Autistic people talk so often about being shamed for stimming that I used to find it so strange that I never was but now I can see that it's so prevalent, it's definitely not possible I wasn't being shamed for it, I clearly just wasn't listening 😂
When I first heard about stimming I thought I didn't do it because I couldn't think of any specific ones I do but I now see I have been stimming every moment of my waking life. I couldn't see what it is because I was never not doing it. I just thought everyone else was boring
In the last couple weeks I noticed myself rocking and my best friend pointed out that I put my hands over my ears when I had to make a stressful nail polish color decision so it turns out I do every single stereotypical autistic stim lol literally all of them
I had a different explanation for all of them. Rocking? That's me bouncing to the beat in my head. Flapping my hands? That's just drying tears out of your eyes when you're crying from laughing, it's normal and adorable. Tapping on the desk? I would be a fantastic drummer
I've done every stereotypically autistic thing very obviously for my whole life and nobody ever saw them as autistic things, I think because I was never self-conscious. And that says something very sad about how society treats autistic people & expects us to feel about ourselves
I'm still mentally adjusting to the fact that the reason people always asked me why I was doing things and looked confused by the answer “because it feels nice” is because they almost never do random things with their body just because it feels nice
omg this is why people think I'm on drugs all the time
This must also be why I love trying to pick people up. My ex-boyfriend let me pick him up one time and I asked to do it again and he was like no, that was the only one you'll ever get or you'll be trying to do it all the time. In retrospect, he was probably correct
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