Stim, Baby, Stim!
When I first started thinking that I might be autistic I started researching the specific autistic traits and the official diagnosis criteria. I found that I identified with so much of the criteria, that there was a very clear “wow, I do that all the time but just thought something was wrong with me.” Except with stimming. When I thought of being autistic I had this image of someone stimming, flapping their hands and I remembered thinking: “Can I be autistic if I don’t stim?” At the time I didn’t know that some of the stims I did (such as rubbing my feet together, tapping the pads of fingers together, chewing on my lips, ect) were stims. But I was also masking hardcore until one afternoon I was in my home office and I just started flapping my hands in the air. Almost a year later and I still feel the exquisite pleasure of joy at flapping my hands, it almost felt like a homecoming.
I’m telling you this because part of my unmasking journey is stimming all the damn time. I stim when I’m anxious, when I experience sensory trauma but also when I’m happy, excited and just because I really want to stim. I stim in my apartment, walking down the street, in stores, in parks. Sometimes I notice people watching me and perhaps wonder why the woman wearing headphones is flapping her hands as she walks down the street.
Part of unmasking has been realizing that it’s okay to look autistic or for others to look at me and think that I look autistic and disabled. In his book Unmasking Autism the author Devon Price states that “refusing to perform neurotypicality is a revolutionary act of disability justice. It’s also a radical act of self-love.” Stimming is a way of refusing to mask, refusing to perform neurotypicality, refusing to put others needs before my own. Stimming is both resistance, pleasure and joy.
Stimming is both self-soothing but it’s also about pleasure and joy. Over the past few weeks as I’ve been stimming I’ve allowed myself to feel into the sheer pleasure and joy. There’s pleasure when I use chewlry for oral stimming. When I stim dance to the latest album I’ve been playing on repeat for days (which fyi listening to the same song over and over again is also a stim), I can feel the pleasure and delight in my body as I tap my fingers and flap my hands. It’s a similar pleasure and delight as when I caress my own body, as when I walk in the woods and feel a delicious breeze wave over me, when my partner gives me a mouth watering kiss.
Us autistic deserve autistic pleasure and joy. In a world that’s so ableist, disabling and where we experience stigma-tapping into our autistic pleasure and joy is a way of tending to our autistic selves. I find so much joy and pleasure when I stim for myself, when I share with an autistic friend a new stim toy, when I record a Tik Tok of myself flapping my hands to a song, when after a shutdown I find myself back to my body by stimming.
So beloved autistics, please remember:
You stimming is so damn beautiful.
Your autistic joy matters
Practice feeling into what stims feel extra pleasurable and joyful to you.
While it might not always be safe to stim (especially if you hold a marginalized identity), notice what happens when you work stim breaks into your day.
Stim, baby, stim!