In this post, I'll be talking about two of the things I use as stimming tools. Stimming is a repetitive action or body movement that is hypothesized to stimulate one or more senses (wikipedia.org). People with autism are prone to stimming to regulate sensory input and reduce anxiety.
Today, I was hanging out at my friends' house after class, like I do most days. For some reason, my autism characteristics came out a little more. I was having a hard time speaking and was engaging in repetitive behaviors. I was jumping around and moving my arms and hands. I was happy with sitting there, listening to everyone else have their conversations, and observing. One of my good friends has an iPhone, and I love to play games on it, especially when my autism is acting up. She understands this very well and will usually agree to let me play on her phone. The only thing is I have to agree to give it to her when she gets a text or phone call, which frustrates me when I'm in autistic states.
Recently, I've discovered this newer game on her phone that lets you draw pictures with neon. I've become addicted to it. I played it for forever today. Like I said, though, every time she got a text, I had to give her phone to her. When an autistic person is stimming and becomes focused on what they are doing, it frustrates them to no end to be interrupted. Even though she would give the phone back to me after checking the text, it still frustrated me to have to pause my game. I would make a disgruntled noise every time a text would pop up, slide off the couch, scoot over to her, and hand her the phone.
At one point, she had to keep her phone so she could talk to her dad. This annoyed me really bad. Luckily, two of my other friends have iPads, which have bigger screens :) An iPad has also been on my wishlist for a while. I love playing on them! I played on one of them for about another hour or two and just kept to myself in my own little world. I know several autistic individuals and autistic children who use an iPhone or iPad a lot. They seem to be very popular among autistic people. I know I like them! I can't wait until I can get one of my own, if possible.
One of my other stimming tools I've been using lately is a bouncing ball that has those little spikes all over it. I like to spin it close to my face. I also like to hit it back and forth between my hands. It kind of looks like a cat batting a ball of yarn around haha. In fact, one of my friends' nicknames for me was "Kitten" because of this stimming behavior. I curl up in the floor with my legs tugged up under me, which is something I found out a lot of people can't do, and bat a ball around. If permitted, I could do this for hours. However, I can also concentrate on what's going on around me. I'm still able to observe people and interact, whether I'm able to speak or not. This is one of my more repetitive stimming behaviors, as you can probably tell.
Although I engage in many other stimming behaviors, I wanted to talk about these two today. I will most likely talk about the others some other time; probably when they become more prevalent. This is because certain stimming behaviors come and go. Anyway, there's a glimpse into just two of my stimming behaviors and how they are some of the ones coming out lately.
"I live in the same world you do; I just experience it differently. I am a human being with feelings, just like you; I just express them in my own way." ~Me~
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