MORE THAN AN AESTHETIC

If you don't understand a post I am always happy to rephrase or explain more. I follow from @hawthornthoughts.

[actuallystimming]

The autistic community has to be accepting of people who have difficulty communicating. We have to accept people who communicate in ways that can be difficult to understand. We have to accept people who have difficulty understanding other people. We have to accept people who struggle more with communicating when they are experiencing strong emotions. We have to accept people who can’t recognise jokes or sarcasm. We have to accept people who don’t know how to step away from a conversation that is distressing them. We have to accept people who can’t tell if people are attacking them or not and sometimes jump to the wrong conclusion. We have to accept people whose communication is affected by being autistic.

The autistic community cannot become a community of people who can communicate in suitably neurotypical ways.

[actuallystimming]

The autistic community has to be accepting of people who have difficulty communicating. We have to accept people who communicate in ways that can be difficult to understand. We have to accept people who have difficulty understanding other people. We have to accept people who struggle more with communicating when they are experiencing strong emotions. We have to accept people who can’t recognise jokes or sarcasm. We have to accept people who don’t know how to step away from a conversation that is distressing them. We have to accept people who can’t tell if people are attacking them or not and sometimes jump to the wrong conclusion. We have to accept people whose communication is affected by being autistic.

The autistic community cannot become a community of people who can communicate in suitably neurotypical ways.

[actuallystimming]

i stim by rocking, hand flapping (doubly good when i wear super long sleeve), folding paper or fabric around my finger (idk how to explain it lolzzz), and what i call "happy flopping"

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I mostly stim through various squihes, sometimes with toys + my hand but mostly wrapping my arms around myself with my arms or shawls. I need to figure out a redirect though because I've hurt my shoulders

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I stim by opening and closing my hands "grabby hands" and by drawing. I literally always have a sketch book with me. I also bite myself a lot, and am trying to stop. Gum used to help with that, but now I'm allergic to mint so that's harder to find. Wearing a mask helps though because I can't get to my mouth.

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I stim by biting skin off my lip but i’m trying to curb it by using a shoelace instead. Also tiptoe walking and light hair pulling

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[autisticjoy]

Is and autistic thing to tone mimick? idk if theres a word for it but like when you talk to someone and mimick their tone mostly invoulentarily but also on purpose, even when its not appropriate and kinda take on persons speaking style in terms of how much talk

i’ve not heard others talk about it and i don’t know if there’s a name for it (outside of mimicking/mirroring), but it is absolutely a thing and in my personal experience very much an autism thing to do with masking. my theory is that if we don’t know what tone of voice to use, defaulting to what was aimed at us is generally a safer bet to avoid using the “wrong” tone of voice, because a neurotypical/allistic person has confirmed that tone as safe/appropriate in this situation. that’s just my own experience and thoughts, i might be totally off, but yes, it IS absolutely A Thing. and it can definitely be subconscious/automatic, and come off as unnatural or in appropriate in its own way. (sometimes there’s just no winning with allistics🙄)

[actuallystimming]

I think this is a thing neurotypical people do as well and it’s more that autistic people struggle with it, do it incorrectly, or are more aware of it. 

I’ve often seen advice to give people announcements about your life in the tone you want them to respond to it because they will subconsciously mirror that tone back to you and it can soften potential negative reactions. And I know several neurotypical people with accents that have faded with moving away from the area they’re from but have much stronger accents when talking to someone with the same accent as them. Sometimes I notice the people around me matching the speaking patterns of whoever they’re talking to but that’s a very subtle thing.

I think that it’s a social thing neurotypical people do subconsciously, but like many social things neurotypical people do subconsciously (body language, for example) autistic people often find it hard. That can mean that autistic people do it too little or too much, and can make us much more aware of and likely to worry about it than neurotypical people are.

(I googled this briefly to make sure that I wasn’t completely wrong and got the wikipedia article on mirroring, which seems to describe this. Warning that the section on autism is brief and not very good though.)

[actuallystimming]

i stim lots of ways, but mostly flapping making noises pacing and rocking. i also like stim toys like tanbgles :)

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I wanted to ask about one of your posts from a while ago, in early may. It was about habits and stimming, and you used the example bouning your leg/foot. I use this as a stim, bc for many years i masked very hevily, and while i tried to avoid stimming, i would turn to foot bouncing when incredibly stressed, bc it was less obvious. Does anyone else use that as a stim?

Hi! If you’re talking about this post, the leg bouncing was just an example. Something is a form of stimming if the person doing it does it to stim, and people can absolutely stim by bouncing their leg. That post is about how lots of neurotypical people have habits like bouncing their leg that I think are not stimming because they choose to do them and can easily stop. I don’t like having my stimming compared to that because I need to stim in ways that neurotypical people don’t. I talked about this in a bit more detail in this post.

[actuallystimming]

i have a problem. singing is one of my major stims, but i live in a house with 5 other people, one of whom is my adhd brother for whom my singing often exacerbates his sensory issues. the problem is, i find it very hard to redirect to another form of stimming when im singing, and my house isnt big enough that i can just go somewhere else, and i have neighbors on either side of my house so i cant just go outside either. what can i do to satisfy my sensory needs while still respecting my family's?

Hi! This is a difficult situation and I don’t know how much help I can be, but I’ll try to offer some advice.

First, are there times when your brother is either out of the house or uses headphones/ear defenders and you can stim freely? If it’s an option, talking to your brother about this and finding times when you don’t have to work to redirect your stimming is important.

Second, I don’t stim by singing so I don’t have any specific suggestions on how to redirect. Generally though, if you can identify what sensory need the stim is satisfying it can be easier to think of things to redirect to. You might need to experiment with lots of different things before finding one that works, if you find one at all. Also, I’ve had more success in redirecting stims to something that uses the same body part, so it might be worth trying something like chewlery to see if that helps.

Followers, do you have any advice for anon?

[actuallystimming]

I stim by flapping my hands, bouncing, sucking on my knuckles and making high pitched squeals. I also love to have some soft thin fabric between my fingers, it feels so nice!

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I chew on bracelets and flap my hands and sometimes rock and hum

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I stim by flapping my hands and tapping my collarbone, and by cracking my joints (and a lot of other ways, but the list would be too long if I listed all of them)

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

one of my stims is sort of humming but silently in the back of my throat, if that makes sense? i also chew, fidget with stim toys, and just move in general.

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

I bite and click things like pens- really bad for my nails and annoying for people sitting next to me in class, also bad for my mum cos she has to constantly buy me new pens and pencils XD

Thank you for answering!

Let me know how you stim!

[actuallystimming]

From the "#actuallyautistic ask game", can you answer 📝 and 🔍, please?

(I’ve answered 📝 What did the process of discovering that you’re autistic look like for you? Do you have a formal diagnosis? here.)

🔍 Do you have a special interest? If you do, what is it and what is your favourite thing about it?

I was going to answer that I don’t think I have a special interest at the moment, but then I remembered that any time I have an excuse to talk about bees I end up infodumping about them for hours to anyone who will listen. Bees are so cool! I have a hive and looking after them is one of my favourite things. They’re really interesting because there’s always something new to learn about how they behave. Also, they’re so cute! 

[actuallystimming]

I have lots of new followers because one of my posts has been getting a lot of notes recently, so I thought I should introduce my blog! 

I created this blog to talk about stimming because I felt that most conversations about stimming on Tumblr were centred around gifs that people use for visual stimming. I also created the #actuallystimming tag to make it easier to find posts by people who stim talking about their stimming. Over time the purpose of this blog has expanded to discussing autism and stimming.

I make posts, occasionally reblog things, answer questions about autism and stimming, and post things people send in talking about how they stim. If you’d like to send in something showing or describing how you stim you can send an ask, submit it, or tag me in a post. I don’t reblog photos or videos of people stimming or any photos or videos showing people’s faces without being explicitly asked to.

I don’t talk much about myself here but this blog is run by one person. My posts approach stimming from an autistic perspective because I am autistic. I like it when people ask questions and the ask box is always open, but I can’t promise that I will always have a useful answer because I’m not an expert. I’m just one autistic person with one experience.