soaps for everything are lavender! What is it about that scent?!? And I used to get "talked to" or outright smacked as a child because I loved to smell people's hair - As a little I'd be up on my feet or knees on the seat, facing over the back of it, almost burying my face into a perfect stranger's hair, trapped in its scent until mom or dad yanked me away and apologized to them for my bad behavior.
I tend to smell rocks because for some reason I always expect them to have a smell. They almost never do 😔
8:35 And I thought my only stims were cracking my knuckles and twirling my hair if it’s long enough. This part helped me remember that my mother would say that I would talk with my hands. Not flapping, just gesturing in the air. I’ll keep watching to see if other reminders come up.
Rainstorms bring a LOT of stimulation for me ☺️☺️ I love it everytime. I love it so much. The lightning strikes (I always wait outside to see them), thunder, rain, and the smell of the muddy ground. I usually stand and squeal outside watching the sky for lighting strikes ^_^
I hope this isn't ignorant in anyway or insulting but that is actually so cute 😭 And I too love the smell of rain and the sound it's very comforting :)
I’ve never related to anything more 🥹⚡️
I write stories with the window wide open during thunderstorms, love the crackly energy feeling
My favourite is wind - I really like when it's windy and it almost blows me away, for some reason 😭
My favourite stim growing up was spinning around in a chair for hours, or in school recess i would spend the entire break using the swing. That and also copying pokemon cries while playing the games. Somehow I didnt get diagnosed until my 20s.
I have a very similar experience to that! I love spinning in office chairs, swings and marry-go-rounds are my favorite playground equipment, and I love repeating after pokemon (although I only watched the anime, and never played the games)
i used to LOVE spinning id steal my dad's office chair and spin in it for minutes straight, but as i got older i stopped cause i started getting REALLY sick afterwards XD
@@MSAWCartoonist SAME!!!! my favorite playground equipment has always been swings and carousels/merry-go-rounds (and i used to love flipping over on those standy bars you could do pull-ups on) and i would literally just spin on my own axis while staring straight up at a light for tens of minutes while waiting for art classes but now i get so motion sick so quickly from any of it, its horrible ;-;
Yooooo I'd also copy Pokemon cries as a kid because I watched the anime so much
me too
Not to mention, if I can't stim, or I'm stopped from stimming, or have to alter my stim because public/other people, it's not as satisfying and causes me to be anxious. That anxiety also makes things worse, because people don't understand the need.
I'm not officially diagnosed, but I strongly suspect I might be autistic. When I go on vacation while I'm excited I also dread it at the same time. Because since I will be in public or in someone else's company I can't do the certain thing I do when in private. Which is I can only describe as full on body movement/flailing about.
It's an almost stifling feeling. Like a pop bottle slowly building up pressure. But I have absolutely no where to go to release that energy. It's always a huge relief when I finally get back to my private/safe space to release that energy. I knew what I did wasn't normal at all until I started to really research what it could mean. I'm glad I'm not the only one who has not one, but multiple ways stimming can manifest in one's self.
You can try incoperating some more socially acceptable stims, also do them just at home and stuff. That way. Those will also actually feel like stims in public.
Like wearing any normal jewelry you rub your fingers over. One of the hand things. Chewing gum instead of other oral stims.
Using a pen or whatever or a rubber band. Bottle cap.
If you want an ultra silent toy you can also opt for a worry stone. These can be used inside your pocket.
It feels weird watching a video about stimming when many of my stimming behaviors have been so heavily pathologized. When I was in school, the stims I used to perform would get me into so much trouble that one school (some Catholic one) threatened me with expulsion, and the other (a public one) suspended me for a few days. And the truth was, I never even really noticed it; I was trying to cope with stress. And here, watching this, I feel a sense of anomie after years of trying to fit in. It’s so surreal, and yet, Megan makes me feel like I am at home. Thank you, Megan. You are the best. You are doing good work for autists everywhere.
•o• What were the stims you did?
I only got nagged by another student to stop making my pencil bounce side to side like a seesaw, she probably said to “stop doing that” idk. I was just like no why? Stimming helps me think, but I didn’t realize it was stimming back then. I just knew I liked it and felt comfortable with it vs restless without.
I tend to have more misophonia and this stim was completely silent, so I just don’t get why it bothered her.
I also flex my muscles in my toes and legs. I readjust my shoulders as well, especially when I’m wearing a bra or sports bra.
Most of my stims are quieter and subtle, so I doubt people saw it. Maybe I’m wrong? 🤷
My stimming consisted of playing with my hair and fidgeting with other body parts, some of which are social taboos. They weren’t what people thought they were; it was more of a way to ground myself in the world. However, Intersubjectivity, neurotypicals did not understand that, so they judged before they investigated. Now, after those humiliating circumstances, I just carry a blitzableiter (stimming device) with me in the form of a dictionary since it is socially acceptable.
@sarahc5608 the irony is that people with ADHD can have trouble filtering out irrelevant details, so everything is distracting. I have this, and insofar as my ADHD side makes louder, more seemingly extroverted, and an impulsive talker, I’m also unfortunately good at annoying autistic people. It’s lonely.
Which is not to say that this is why quiet stimming is objectively a problem, or you shouldn’t do it. Everyone has a cognitive profile based partly in physiology, and basically everyone has to figure out how to get along as best we can. IMO, it is not a simple matter of “right behavior/wrong behavior,” as it gets defined in schools. That’s more about enforcing uniform behavior in order to manage large groups of people, crowd control if you will. Even if sometimes necessary, it should always (again, IMO) be looked atcas a cooperative exercise, NOT as a moral “tight way/wrong way” thing. That approach can do terrible emotional damage to kids (I’m referencing my own second grade experiences here!)
I'm diagnosed with ADHD and thinking of getting an autism assessment one day. My partner isn’t diagnosed but we share so many neurodivergent traits that we kind of stim together. We're always making noises at each other, patting each other's backs and hugging while rocking from side to side (honestly the best stim with someone you’re comfortable with) and we tend to echo each other's casual sound effects, it’s beautiful.
My mum only just found out she has autism and she likes to randomly hug me and I usually turn it into a rocking hug, it is fun! We also meow or make noises to each other (which usually gets us weird looks from my dad lol). I'm not diagnosed with anything but I'm happy I can understand my mum and the "weird" things she does
@@mhenderson7673 That is so sweet! My mum is very similar and she’s definitely going through some kind of self-discovery since I was diagnosed with ADHD hahah. My partner and I visited my family recently and while we were playing a board game we started making noises. Slowly everyone joined in and it became an endless cycle of echolalia
Most of my siblings plus my mom and dad are neurodivergent in some way including me and we tend to make weird noises at each other poke each other stuff like constantly I get a lot of weird looks from people when I do these things
Aww that's cute and wholesome 🥺 that sounds like an amazing experience to be able to mutually stim and find comfort in each other doing it, also sounds like a wonderful bonding experience.
Not autistic, but ADHD, is where steel boned corsets because I liked the tight pressure all along my torso. And then I would catch myself tapping on the steel boning. Something about how the boning carried the tap over my belly was just such a mesmerizing feeling!
Honestly that sounds amazing
I am now jealous of how that would possibly sound and feel like because i won't experience it as im male
There are corsets with less curve or tailored more towards the male body type. I don't have hips or curves so finding one that fit was a bit of a trial but the pressure is really nice for anxiety and grounding
I love tapping on my corset when I wear it
@@shane5535There is a market now for masc bodies, it’s entirely up to you to change the status quo and wear what you want (if you can afford it and feel safe doing so).
Hi! I just wanted to say how happy I am that trichotillamania was mentioned! I suffer with that and I felt so included, love your content btw ❤
My stimming behaviour is so contradictory. I am most sensitive to sound, it’s the input that distresses me most, but I also require constant auditory stimulation through my headphones to get anything done. And when there’s loud noises I can’t block out, I stim by humming/moaning in time, like if I can be the one making the noise it’ll be okay.
I'm actually the same!
As someone who’s also sensitive to sound but likes listening to loud music and such to get things done, I don’t think it’s super contradictory! It’s the difference between uncontrollable noise that’s often comes from multiple sources and a sound that you yourself control and that only comes from one source! If I get overstimulated by my loud music, I can turn it down or turn it off. Can’t do that with loud crowds!
From my own experience, a lot of it is what the noise triggers. If it’s fight of flight, it’s bad news. If it’s excited adrenaline, it can feel good. I think that’s the deal with loud noises vs loud music, anyway. The vocal stims I do are different, I don’t think they trigger adrenaline.
The crappy thing that I think happened to me is that I leaned hard on adrenaline for some years in a high pressure job, in a company that I think is historically ADHD. I was unaware of my own neurology at that time, and because I was already predisposed to high stress hormones, which the adrenal glands also produce, using adrenaline to focus all the time drove up my anxiety and irritability. I could feel it happening but didn’t understand what it was. Now I just plain can’t listen to loud music, and my nervous system is really overwrought.
I tell people "I don't like loud noises unless i make them. Like...loud music is bad unless it's from my own earbuds and I control the song." And I thought that was NORMAL.
Oh goodness the humming along to the loud noise is Such a thing.
Every time Meg makes a video like this I’m like “this is the most validating video I’ve ever seen!” And then she posts another.
Just for "why not?", stims that you listed that I do:
4:31 - Finger rolling
4:45 - Tapping (mostly taping other stuff, but yeah) [probably more like the drumming one mentioned later]
4:52 - Swaying
4:53 - Spinning (probably one of the first parts of my shoes to wear down is probably the sole because of this)
5:31 - Snapping (not what was listed here, but similar enough)
6:12 - This thing (I don't think I do this one that much anymore though, but I immediately recognised it)
6:22 - Leg shake (also foot shake when I have one leg on the other)
6:36 - Muscle flexing (especially in my face, feels like they always need to stretch)
6:47 - Glute flexing
7:05 - Rapid blinking
7:14 - Squeezing eyes shut
7:16 - Rubbing eyes
7:27 - Playing with hair (especially after dying my hair, but that's probably more for seeing it more)
8:06 - Doodling (I have many school/homework papers that I've kept just for the doodles, or at least what I could get away with without my parents making me toss them 😒)
9:00 - Drumming (one of my pockets in my work vest is full of hanger tags that I originally collected to reuse them but I've never felt like going through them to find the size I needed, but I eventually found out I can drum on them and now it's kinda hard not to 🤣)
9:26 - Sitting on hands (don't do this one anymore I don't think, but I used to get whatever those imprints are called after sitting on them)
9:39 - Foot rubbing
10:20 - Toe wiggling (also toe stretching)
10:47 - Lip chewing (more like scratching/scraping my lips with my teeth, but sometimes I do bite off loose pieces of lip)
15:20 - If I knew how to whistle I bet that would be one of my more common stims
21:47 - Teeth grinding (don't know about during my sleep, but I definitely do it while awake)
22:18 - Rubbing tongue against teeth
22:36 - If I don't chew on the right side of my mouth with one bite and chew the next bite on the left side and so-forth ending with chewing food on my left side, then it feels really off. This was an issue whenever I had something that made it so that chewing on one side was painful. I still _had_ to chew on that side though.
24:05 - Chewing non-food items (don't do this anymore, but I used to chew on my metal jacket zipper)
18:11 - I also find random background noises like that very distracting to the point I had to take tests in a separate room. It's not as bad when everyone's not trying to be quiet though, probably because there's a more consistent background sound that all those blend into.
18:30 - I don't really watch ASMR, and one of the few times I've done it recently was because it was one of the few tutorials I could find for something. The whispering turned me off immediately, and since there were a few other tutorials I went to those instead (of course trying to find what videos there were after the fact I end up finding way more)
Some that weren't mentioned (or I didn't recall during the and forgot it was when I remembered) that I do:
Knuckle cracking (even when they don't crack, which they usually don't because most of the time I try cracking them not long after cracking them)
- Sometimes I do this with individual fingers
Toe cracking (basically if I move either of my big toes in a certain way it cracks like a knuckle crack)
Wrist cracking (same as with toes)
Neck cracking
Fidgeting with beard and boobs (though I understand this one as not everyone has either and most don't have both, and the beard one can probably fall under hair fidgeting)
Don't know what to call this one, but spinning my chair but not by much back and forth, kinda like rocking
- This can be paired with using one of my feet to push against the side of my desk kinda like I'm bouncing, but horizontally instead of vertically
Toe curling (big toes doesn't curl up with the rest though)
Sometimes when listening to music (whether actually or in my mind, but this happens mostly doing actually) I like to conduct
Wiggling and stretching my fingers
Dancing
Wrist rotating (to the point I wish I could just rotate them 360 degrees)
Pulling on my fingers
Bouncing (I only really do this while sitting, and they're small bounces)
Nose rubbing
Thigh squeezing
Rubbing my thighs (either after a fresh shave or shortly after my leg hairs regrow when they're still stubbly)
Rocking (like with bouncing)
Just flicking the cursor wherever, sometimes just off to one side and then to the other
Spinning the scroll wheel (sometimes I move the cursor to where scrolling won't affect what I'm seeing, but other times I just let it happen)
Head nodding (as in the kinda mini-dance, not as in nodding my head yes)
Pushing myself back while in my chair
Playing with my skirt
Lip syncing to whatever song is playing in my head
Fidgeting with my stomach flab
(probably just gonna end there for now since it's past when I should be in bed 😅)
(fun fact: many of these I only remembered because I was doing them trying to figure out what other ways I stim)
realizing i stim constantly in so many different ways is actually shocking. I’m in disbelief
One that I rediscovered is that I used to pick up leaves or pull out bits of grass and pick them apart, I completely forgot I did it until a video of a dad who made a garden so his autistic daughter could do it came up!
Aaaa your lemon earrings are so cool!!!
Thank you! They're from this shop on Etsy 🍋: www.etsy.com/uk/shop/HollyHocksJewellery?ref=cart_shop_name_click&cart_id=10385581229
@@imautisticnowwhat Can I ask what the sparkly stuff in your hair is and where you got it? I've only ever seen you and one other UA-camr that have it.
I always want to put sparkly stuff in my hair, but all the stuff I find is either something sticky that makes my hair crunchy (and most of the glitter sticks to my hands anyway), or a clip that's hard to put on right.
@@anacsadderI could be wrong, but it looks like hair tinsel
Earrings matching the shirt! Bonus. 😁
I've struggled with head hitting, self punching, self harm, and skin picking for my whole life, and only just recently got a lot better with it. It would get to an explosive point because I was trying to mask too much and push myself too far, not allowing myself to be myself and soothe myself the way I needed to. When you feel forced into masking and you're never allowed to release any of that pressure without being called a freak, from how overwhelming everything is by rocking, flapping, humming, tapping, or any other 'socially unacceptable' stim... it will all come out at once eventually. Being a DV survivor didn't help with that either, I learned it from my parents. Allowing myself to stim in all the ways I want, as hard as I want, and as much as I want, around people who accept me, changed my life. No more skin infections, scars all over my arms and lumps on my head. I also love learning new ways to stim that I've never tried or thought of before. Keeps me too preoccupied to do the bad stims.
Unmasking is probably one of the most beneficial things I've ever done for myself, good on you!
I appreciate you sharing that. It doesn’t get talked about a lot, even on ND channels. I get why but it can feel lonely. Paige did a thing on SIBs and SH a few months back, and it was really helpful to hear from others who’ve struggled with this as an adult.
I skin pick and bite...I never thought it was stimming or a tic - I just thought it was a thing I did. It's kind of funny I never put that together before now.
❤ I'm sorry /DV !!
Genuine question, what does DV mean?
Bro you kept calling out what I'm doing and I out of embarrassment keep dropping and doing another stimm
0:21 I’m picturing someone saying mid-seizure “nah bro don’t call 911 I’m just stimming bro”
💀 nah bro
the bit about trichotillomania as a stim made me feel so seen-I have PCOS and grow a lot of facial hair for an AFAB person, and I obsessively play with it and pull it out whenever I notice some growing in. when I was a kid I would pull out hair from my scalp, too, but got yelled at a lot so eventually I stopped until I picked up the facial hair stim in adulthood. I think it's good to acknowledge stims that aren't healthy as long because it helps destigmatize them and makes it easier to find alternatives. thanks for the lovely video 💖
I also have PCOS and I often have to pluck my chin hairs because if i dont and my finger brushes against a thicker hair when i run my hands along my jawline, i will obsessively wiggle the hair back and forth with the tip of my finger. Just typing this has me resisting the urge to look for new chin hairs to play with! 😅
@@LilChuunosuke 🤝 I'm the same way!! either I will play with them endlessly or obsess about pulling them out regardless of whether or not I have a means to do so at my immediate disposal. I hate that I do it but I really can't help it, either.
Omg I feel seen this is me, idk if I have PCOS but I get thicker black hairs on my chin I just gotta rip out
I'm AMAB Transgender, so my experience is different, but I still relate to the playing with facial hair part.
@@SunIsLost I'm also trans, and honestly growing even more facial hair is what keeps me from starting T because this particular stim drives me nuts and is probably not healthy (the way I do it, anyway). hearing about other people who arrived at the same stim from different backgrounds makes me feel better about it, so thank you for sharing ❤️
For the intro, I have Tourette’s syndrome and Autism *(also possibly ADHD and Dyspraxia)* and so people can confuse stims with ticks, it doesn’t happen often though, because I usually tick around my family, which mostly know me in and out
Edit: also at 12:22 reminded me of another tick where I would shake my head quite vigorously for about 20-30 seconds, and at one point it got so bad to the point where I was doing it every 10 seconds after the previous one, I had a really bad headache constantly for about 2 days during it and one day after and begged to my parents to miss school, which they were hesitant about, but luckily let me for one day, this was also paired with vigorous hand shaking lasting about 5 seconds which also stopped the rest of my body from moving at all, and cost a tonn of energy from my body
Luckily I don’t do this as often anymore, it’s been a long time since, I usually do it every 10 minutes or so, and a lot less vigorously
thank you SO SO much for reading the entire thing, you really are very patient!
Yeah, I'm formally diagnosed with autism and I get both stims AND tics. The easiest way to separate them is that tics are always unpleasant, (they feel bad, they are uncontrollable in a violent way and after tics I feel worse than I felt before) whereas stims, even the painful ones, are pleasurable in either a direct or a roundabout way. (Physical pain relieves mental pain = pleasure from relief. etc.)
Does that sound about right for you too?
It was probably so hard to have Tourette's in school for you. I also have autism and adhd. I don't know why but when I cant handle with the amount of stres I'm in I start to speak nonsense like I don't say them they are just irrelevent sounds my mouth make and I start thighten my muscles all over my body, and sometimes pull my hair to the degree it is damaged. And I live in a dormitary. So sometimes other kids see me during this thing. But I experience it five times a year or so. I can't imagine having Tourette's in school. Kids can be really mean sometimes. They don't understand the nature of disorders. I hope you are doing ok.
wonderhoyy
@@heli0ns yep
@@sevgilikitaplarm4364 I do still get bullied even after years of them seeing this, I thought they'd be used to it now, but nope! (It’s gotten better though, thankfully)
Here's a few goodies that you hadn't mentioned: singing along with the songs that are playing in my head, regardless of where i am. I often find myself doing this when i have to go shopping, and the bright lights, the crowds and the odd humming noises bother me. I feel overstimulated and overwhelmed, then i tend to start rocking as well. I go through the clothing department, touching the various fabrics. I love velvet, soft cotton, plush like and velvet like fabrics.
I love playing with my gemstones and crystal collection, making grids, looking at them, through them, shining light through them, feeling the cool flat, glass like surfaces, the roughness of some stones.
I used to love hearing the rain on a ton roof, also the sound of a thunderstorm.
I used to love dangling my legs and feet in the river, feeling the water flowing over my legs and feet, the softness of the silt between my toes and the minnows nibbling on my skin; the way it tickles.
I love lying down on the grass watching the clouds and the light playing through the trees, the sound of birds singing. Sky watching during a meteor shower.
Playing with a hand drum or a tibetan singing bowl.
Earlier in the video, when you mentioned playing with hair, I literally thought to myself “I don’t let myself do that. I just end up pulling it out. I wear hats so that I don’t pull my head hair and my glasses keep me from pulling at my eyebrows and eyelashes too much.” And then you mentioned it later on and I went “Oh. That has a name?” So. Thanks for teaching me I guess? Time for research!
I literally pull out my eyebrow and eyelash hairs...glasses don't stop me.
@@Andrea-gp1xnMe too 😔
0:08 I don't even remember what stimming means, therefore I can tell people are misusing the word
Silly comment
I got distracted trying out new stims and had to watch several parts over and over again.
crocheting, doodling and SO much more. It has been such a HUGE thing for me to realize that I can watch tv or whatever else if I am crocheting/fidgeting . I am usually way more hyper when I have to sit still and just take in information so this my brain has to do two things in at once is just such a nice way I can hack my brain.
For me, my major stim is head scratching, but only by other people. When I was a child, I would go to my mother's room everyday and ask her to give me a head scratch because the sensation was phenomenal, it also helped me get sleepy. I still love to ask friends or bfs to give me a head scratch if I feel comfortable because it's just so nice.
Yes (only I rarely ask, and only comfortable with my mom doing it)
but also head pats are good
I self-diagnosed myself and am waiting for the opportunity to actually see a professional,
I keep getting crazy imposter syndrome constantly because "what if I'm just pretending" or "doing it as an excuse" but like there's no way me relating to most of these are all just coincidences, for example, I didn't know galloping around was a type of stimming, I do it CONSTANTLY at home, or tapping your fingers on your thumb which I noticed myself frequently doing recently. Leg shaking is a gigantic one, I've been doing it almost constantly for around 2 years at this point, I've always just thought it was stress.. it was probably influenced by stress but still. Also when she started talking about moving your toes I noticed myself doing it already which was like a weird wake up call
I'm sorry for venting I just need some kind of validation
Plus side: you may find it helpful to take notes, and when you are able to see a professional, you'll have specific examples to give them. 👍🏻 When I got my diagnosis, I found myself unable to remember specific examples many times when I was put on the spot in the diagnostic 1-on-1 conversation with the evaluator. (I know it's why I was there, and they were just doing their job, but it was still stressful to me -- I wish I had brought notes.) I still got diagnosed, and you probably will too, but taking notes with you might help with the stress of the actual diagnostic process? Just an idea of course, do what is best for you.
real af😢
Be well, the label doesn't matter. If it's helpful, it's helpful.
I'm ccurrently in tears. You can´t imagine how much these videos help us understand our weird minds and also lets us know we are not alone and we are not that otherwordly. Thanks a whole lot for everything you do.
I've been on the waiting list for about 20 months for an ADHD assessment, but this video called me out on so many things (like I do a good 75%+ of the things mentioned, plus things not mentioned) that it's making me wonder 😅
Usually my ‘harmful’ stims show up when I’m in distress usually in a crowded plays and I always get weird looks because I’m all stiff, my eyes are darting everywhere, I scratch my neck, pull my ears and I have to constantly assure people I’m fine, I’m just stressed 😭😭
Me and my brother do something we call crowing sometimes when our parents are gone and it’s exactly what it sounds like we just go
AHH AHH AHH repeatedly at eachother
this made me laugh. i think that's so beautiful. everyone deserves a brother in crowing
Me and this friend I had in HS used to screech like raptors at each other sometimes. His parents were great too. We were doing it at his house one day and his mom walked in, made a noise at us, smiled, then walked into her room. Now that I think about it, pretty sure they both may be on the spectrum taking in a lot of other factors lol
After a month this has made me hyper aware of when I’m doing stim stuff now. 3
Every once in awhile, my daughter will start this with me and I respond in kind, repeating random loud sounds at each other for a full minute - the rest of the family looks at us like we’re nuts!
I have adhd, and i think we’re working on a diagnosis for autism.
My stims tend to be
Drawing.
Random vocal sounds (ex: meowing, saying “rawr” or other random sounds)
Leg bouncing
Pencil tapping
Finger tapping
Jumping
blinking
Playing with my hair
Ring twisting
Talking with hands
Cracking knuckles
Drumming
Then ones i dislike:
Skin/scab Picking
Skin Biting
Scratching
Lip chewing
So. Yeah..
I wonder if drawing was/is a stim for me? I spent most of my childhood drawing, and I’ve thought it was mostly because I could do it alone in my room. There is something about a freehand drawing that comes out the way I wanted (rarer than I would like), and when I manipulate a drawing tool well it feels good. I miss the old brush and ink days.
Amusingly, I had started chewing my lip right before reading lip chewing. LOL
@@arithefennec lmaoo
I wildly gesticulate with my hands when I speak, most of the time I don't know I'm doing it!
I also play with jewelry that I've got on if I'm wearing it, usually when I'm nervous.
I also have ADHD and probably autism. I have a lot of very similar stims. Only ones I don't have are drawing and blinking. Jumping is only when I'm really excited, though.
I have autism and ADD and i realized i have a lot of stims like, I often walk on my toes at home, tap my leg, click a pen or flap my hand while i walk, biting or picking my skin, and doodling also a lot more, this video really made me realize all the different type of stims that can be with autism and so on, thank you for making this video
Pen clicking. Omgoodness 😂
I catch myself doing this when I’m in a group situation and realize how loud it is!!
When I was a kid I used to run the hose so I could watch the water flow like a tiny river, and then I would dig channels and lakes for the river. I'd do the same thing with puddles and dig them out and get them to flow. I loved those water tables at children's museums and I still want to go to childrens museums to just play with them as a young adult. I get so excited when it rains, especially heavy rain that flows on the ground and over the streets to storm drains. I'd never thought about watching water being a stim but it totally makes sense.
I used to watch the rain drops race across the car windows whenever I went anywhere in the car with my family.
I did this too! I think about it at the time. I’m also surprised when people don’t know how earth and water interact and flow 😂
Tell myself before the video "I don't think I really do much stimming". proceeds by thinking "yeah I usually do that" to basically every example in the video and remember how satisfying those things are to do.
*Vocal* *stimming* is another one that people tend to overlook (especially in the form of singing) since "everybody does that" and I vocal stims A LOT.
I also dance as a stim, but It's soooo difficult to not to sometimes ESPECIALLY when I'm in a public space and I hear some music lol.
I just want to dance immediately. (> w
Singing is my mayor stim, I do it all tge time, its my ultimate soothing mechanism!!!
i sing constantly, like even in school i would just always hum something. it just helped me focus so much better
I sing all rhe time it's my favorite stim, and doodling when im in class, some teachers get mad at me tho lol
I used to dance a LOT when younger, at minimum tapping my foot to a tune. Even now I often listen to EDM (an autistic saviour, especially kick-focussed versions) so I have a steady, predictable boom boom boom in my ears instead of random noise from outside, but in my past I've been a big raver
@@SingingSealRiana Same, it’s like a constant routine 😂
Just received my ASD diagnosis an hour ago and wanted THANK YOU for all of your videos, they have been an invaluable resource during the diagnostic process.
The bit about harmful stims was sooo validating. I actually cried. I’ve been looking into autism for the last couple years and think I am autistic, but I thought that my harmful stims were just me having something wrong with me. I didn’t realise that some of those are so common and I feel so much better now!! Also hello from South Africa 💗🇿🇦
i have real issues with skin picking and only recently realised it was because of my adhd/autism!! there's definitely not something wrong with you and you can 100% replace those stims with something more healthy for you
I've never been tested nor diagnosed, and I'm very hesitant to "self-diagnose," but holy crap I've done so many of these my whole life! I had to learn how to "be still" when I was young, but even now at 50 I don't always succeed for very long - I compartmentalize and create an imaginary me. That me can get away with my action, while everyone else sees a perfectly behaved person. I don't have any idea what that says about my mental state/health.... My song is One Tin Soldier, used to be a cutter, still a skin picker, still smoke like a chimney, randomly realize I'm rocking, on and on.... So many things you mentioned here, I plummet head-first into doing over and over and over until something outside breaks me free. I'm a smeller and toucher, too - now *that's* lead to some awkward times when I was a kid! Thank you so much for what you're doing :)
self-diagnosis is valid! don't worry about it 🥰
I was diagnosed at 67. I'm 72 now and self diagnosed ADHD but I *need* an official diagnosis 😊
@@LieseFury self diagnosis is fine, self *medicating* isn't. Even if you are 1000% sure it's right for you, getting the right dose can be a very precise process with a lot of trial and error. Please don't ever self medicate.
I wish I could get an official diagnosis, but I'm afraid it might be way out of my price range 😥. But these last few years have led me to self diagnose myself because there were a lot of "weird" things I was doing that I knew was not normal. It really does explain a lot of my behavior and the way I choose to tackle certain situations. It would also explain my dad's own behavior over the years. But unlike me it would take an act of Congress to get him tested.
@@IncineroarBestPokemon thank you for the unwarranted advice. nobody was talking about medication, and autism doesn't require medication anyway.
I have a massive stim of BLASTING certain songs on full volume and then imaging full on scenarios (usually I’m trying to act out some of it sometimes, it looks kinda like dancing) featuring stuff I’m fixated on, the music is usually a lot of Vocaloid (example: Hatsune Miku), Video Game Music and/or Remixes, Tame Impala, or anything that catches my autism randomly! Although I blast the music a little TOO loud as I’m always trying to “tune out everything.”
And even then, I’m usually listening to some chill Synthwave if I’m listening to music while doing something else in the forefront, like gaming or reading a book.
My dad got me these super comfortable noise canceling headphones years ago, (that aren’t bulky) they’ve saved me SO many times, I love them so much and I don’t go anywhere without them! 💖
I love to imagine full-on immersive fantasy scenarios while listening to music! 🎶❤
This is a huge stim for me too, and it’s usually quite hard to pull out of it due to having Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder.
THAT'S A STIM?????? I've been doing that since forever bc concentrating on a specific line of thought helps me tune out the rest of my brain, i often do this to sleep 💀
You're literally me, lol
this type of stim is so fun its like so good for musicals or anything that sounds similar!! just earlier i was dramatically acting out avenged sevenfold songs. For over a year every night, id sing the entirety of doomstar requiem and pickles' rehab saga from metalocalypse before bed and i still havent gotten sick of them. i do like some good calm songs as have a constant need to listen to different genres, but usually the heavier the better for me (i know im not the only one who gets calmed down by heavy metal, i saw dying fetus live and so many people in the crowd were happily swaying back and forth!) and i am always listening to music while in public and doing things.
also speaking of vocaloid :3 i thank utsu-p's contributions to the metalhead vocaloid community daily.
Wow! I am aware of some of my stims, but some I never really thought about until now! I also really like how you explained things in detail / showed the examples, so we had a clear idea of it. Incredibly informative video 😁👍
Funny thing about listening to music: the first time I worked from home with my parent in my apartment they commented on the fact that I wasn’t listening to any music during work. I was confused why they would comment on it but they reminded me that I basically used to listen to music 24/7 growing up, always when doing homework and any other time as well. Somehow I had unlearned this during university and forgotten about it. I’ve started listening to music at work again sometimes and it’s lovely.
I could only do homework if I had the radio on (it was the 1960s). My nosy, boundary-less would come into my room and turn the radio off, assuming that it was "distracting" me. I would turn the radio back on as soon as she left my room
Echolalia is so fun- I love to mimic the sounds my cats make, especially when they chirp. I do it so much that I think I can do a pretty solid cat impression XD
I can't tell if I have echolalia or if I just have big ambitions to impersonate bird calls XD
I love to bother the seagulls on our neighbours roof, they look at me so funny
I'm Audhd and an elementary sped para and accidentally mimic my students all the time. One friend hates it. "Don't copy me!!"
I feel so bad every time and I try to explain that I just really liked how it sounded. 😭 Then he'll mimic me 10 minutes later, and I'll call him a copycat as he giggles lol.
Omg i never thought about echolalia in the context of my cats (and dog), idk why it feels less weird than if I were to repeat things people say
This made me smile!
I did(had?) echolalia when I was younger, someone in my kindergarten class pointed it out and I got embarrassed and stopped. Same thing happened with hand flapping, someone told me I looked autistic when I flapped my hands and because I didn’t want to appropriate it or be seen as something I wasn’t (I am autistic, but little me didn’t know that) I stopped, I only just started up again a few years ago
As an adhd-er with tourettes; the tics and stims intertwine but also; stims keep the tics away. For the outside world it is all perceived as one, as wrong, as a sign of me not being calm,focused and in control even though half of the time I actually am (because i'm stimming) and the other half I can function fine regardless of tics. So I've learned to mask it all, ending up forcing a stiff posture and secretly playing piano etc.
All of it causes physical pain.
I am now 37 and unlearning
So
Normalize it please!
Tysm r making this vid!
Most hilarious thing in the world is when you realize that neurotypical people also got really subtle stimming behaviour that's self soothing. And it's nothing to be ashamed or awkward about. People say anything about it? Just watch them. See how often they jiggle with their keychain, or how often they click their pen, chew their lips, scratch their hair. It's cause our monkey brain is anxious and patterns are soothing. Extremely so for people on the spectrum. But also for regular people.
9:27 nobody has ever acknowledged this as a stim before for me, but when I was little I remember teachers telling someone (whether it was me or my siblings or my classmates, I don't know) that we need to keep our hands down and not distracting, keep our hands to ourselves, and the adult said to sit on your hands, it could have been my mom talking to my brother. But I remember hearing that, and for a solid 5 or 6 years, I did that because I loved the pressure on my hands. I still do it occasionally, but it's just so funny to me because nobody's ever spoken about it before that I've heard.
I had completely forgotten I used to do this at school, I can still remember the texture of the plastic chair. I would try and hide my hands sometimes afterwards because I didn't want people to notice my hands were all red and lined from the pressure!
I’m sitting on one hand right now as I type. When I’m watching a movie I always sit on my hands.
I was surprised to hear that and then notice I was sitting on my hand
Metal has literally helped me so much with the loud music, drumming stim, jumping up and down, headbanging, music patterns, ect.
Same
I have NEVER heard about "cricketing" before, ...and I've been doing it as long as I remember.
I thought I was the only one having this "problem", and I didn't know why I do it.
Nice to know it is a thing people do. Well, at least some people...
I do it every night to fall asleep and always have!
@@claraclear5665Me too! I honestly never even thought about it being a stim until watching this.
I do it constantly when in the couch and bed. Cricket cricket 4ever.
12:24 yeah, i was forced into a pep rally at my school and did this while i was overstimulated and overwhelmed. My mom said to scream LOUDER with the people but that 1: makes it worse 2: overstimulates my friends i sit next to sometimes, so i told the person who takes people who are noise sensitive to a different room then the loud gym to never put me in that again, so now o think im good
I finally made my own stim toy. I've owned a stuffed animal since I was 9 months old (I'm in my 30s now), and ever since I can remember, I've run its tail between my fingers. It helps me focus, it makes me feel better, and it's stuck at home because I'm an adult and carrying around a 13in stuffed animal isn't really conducive to my job.
I also tend to slide my fingers up and down on the stiff fabric of a zipper (the tape), running it under my nails. Jacket season is my favorite.
I went in for an ADHD screening appointment, and the lady brought up autism. I'm not yet diagnosed, but I'm seeing so much of myself more clearly now, and I'm so much happier and forgiving of myself.
I made a bracelet with a stiff fabric that comes together with two magnets. I can run it between my fingers or under my nails, and I can click the magnets together as a bonus. It's subtle, it's quiet, and I can wear it. Being able to stim throughout the day instead of having to wait until I get home and have access to that stuffed animal has been life-changing.
I've been looking for this stim forever! I had a stuffed animal and now I have a jacket where I would run part of its fabric under my fingers and I always thought I was the only one who did that. So thank you for commenting!
I’m 70 and still sleep with stuffed animals. I take at least one with me when I travel because otherwise I can’t sleep.
When you said you felt embarrassed and that you stood really still it broke my heart.
Watching this right now and just noticing, I’m chewing on my cheeks and wiggling my toes at the same time. I’ve been bedridden for quite a few months now and this video is really helping me a lot to pass the time since I haven’t been able to get out to do anything or go anywhere or spend very much time with friends or family without getting exhausted this is reallycomforting and it’s made my evening so much more soothing and validating and I want to thank you so much for your videos!!
i’ve been there, even with the same stims. so frustrating and hard to be in that place. sending you love & solidarity!
Me, too! I've been rubbing my feet together. I also play with my hair, and I'll do BOTH things when thinking of an answer to a question.
I have a callus on my thumb that I will pick at or bite.
I also have chronic pain and spasms that I can avoid by keeping absolutely still (impossible, and eventually this causes spasms, too).
I will go over trigger points that might be helpful to me, though most are dangerous.
I chew gum bc my meds cause dry mouth, but it also makes me look like a ruminant animal!
Just a few bedridden friend things, with some embarrassing ones omitted 😅. ❤
Same das mache ich jeden Tag und hab lange nicht gedacht das ist stimmig
I once clicked a pen so vigorously it broke
My personal most common stims are what my friends and I dub "puppy taps": Basically when a dog is super happy they tend to tap their feet, one to the other, and when I myself am happy I also do that too.
I also do a form of Echolalia: I grew up around a lot of cats, so I tend to do the "Mrrp" sound cats do, or do a realistic type of meow. It's probably the one I do thats the second most common after the tapping.
New to your channel, and loving all the stuff here! It's nice to find some cool content like this around, so I'll probably be here a while :3
I used to meow when embarrassed. That's more of a tic for me, though.
For painful stims, I've replaced them by sort of digging my thumb nail into a fingertip. Fingertips are sensitive so it's sufficiently painful, but it only leaves a small mark that disappears after a little while and it doesn't do any actual damage
Was it easy to replace them? Because the skin picking for example is quite automatic and I often only realise when my hand is already busy :D
@@maliniatb for me personally it took some conscious effort, but it was doable. Maybe it was easier since I was replacing scratching at my forearm with a thumb, which is kind of a similar movement?
My mum used acupressure points a lot when I was a kid, I so know some of them that will always hurt for me and will just press them 😂😅
I've had dermatillomania for YEARS and now at age 26 I am looking for an autism diagnosis! Thank you so much for this video. Writing down all of the stims I experince is helping me understand why I do these things :)
DERMATILLOMANIA TWINS 🎉🎉🎉
I have dermatillomania as well, also autistic. Mine is really bad but so it goes- I know I shouldn't do it but it just happens a lot of the time.
@@shirahp5798 I often don't even notice I'm doing it until I start bleeding. The struggle is real.
@@Causticfeline I pick at the skin around my nails and fingers until it bleeds or is sore. 66 now, done all my life.
thank you for this video! I’ve been doing a stim where I rock back and forth aggressively since I was literally a baby in a crib. Nowadays we know how harmful it is on my spine and my legs. I’ve been trying for a while to find something that could help me replace it with something less harmful, but it’s SO HARD. so again, thank you so much for this video!!
this almost made my cry because literally all of them are so relatable and a weird sort of comfort to know i'm not the only one
I push down my cuticles till they bleed as a pain stim 🥲
I learned that I have way more stims than I was crediting myself for! This also reminded me that when my child was 4 and before they were diagnosed, they did the head banging during one particular epic meltdown after being overstimulated by the intensity of the sun that day. It was scary for their caregivers and it wore the poor kiddo completely out. I went to pick them up and they crawled into my arms and fell right to sleep. Even though it’s been over a decade, it helps to realize this was a stim to help them get relief from the pain of the sun in their eyes.
The bright sun does hurt, even when looking at the ground and walking.
i have both autism and ocd. this video was so interesting because it really highlighted how hard it is to delineate exactly which behaviors come from which (and how to refer to them). like, i do a lot of these behaviors, but some of them i've always referred to as ocd compulsions (i used to call them "tics" when i was a kid, but i recognize that it's probably not quite the right vocabulary), while others i've identified as stims. it was just really fascinating to me that i never thought about some of the things i do as stims, and how much overlap there is between autism and ocd (which i actually didn't realize, but wow it makes so much sense). thanks for talking about this !
16:58 nothing wrong with hearing your favorite song or sound on constant loop. It's relaxing and everybody loves hearing relaxing songs and sounds. It's just hard to find someone that loves the same song or sound in repeat.
Oh my gosh this video made me soooo validated! I think some of my commonly used stims at the moment are hitting my thigh, finger tapping on literally anything (especially if it’s something I’m holding), and snapping (singing is a big one too)