“His stimming is beautiful. To get him to stop stimming would require intensive coercion that, even if successful, would likely result in irreparable psychological harm.”
Stimming is shorthand for self-stimulatory behavior. Stimming is often repetitive movements that seem purposeless on the outside, but it’s actually serving a very important purpose: regulating our nervous systems! 😀
I stim to create sensation when I feel understimulated, I stim to shut out other stimuli if I’m overstimulated, I stim to help me focus on something, I stim to express myself and sometimes I stim just for the heck of it. Sometimes I start stimming without realizing it and become conscious of myself doing it(semi-voluntary) and sometimes I choose to start doing it(voluntary).
Like right now, I just now realized I’m bouncing my leg like a jackhammer. I don’t remember starting to do it. Then I rocked backwards and forwards twice while waving my arms in the air– I chose to do that.
You might be stimming a lot and not realize it. Any action that’s repetitive can be a stim. Leg jiggling, twirling a pen, tapping your fingers, chewing the erasers off your pencils, looking at things that sparkle or are colorful, rubbing velvet or stucco, sniffing bottles of lotion, sucking on lemon slices, making random noises, listening to music or repeating the same song over and over are all forms of stimming. The list is honestly endless.
This is happy stimming mixed in with sensory seeking stimming. Trust me, you will see the happy stims because the rhythm and “size” of my happy stim movements are different than sensory seeking stim movements:
And here’s a video of visual stimming from my perspective. I like sparkly things and how moving them can make points of light appear to flow like water. Sometimes I look at it with my eyes unfocused and my imagination goes wild.
(* * * Warning: Video may induce sensory overload if you have issues with sparkle, flicker or shifting light patterns.* * *)
The combination of olfactory and tactile stimming would be quite calming, I think.
Liesel, Mod.
so the ones shown here are the “kids” versions – the stuff they aim to help with are more aimed at children (bed wetting, travel sickness)
that website looks like it’s an awesome resource for finding stim toys and stuff… but there’s one major issue: they don’t ship outside australia…
good news is: there are ADULT ones that you can buy CHEAPER and NOT IN AUSTRALIA
((while there is a lot of overlap in the kids’ vs adults’ mohdoh purposes, there are some exclusively adult clays, such as one which helps relieve symptoms of addiction))
you can check out their website to get more information on what each one does, and you can buy it a lot more inexpensively than the listed website if you go on amazon (amazon unfortunately doesn’t seem to have the kids one’s listed if you were more interested in those, but you can find them on mohdoh’s “kids” website or this one has a deal if you get 4)
Holding the Bowl 