The Importance of Stimming in Late Diagnosed Autistic Adults

hey it's Taylor with Mom on the Spectrum and today we're talking about autistic stimming what is it why do we do it what are the benefits and how can we relearn the art of stemming if it's something that maybe we trained ourselves out of as a late diagnosed autistic adult and I say the art of stemming because I really believe that when practiced intentionally it can really enhance your overall quality of life as an autistic adult stick around till the end of the video I'm going to be telling you about my new absolute favorite stem toy and how you can get your own if you're new here like I said I'm Taylor I started this channel as a late diagnosed autistic mom I received my professional autism diagnosis at the age of 31. it totally changed my life and I knew that I had to share everything I was learning with everyone because that's just what I do so if that sounds like something that might benefit you either as a late diagnosed autistic adult or maybe there's someone important to you that is on the autism spectrum subscribe to the channel and hit the little bell and you'll be notified anytime a new video is posted so what is stimming this is my definition I wrote it up here for us so stemming is the act of moving excess energy out of the body and it's often done subconsciously to regulate one's emotions and or psychological State there's all sorts of stems there's physical stems which would it could be like rocking it could be jumping or bouncing the stereotypical autistic stem is hand flapping it can also be dancing there are also verbal stems so you might have heard the term echolalia before which is the repetition of sounds repetition of words also singing is a verbal stem there's visual stems think lava lamps desktop screen savers um maybe watching an hourglass all the sand fall down there's stem toys fidget Spinners puppets fidget gadgets all kinds of things that are on the market now there are so many different ways to stem so from my own observations I I get to spend a lot of time with the autistic Community I do one-on-one sessions I do group sessions I'm constantly learning from y'all researching information to help support our community and something that I've noticed is that we often are dealing with very large amounts of uncomfortable energy so if you've heard me talk about autistic inertia on the channel before um I'll put a link to the video in the description if you want to learn more about it it's this idea that whenever we're doing something it's incredibly hard to stop doing that thing and if we're not doing anything it's incredibly hard to start doing something okay so if you think about it in terms of energy let's say that you are in the zone the productivity Zone your inflow State and you are just getting so much done if you have to stop if you have to get out of that flow state it is just this surplus of uncomfortable energy that you don't know what to do with it's like this huge snowball that's been rolling down the hill for hours and there's only one thing that can happen just like this explosion of energy right or if you're coming from a place of stagnant energy you're in bed and you absolutely can't move or you've been on the couch for hours and you know that you need to get up and make something to eat but you're stuck that's the stagnant energy that becomes really com really uncomfortable in your body and and it can feel overwhelming claustrophobic but it's it's this pent-up energy that gets stuck in stagnant we also are constantly taking in a lot of sensory information so people on the channel have described this as like being an antenna where when you walk in the room you're taking in everything around you so you're receiving all of this energy through an antenna yourself and all of that energy doesn't necessarily have a channel to flow through so again all of this energy that's staying in your body with nowhere to go so stimming is a way that we can Channel this excess energy out of our bodies and we do it subconsciously probably most of the time sometimes consciously but it's this ingrained practice that we have as autistic people to help alleviate some of that extreme tension and discomfort that we can feel from all of the energy and information that we're taking in you can stem when you're happy when you're overwhelmed when you're frustrated when you have a sensory overload when you have overpowering thoughts that are just overloading your brain you can stem just because it feels good so why is stimming important I want to share some quotes with you from a couple of articles that I found online about autism and stimming I'll make sure to link those in the description if you'd like to read them they're both really good articles this first one this quote is from Matt Medina from Embrace autism and he said I find that stimming and improves my ability for active listening especially during long conversations any sort of cognitively demanding task will unconsciously involve me stemming as I work through the problem something about the repetitive movements locks me into my work and allows me to funnel that concentration onto the object of my mentation this next quote is from Stephen Capp who wrote an article called stimming therapeutic for autistic people deserves acceptance from the Spectrum news stimming is proving to be a healthy and constructive way of modulating emotions and external stimuli study participants told us that stimming soothes intense feelings helping them regain a sense of control participants said they sometimes stem out of Joy or excitement and other times out of anxiety or boredom but that the emotion colors the behavior for example hand flapping that reflects a positive emotional state often involves holding the arms out and making a waving motion whereas in hand flapping due to distress autistic people tend to keep their hands and arms near the Torso was really interesting so it's almost like it can be kind of brought in internally as like a way to kind of protect yourself you can keep things close if that feels comforting but if you're happy you know you don't feel this need to protect yourself you're going to kind of be out here and you might be dancing or waving your arms around a little bit bigger and again these are just a couple of examples or so many different ways to stem so a question that I've been asking myself the past couple of years it's been about three years since my diagnosis which I can't believe but I've asked myself did I forget how to stem what happened because I think initially like I felt kind of separate from others in the community because I didn't think that I don't I didn't think I had these big over stems and I looking back on my childhood it's like I don't remember doing that kind of stuff and so I was like well maybe you know maybe this doesn't fit me but I slowly realized over time that I for sure stem in so many different ways all the time so there's different reasons why we might stop stimming it's pretty easy to learn early on that stimming is not necessarily socially acceptable so not a whole lot of other people are doing it maybe no one around us is doing it and so it can be very uncomfortable to be the only person doing something we want to be like our peers we want to blend in so we don't want to be noticed people might have told us that it was annoying or distracting to do those things maybe in class maybe at home it was upsetting to your appearance or your brothers or sisters so you found a way to not do those things anymore there's all different reasons why we might stop stimming in larger ways but this is often channeled through other discrete ways of stemming or covert ways of stimming and looking back on my life I can see it everywhere I picked up my lip I bit my nails I picked at him I twirled my hair I tapped my feet I drummed on the desks there's all different ways even blinking like I remember a phase where I just was like blinking all the time because it felt even right now it feels kind of good so there's all different kinds of covert waves where we might subconsciously our body might say well I still need an outlet for these things and it finds a way to move that energy through your body there's my kitty he is literally staying just out of frame so your body tries to find these other outlets and it's really interesting what our body comes up with because again there is this excess energy and it has to go somewhere it can't just stay it has to move I think these covert stems happen a lot for especially High masking individuals which just means if I haven't said it already that you become really skilled you've become really skilled at blending in Social and adapting different social norms to fit in so we go covert with our stems because it helps us play the part of a certain social group we're not sticking out we're not being annoying or distracting um one thing that people share with me a lot too is that they scrunch their toes and their shoes that's something that you can do that nobody ever sees so what happens when we suppress these stems if we need an outlet and we're not giving it to ourselves it kind of becomes like this traffic jam in our brain so our brain has all these processes that are trying to happen and I think you know this is compounded for autistic individuals because we've got you know social anxieties we've got delayed processing we've got sensory overwhelm and then trying to figure out a way to direct this energy if if we don't feel safe physically stimming it's like this traffic jam and this huge cognitive kind of brain fog sets in where our executive functioning becomes impaired and we can't make decisions as well because there's not enough bandwidth our bandwidth is tied up trying to figure out which process it needs to focus on first the energy is stuck in our brain and there's no Channel that I can move through when this happens you might notice and for some of you this might be kind of the precursor to a meltdown kind of a warning sign that you're approaching that you might start get this feeling of being claustrophobic of feeling like your skin is tight or like you need to crawl out of your skin or you're itchy um this feeling of just being stuck or overwhelmed or claustrophobic that is a sign that that energy is stuck and that it needs a way to flow through you you might just have no other words other than you feel stuck you might not be able to make decisions you might try to think through the same situation over and over and over again but you can never quite finish the thought though that's when I start realizing oh I think I need to stem like something's stuck so as you start becoming more aware of your own patterns and what tends to happen whenever you feel stuck whether it does feel like your skin is crawling or you feel stuck or claustrophobic just simply becoming aware of that and realizing okay something needs to change something the energy is not flowing right right now know and giving yourself the opportunity to stim test it out try something new if you're not feeling comfortable doing it in front of other people which I still don't really feel comfortable doing big stems in front of other people go in the other room go in a closet just jump around I like to bounce on my toes and like throw my hands down just kind of feel the weight of my body going into the floor that always feels really comforting but give yourself an opportunity to explore and try all different kinds of stems and take note of what it feels like in your body after you do it so let me explain one of you had commented about imposter syndrome and as we try to to relearn how to stem we start rethinking everything like oh am I just making this up do I actually need to stem right now or am I just forcing this I would say it's gonna feel really foreign and awkward for a while because your brain we have grooves in our brain and you've trained your brain when you're feeling overwhelmed don't take this path take this path right the discrete covert stem so in order to start creating a new neural pathway you're going to have to make that decision over and over and over again to try something different so keep experimenting and then take note of how you feel after you engage in a stem does your body feel lighter do you feel less pent up energy do you feel less stuck how are you emotionally how are you able to make decisions now and as you focus on the results of the stemming in your life that will help with the Imposter syndrome of am I making this up because I would bet that you'll start noticing improvements in your ability to function when you start intentionally engaging in active stimming so the more you focus on the benefits for yourself the the quieter that imposter syndrome becomes but it is a practice it does require some Grace and self-compassion and just not taking yourself too seriously right because it can feel really silly to stem I like to head bang in my car by myself sometimes there's just there's all different kinds of ways to do it and it'll take a while to start feeling comfortable with any of it you can start small there's no pressure to do anything big and large you can start at your own pace with whatever feels good one thing I wanted to mention in this video is the importance of allowing autistic stems I think this might be one concern that people have about ABA therapy I don't know if you're familiar with that or not but some people have said that with ABA therapy it can train kids to not stem when they need to stem so I would just kind of like to throw out a word of a word of warning is that a phrase word of caution I don't know does that make sense um just if if you do know someone in ABA therapy if you have a child in ABA therapy I would just encourage you to make sure that you kind of understand uh the goal in that therapy for your child and that you make sure to encourage stems whenever it feels right to your child another thing that kind of pops up in educational settings is you might have you may have heard teachers say quiet hands you know keep your hands in your lap be quiet and as I've been researching and learning about stimming this week I've kind of stumbled upon a rally Cry of parts of the autistic Community being loud hands so I'm encouraging you and especially the parents encouraging you to encourage your kids to have loud hands and to do what they need to do in order to feel comfortable and that that's not socially inacceptable right and hopefully that will become more and more normalized as we learn more about the importance of stimming okay so before we wrap up I have to tell you about my new favorite fidget toy so I get so many offers in my inbox for fidget toys will you try this out will you try this out I promise you I turned down like 90 of them because I don't want to share stuff with you all that's just junk you know there's so many like cheapy products out there that have weird textures and smells and they're loud and clunky this is not that okay this is called the Ono roller o-n-o it comes in different colors I wanted rose gold because it's one of my favorites it's beautiful it's elegant it's smooth seamless there are no clicks there are no sounds whatsoever coming out of this beautiful fidget roller and I wanted to read something to you that the founder said about why they created this so they said even with a yoga class here and there I'd find myself fidgeting while watching TV on the couch and my little mindlessly scrolling my phone after a long day and making my anxiety worse fidget products on the market were cheaply made and annoyingly noisy I got fed up and decided to put my industrial design degree to work I set out to create a high quality completely silent fidget that would be appropriate for people of all ages and actually help with relaxation and focus not just promote more fidgeting this my friends they nailed it so what I love about the fidget roller this is heavy this isn't cheaply made this is like very solid I'm going to drop it on my desk just so you can hear what it's made out of caution loud noise very nice quality um they even say on the package that you can put it in the freezer and then roll it on your body for another sensory experience it's a really nice feeling material that kind of heats up a little bit after you use it in your hands you can use it all different kinds of ways you can roll it on your neck you can roll it on your back between your hands and then this is my favorite thing to do is just twirl it like this lately this has been within my reach at all times if I'm doing a one-on-one session if I'm running a group webinar or whatever this is in my hands and it just really helps me channel some of that extra anxiety and like energy that I have into something that doesn't make sound and feels really nice so in between this shot and the one that you just saw I've ransacked my house for the other version of this um there's a kid version that's not made out of this heavy of a weight it's like um more of a rubbery feel but it still has weight to it and it's a smaller size so it works better for smaller hands so hopefully I'll find it and I'll be able to edit it in but if not I will show you a picture of it and um we my family we love these we like anytime we see it around we just pick it up and um try not to fight over it so if you're interested in getting one for yourself like I said I think there's like four different colors and you can go to the link in the description and use the code mom on the Spectrum for 10 off so I hope this video has been helpful to you my goal is that you will feel encouraged to cultivate the practice of stimming in your life and that it will add value by helping you feel more regulated more grounded more centered so I'd love to hear from you in the comments how these practices work for you and if you decide to get one of these what color you get for yourself thanks so much for watching make sure to subscribe if you haven't already like the video if it was helpful to you and I will see you in the next video bye

Channel: Mom on the Spectrum

Views: 444,473

Keywords: autistic, aspergers, autism, adhd, autistic female, autism spectrum disorder, asd, mental health, asperger, autism in females, sensory processing, high functioning, yt:cc=on, late diagnosed autism, high masking autism, high functioning autism, autism in girls, autism in women, adhd in girls, female autism, adhd in women, cptsd, demand avoidance, autistic inertia, stimming, autistic stimming, autistic stims, fidget toys, stim toys, fidget gadgets, pop its, fidget spinner

Id: -gWd0JnnsrE

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 18 2023