Embrace Autistic Stimming | North Walesn Autism Conference 2018 

This needs to be a TED Talk.

Someone please give this woman a TV show because she is mesmerizing.

Singing is one of my stims and I have to suppress it in public all the time. I end up mouthing along and making hand movements along to songs. Secret rockstar :) Thanks for this talk!

I've never heard stimming explained as understandable, beautiful and amazing as you have explained it. Thank you! I can't wait to abow my children and help them learn!

OH, SWEETHEART, YOU MAKE ME CRY NOT BECAUSE IM SAD BUT BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND

Thank you. My child was literally taught to NOT stim. Taught to not flap her hands and turn in circles.. I appreciate you so much. Its mean to make someone not able or comfortable to move in a way that feels natural. We NEED people who are able to help us understand how it feels. Thank you. Thank you

I think you're a talented speaker. Also, I find your message universal. We live in a very repressed world. I enjoy learning what's natural for autistic people because it makes me understand how unique we all are and it deepens my amazement of how diverse the world is. Forcing a specific way of behaviour as normal is narrow-minded, harmful and usually has devastating consequences. As a highly sensitive person, I experienced it too. I agree with everything you said. Despite, in the beginning, it's difficult there's no other way than to finally embrace who you truly are.

This was a beautiful plea. I don't have a spectrum diagnosis, but I am highly sensitive and have had a lot of stimming behaviors that are similar to an autistic. I mask my general weirdness anyway so, yeah, I understand feeling odd 🙂 but I LOVE music and the one stim that happens to me all the time is very subtle. It's actually kind of hard to explain. If there is a song or a beat in my head, my muscles will sort of contract in patterns with that beat. It gets complicated, usually toes, calves, my sides, the little muscles inside my elbows, etc., all going left, right, left but at their individual rhythms, in time with the beat. Like one is whole notes, quarter notes, some play a rhythm, some hold on for a few measures. I found it happening after I watched this and that song you used was still in my head. No one has ever noticed and I haven't told hardly anyone cuz, well, it seems awfully weird hahaha! But you know, it's me. And as far as I know it's pretty unique and interesting. Maybe it does also help me cope with the sensitivity. Thanks for the video and for this space to be ourselves.

I am super surprised at this really. I have a 7 year old daughter who stims a lot but it's funny that I am just finding out about it today! I didn't understand what it was and best believe that I have even tried to stop her from stimming. Allow me to thank you for sharing about this. You are amazing coz you have taught me something major today. Information is power for sure.

Ok i seriously love this video!!! I personally have suppressed my stimming behaviors since around the age of 13-14 yrs old, as thats around the time frame i started 2 see the world, and more specifically how the world sees me. And its gotten so bad that up until almost 4 yrs ago, (and im 23 now) when my amazing man walked into my life, that ive slowly started 2 allow myself, thanks mainly 2 him gently coaxing me and helping me 2 get more comfortable and ok with not only stimming, but other ppl seeing me stim, 2 stim when im by myself and need 2, and just this summer have started 2 allow myself 2 stim in public if i need 2, and that is only cuz my man was there with me at the time. Its truly amazing and artfully well said!!!

Oh gosh, I burst into tears when you started speaking about your stims and tic as I do the same things. I will turn on music and dance crazily around my room or if I'm sitting on my bed I'll clap, drum, bounce, and sway. When you mentioned the neck twitch I couldn't believe it. I get the neck twitch randomly and I believe it is when I'm more stressed but I thought I was crazy and imagining it... I thought it may have been a side effect from all the antidepressants I had been put on in my teens. I am undiagnosed but I strongly suspect I am on the spectrum although my parents don't believe it one bit. I relate so much to all the content you put out there. After every video I come away saying I love her so much for understanding. I just want to be understood.

Every time that I’m not okay because I feel ashamed of my behavior (it happens sometimes even if you know that you don’t have to be ashamed because you’re natural) I just listen to this video and I feel better, I feel enough brave.

Thank you for that. I'm only recently beginning to learn my own stims. This is most helpful advice.

Sara - Thank you! - What you are doing for our autistic community is so needed and important! We have been taught to feel shame by society and worse is we've learned to shame ourselves for being who we are. I'm recently diagnosed at age 59 - A life-time of trying to be something other than myself - I'm discovering my true self now and it is a journey we don't have to do alone - that we cannot do alone - Our community is so vital to this discovery/recovery process - We are so conditioned to feel absolutely alone in this world but we are not - We have each other - and together we can all heal -

Your words hit home for me so hard. I do this thing I call "air tracing" where I trace letters, shapes or pretend that I'm playing an instrument of I'm listening to music. I've done it since I was really little and my mom used to ask me what was wrong with me whenever she'd see my hand "twitching." I remember lying in bed and watching tv while she was talking to me. I tried my hardest not to trace whatever I was seeing on TV, but I couldn't help it and she made a big deal out of it, asking why my hand was twitching. I had no way of explaining it to her, so I've done my best to hide it from her for all these years.

I like how I cried during this for some reason. 🖤

This is brave of you to share your story about your life of being different and that you're showing us all its okay to stim and do what you can through stimming. Thanks for the explanation and being you and l high five you for doing this. Keep being you for what you're doing as an advocate for autistics and more xx

I appreciate what you said about all humans being animals. It's so true, and people wouldn't use it as an insult if they actually gave animals the respect they deserve. My mom pointed out to me that her dog stims all the time to calm himself down. When he is overexcited and running around barking, he'll often stop and scratch himself until he calms down. Or he'll find a toy to chew. A trainer even gave us a suggestion to throw cheerios in the air as a stim for him. It works! He gets distracted trying to find and eat all the cheerios around the room and it calms him down. Again, I don't mean it as an insult to compare myself and my fellow autistics to dogs. I respect dogs immensely and I think this similarity shows autistics are in touch with our evolutionary biology.

Beautiful! Do you have any tips how to find your Stimm again if it’s been suppressed? How did you tap back into your stimm? Love the last part that it’s also a form of communication because it really is 💕

You fascinate me. I'm so happy to have this learning platform.

Your videos are great and help me get an insight into my son's head. I grasp his behaviors and that they are his way of navigating this reality but sometimes it's just one sentence or point you make that makes something click for me and understand him that much better. Thank you for this. I'm so grateful that he will get to grow up in a world that is so much more understanding and accepting of things like autism.

I've been having social anxiety for the past four years because I'm ''weird''. But I never asked myself what that means, and eventually I realised that ''weird'' is my autistic stimming I've been looked down upon for my entire life.

Thank you so much for the great explanation!

Thank you so much for sharing this information with us!! I found it to be very useful, important and vital!

I like to pick cuticles and feel my silky scarf. A lot of people have told me to stop and I feel like I can’t and don’t even know I’m doing it half the time. I like it- I’m doing it. Xxx

stimming first as a child in a Schaukelstuhl, swingchair? and verry soon dancing on newwave, punk and still Elektrotekno saved my live , made me happy beeing with myself , on top now i love looking at the other ravers in Berlin, i rarely remember their faces but i adore the dancestyles. everyone is speziel

So many repressed behaviours. Currently on a journey of self discovery. Awaiting an assessment. Funny how we know how to cope as kids but are told by adults that it's the wrong way and so we are shamed and punished into stopping and then develop severe anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, etc. If we're not hurting ourselves or others than what's the problem? Why get all up in arms because something looks weird to us, if it is helping the person who is doing it?! 💕

Youre amazing and so inspiring to me.

You are wonderful!

You move so beautifully💖

I'd like to add that people with ADHD are actually quite in the same boat regarding some of this. Motor behaviours, such as bouncing legs or tapping pens (fidgeting in general) help with focus. And just like people with Autism are told off, people with ADHD are told off as well. It probably wasn't meant that way, but I found the overall vibe around the mention of "getting told to be ADHD" in the talk's context a bit disheartening, because being labeled like that actually isn't per-se a miscategorization when it comes to that particular issue: It's the person labeling an autistic person as ADHD for their stimming who's using their lack of understanding of ADHD to do to the autistic person what they'd also do to an ADHD-person. The mislabeler thinks that ADHD-people who fidget aren't listening, the same way they think autistic people aren't listening when stimming, when in fact, fidgeting/stimming helps both to pay attention. Also, I'm under the impression that stimming isn't that uncommon among ADHD-people. As such, I'd actually go as far as to categorize at least some of the "fidgeting" you see in ADHD-people as stimming proper.

Fucking hell. I've just realised I'm watching this on my lovely standing desk with my hands folded behind my back.

Yes, current stimming is a reaction to trauma causing anxiety or anger, but humans were designed as musical instruments, formed to perform repetitive movements, foundation of all crafts trades arts. There is only one way to day anything best and performing repetitive movements done perfectly is the path to success. Example, welding fine jewelry or watchmaking requires an individual that can sit alone for hours/decades obsessing, repeating hand/body motions until perfection is reached, a master craftsman who teaches! Today, this great frustration, this tragic loss we sense deep down because the fine trades have died a quick death like the wagon wheel maker of short past, while our youth rave in senseless maddening gyrations, for want of something to make ~~

hii so I'm autistic and I have a blanket that I smell, rub onto my face and touch with my fingers, it's hard to explain but it makes me feel good and relaxed... is that a way of stimming?

Stimming should not be met by responses like: stop that or act normal. What is normal anyway. Good job Sara!

I think my stimming may have got suppressed and turned into skin picking... Every single thing I did in school to try to feel calm and be able to process was not allowed and by the end of school and still now as an adult the thing that calms me is skin picking an I can't seem to stop... Any idea of how to reverse this effect?

Really good - you're amazing!! :)

Oh wow, powerful. 8:55 Thanks 🧡💗💗

Singing is my stim too, I'm actually a musician and singer and in public I often just lipsync but it still feels "weird". I don't know where am I and where is my mask anymore. I got severe depression, anxiety and probably bipolar disorder from hiding and masking. I'm feeling so tired and sick lately I'm unable to get out of my bed.

You were pretty full on there. You must've been knackered after putting all that energy into that talk!

I'm not crying you're crying.

i've been blamed so much for stimming now i instinctively try not to, or i do those "invisible" stims and i think, depression also has something to do with it, maybe, but i can't do anything about it yet it's pretty much like if something took them, or erased them now i'm mostly stacking everything and one day when there's too much i break something or i punch my legs but it makes it worse, like a frenetic action i slowly am getting them back because i have some friends who helps me but i will still need a therapy i want to be as i used to be until the day everything broke when i was 9 years old i need it

People always ask why im flapping my hands? How do i explain why i do that?

I reabeat my self all the time.

I wish i had friends to help me.

I dont think my teachers know that much about it, because i seem to annoy my teachers quite alot

2:30 I don't know why I got really emotional

👏👏👏👏👏😁😁☺☺☺☺

Thank you for this!! Question, do you think that smoking cigarettes can be a form of stimming? I have seen mixed reviews on this idea from searching online.

I woz bullied at school and at work. I uest to get punisted at school for not being able read and write.

Is there not a way to email you directly

Aw man I was asleep.