Further to my last post, here is a hand movement I do all the time. I find it relaxing and therapeutic.
Talking to a good friend at the weekend, she said it sounded like stimming. Right, that’s not a word I understood properly so I’ve looked it up – which has opened a whole area of thinking for me.
You probably know all about this but here we go. Stimming, short for self-stimulating behaviour, refers to “repetitive actions or movements that individuals engage in to help regulate their emotions, manage sensory input, or cope with stress.”
Yup, that makes a lot of sense to me.
And that makes me think about how I’ve related in the past to signs of autism.
Stimming is something regularly associated with autistic people. They tend to do repeated movements (like hand flapping or spinning) and/or possibly repeated behaviours - like saying a word or listening to a song on repeat. This apparently gives them sensory stimulation and keeps them calm.
Yup, that makes sense to my stimming too in the keeping calm area anyway.
I remember when I worked for Cosgrove Care, helping to run an arts class for adults with learning disabilities. I went to an autism awareness class in order to understand the people I was working with.
I recall listening to the class and finding I recognised quite a few of the signs of autism in myself. That includes repetitive movements or actions (stimming of course), intense focus on specific interests – oh yeah I have a few of those – and need for routine and resistance to changing that routine. The fact is there are many other signs of autism that I personally cannot relate to.
What I find particularly interesting on this subject is that there’s a guy in Kings College London who’s researching this relationship in scientific terms…
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