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.

The Toothbrushing Breakthrough

After twenty years or so of adult life I feel like I’ve finally cracked the whole ‘brushing your teeth’ thing. For context, my dad was obsessive about this; making us brush every morning and evening and take fluoride pills too. Brushing was almost a religion in our house. It was never missed.

But when I started taking responsibility for my own brushing it just drifted into nothingness. After all, my teeth don’t ever feel that dirty and I’ve never had a single problem with them. No fillings, no work, nothing. Every time I went to the dentist they’d say, ‘You’ve got no problems, but you should brush your teeth more often.’ More often than, for example, once every couple of months. For the sake of my gums, he would say. And I’d nod and agree, and then go home and just wouldn’t do it.

Photo from Flickr by William Warby. Creative Commons..

I hadn’t really realised that brushing is a sensory and executive function nightmare. Some autistic people (like my dad) are great at routines. Some are not. I’m awful. I have to keep to rather nebulous seeming routines; if I don’t get my after dinner cup of tea within about ten minutes of finishing my dinner, for example, something builds up in me that makes me want to jump out of my skin. But I find day-after-day self care routines oppressive, and terribly hard to stick to. So that, combined with the sensory hell of the brushing and the intense sting of the toothpaste, meant I would just never do it.

Then my husband got an electric toothbrush. I’ve always resisted electric toothbrushes. It seems like an unnecessary waste of energy. But – BUT BUT!! – I discovered a wonderful thing! It does all the thinking for you! I never realised my tooth brushing issues were to do with executive function, but I swear they are. How long do I brush for? Am I doing it right? Too long? Too short? Am I focussing on the right areas? Brushing hard enough? Softly enough? It doesn’t matter! This thing lets you brush one quarter of your mouth, doing all the work for you, and then it vibrates to tell you to move on to the next quarter. And so on, until it’s all done. I don’t have to worry about anything. The only sensory issue is getting over the vibration, which is not great, but I’m getting used to it, and it only goes on for a set amount of time. I’m now a toothbrushing queen! I brush every evening without fail. I’ve been doing it every night for about two months now. I haven’t missed a night. My teeth feel clean all the time.

And this, dear children, is why knowing you’re actually autistic is such a wonderful thing. Because it gives you context for why you fail at the simplest things, and helps you work out ways around it. And we all lived happily ever after. The End.