You Probably Don't Know I'm Stimming

Stimming is that weird thing autistic people do, isn't it? Maybe you don't know what it's called, but you know what it looks like. Hand flapping. Oh, yes, those weird autistic people, they go around flapping their hands like a frustrated seagull?

"WARNING: JAZZ HANDS" by waldopepper, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 

No. Well, yes. Yes, some autistic people flap, and it's not a bad thing. It's just a way of stimming. In fact, flapping is so identified with autistic people that in the early days of getting diagnoses for myself and my children I thought that we wouldn't be diagnosed, because we didn't flap. News flash: you can be autistic without hand flapping and lining up your toy cars. You can be autistic with these things too, but it's not an entry requirement for the club.

I didn't even know that I stimmed, yet I have stimmed all my life. Basically, stimming is self-stimulating with a sound, a texture, a sight, anything sensory, in a way that helps you focus and ground yourself. It helps you concentrate. It helps you calm down. When I walk past an iron railing fence brushing my fingers almost painfully along the rails, I'm stimming. The more worked up I feel, the more anxious, the harder I press my fingers, until the pain pushes away the anxiety. When I brush my fingers over velvet or corduroy, I'm stimming. When I bury my nose in a flower and inhale, I'm stimming. When I find myself repeating a particular phrase or song lyric over and over, or listening to the same song again and again, I'm stimming.

You can buy stim toys to fiddle with. You can buy rings that turn on your finger, fidget spinners, clickers, all sorts. But a lot of us - especially women, I'm guessing, who learn more to mask - do these things so subtly you'd never know it was happening. I've never bought a stim toy but I will run my fingers repeatedly over my phone case or repeat song lyrics in my head. If I'm fiddling with my phone while you're talking to me, I'm probably stimming so I can stay focussed. I'm not being rude.

When I'm walking along holding my thumb so tightly inside my fist that it aches, I'm stimming. It's the most frequent way I stim. Sometimes I have to do that to relax enough to fall asleep at night. It's like a tiny hug for your thumb. And if I'm walking along the street hugging my thumb because urban streets are overwhelming, you probably won't notice, unless you're really observant. I don't 'look autistic,' but there I am, out in public, subverting your expectations with my secret stims. I don't look autistic, but there I am.