Autism and Stimming: 10 Types of Autistic Stims

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I practice conversations out loud. I don't know if it is stimming, but it helps me feel more regulated.

I've found that autistic individuals with strong affinity for echolalia can excel in foreign language learning as far as pronunciation. Once attuned to the shapes and feelings and audial quality of making the sounds, we can mimic native speaker pronunciation.

I didn’t even notice that I quietly say “boop” when setting something on the counter or handing something to a coworker until recently, and then I noticed that my other neurodivergent coworker has picked it up and started doing it too, which makes me incredibly happy, especially when we do it at the same time

i'm crying at this intro because i noticed the cream on your face and after you sat down i just accepted it as some kind of face mask chat or something and even as you said you got everything done without needing any reminders i believed you 🤣

My youngest son who has been diagnosed started humming from birth. I know how it sounds. I had to point it out to the nurses and then they were like, hmm strange” I never thought about that before. He only did it the first few days. He now has a bunch of different stims. I am late diagnosed and have 3 children with autism and I absolutely adore their excited hand flapping, spinning, and jumping because the joy is so real and palpable that I join in. They are the sunshine of my life.

I often imitate sounds around me. “Talk” back to animals, “honk” in response to cars, and so on. Is that echolalia or something else?

The compulsion to organize, align, group up, etc is strong and incredibly soothing 🤷‍♀️

I also bite the inside of my lips, make rythyms with my teeth, eat ice cubes, listen to very complex music or fast music, I taught myself to cut my hair so I don’t have to go to the barber (it’s a simple haircut with a #1 comb attachment), I like to look at complex machinery and try to understand it! I do a lot more things but I would be here writing until next week!!

Me watching this video out of curiosity only for it to be too relatable and leave me questioning my entire existence

My dude just single handedly explained why I collect pretty things, especially rocks, and organize them over and over on shelves. Then sit and stare at them for hours. Probably while humming/singing or making noises with my mouth. Idk how to feel about this.

Listenning to a song over and over and over and over...for hours or days Touching my face around the mouth or rubbing my scalp Fidgeting with the tip of my fingers Folding a bit of paper over and over until it's a stick, then trying to fold the stick tight as well, and then just fidget with the rolled thing

visual stim for me is looking at patterns 0n floors ,walls,and ceilings when i get overwhelmed

This word, "stimming," is less than a week old for me. I have suspected for well over a decade that I might be a bit autistic. This awareness came after attending one of Temple Grandin's talks while living in Fort Collins. Everything she said deeply resonated with me. I felt conflicted about that because I was made fun of for being different, slower, shy, and in my head. No one cared when i voiced this observation, not even my best friend at the time who worked with autistic adults. I was actually accused of wanting to be autistic because it was suddenly cool. It wasn't. I was tormented as a kid by other kids who relentlessly called me a retard. They called out on all of these stimming activities you mentioned as proof of my retaredness. I was even in special Ed for speech therapy. It was awful. I wanted so badly to be normal and likable. I was forced to stop behaviors and learn new ones in order to be more normal. Even then, I could never pass. I was just a fake. In high school. I had to make drastic changes to my social life. Only then, did I begin to pass as normal. Until I had to jump.states and live with my dad. Then all the social awkwardness returned until I could figure out the masking thing all over again. I am fifty-two now, and I live alone. Since being on my own, many behaviors I had growing up have begun to return. Things I felt super self-conscious about. Most of these are in your top ten. I had forgotten about some of them, like running the ends of my hair across my face. As soon as you said this, I did it. And it felt SO GOOD. Which reminded me of something else I used to do all the time. Paint my nails. I learned to paint my nails for the love of color, like a normal person. What I actually loved, however, was the way those painted nails felt when dragging them across my lips. It was so calming. I want to go out and buy some clear polish now. Something I haven't told anyone in a very long time was something I do in my head in the car. My one and only confession left me feeling exceptionally stupid, and so I have kept it to myself. In order to make drives feel shorter, I would count all of the metal posts along the sides of the road. In addition to that, I would also fold and squeeze my toes while squeezing my fingertips together as we passed each one of these posts. I also did it with divided lines between lanes. If I missed one, I would actually feel anxious. I actually still do this when I am a passenger. Sometimes, I will even count them. As a kid, we would watch trains pass through town and count the cars. I still do this, especially if they are long and I am trying to get somewhere. It helps me not stress over time. It puts me in a bit of a trance. I don't know if this is normal or not. I have never asked anyone. Anyway, thank you for this video. It has helped me to remember a lot of the things that were beaten or bullied out of me when I was young. Now that I don't care so much about fitting in anymore, many of these things you mentioned are making their way back. I don't feel the need to hide them.

singing is absolutely the best stim

I like to watch the way the light plays in the falling rain on a puddly city street at night, it's so sparkly but it's so calming. I can stare at it for hours. It's like a meditation sometimes.

Just recently diagnosed with asd1 and adhd at age 49. I think this might fall under echolalia, but I visualize and replay select scenes from movies and tv shows in my head over and over. They’re from my childhood and teenage years. YouTube is such a great resource for media so I’ve searched for those 30+ yr old video clips and rewatched the scenes that I had kept repeating in my head for decades. I have been surprised to find my memory is a carbon copy.

I spin. Not around in circles, but take fiber and turn it into yarn/string. The spindle going round and round with the fiber twisting makes me excessively happy.

I hope you thank Debby ever day. Some of us don't have a Debby... and a Debby would be nice.

The “shy” segment made me laugh out loud - “she’s going to know how shy I am” 🥺💞