Could you please give me examples of?

Stiming? I am not really clear on what it is please and thank you

Wrongplanet has the answer to your question:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt115321.html

It's a concise answer.

Rocking,

yes.

handflapping,

only to dry my hands (being double jointed i can 'spin dry' them).

pacing,

yes.

covering/uncovering eyes,

no.

hitting yourself,

yes but only in the dim and distant past.

headbanging,

yes but i regard this as rocking.

foottapping etc.

no.

Any kind of repetitive movements to calm yourself down.

undoubtedly, these do have a calming and soothing quality. and i probably am worse when i'm stressed. but, for me, they have an obsessive/compulsive quality too.

candidly, before i read this list i didn't think i was too badly affected in this area!!!

Yeah, it's a pretty good list but isn't complete.

Some other examples are :

- crunching toes/hands - I do this a fair amount. I hate wearing shoes so it's easy to do this with the toes more than anything.
- repeatedly playing with change/magnets/etc. I do this when getting a bit more stressed, I just mess with them in my pockets.

As far as this list, I fit some of these, especially the rocking (something I did for about an hour last night). I also pace at times,have 'hit myself' before (although I don't very often), and foot tap (I do this a lot).

I've done all of those, though pacing is from intense thinking, and I've only hit myself when I've done something that brought me great shame.

It's strange, but while I definitely did every single one of those during early childhood, I haven't done any of them with the exception of pacing, foot-tapping, and covering/uncovering eyes, ever since I reached my teenage years.

I can't remember if I did these exact things when I was a kid, but certainly for most of my life I have kept my "stimming" private, since I've always been a very shy and self-conscious person I never wanted to do anything that would "look weird" (I'm much less worried about this now though)
However, I have always been a VERY fidgety person, I could never keep my hands (or feet) still, I have to be fiddling with something, a pen, or whatever is in my pocket, or just the hems of my clothes. When we're watching TV I used to drive my husband nuts with it, until I took up knitting, now I have a "purpose" for my stimming, at least at night!

slugger wrote:..., since I've always been a very shy and self-conscious person I never wanted to do anything that would "look weird" (I'm much less worried about this now though)

It's kinda funny how it takes us as people so many years to figure this kinda thing out. It's easy to get caught up in trying not to look weird, which is such an ambiguous goal because we really don't know what others find weird and what they don't. I have to remind myself quite a bit that I need to just 'be me' and try to be happy, not try and be someone else.

Thank you T for the list and thank you guys for your list wow those are a lot of stimms. I also never knew these appeared in ad/hd also. I am sure others too and nons also I never knew wow

Spring wrote:Thank you T for the list and thank you guys for your list wow those are a lot of stimms. I also never knew these appeared in ad/hd also. I am sure others too and nons also I never knew wow

I wouldn't say that AD/HD people "stim" per se, although I suppose they could appear to only because they have hyperactivity. (Unless they are inattentive type). But that's different, with a different cause. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism is that makes aspies need to "stim", but the term refers to the stimulation that aspies seem to need, and find in hand-flapping etc.

By the way, a follow-up question if I may for everyone who stims.... Would you consider "picking" a form of stimming? I do this a lot too, picking the dry skin on my lips, or picking at my fingernails, or picking split ends off my hair, stuff like that. Just wondering if that's also part of it.

http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com ... -feel.html

This link suggests that actions such as biting one's nails, or "picking" could be considered forms of stimming.