Stimming with OCD, with a side of rhythm
How the obvious stimming from "passing" autistics isn't recognized by other neurotypes
From Desai, R. Why We Fidget: It’s a Coping Mechanism, Not a Sign of Boredom
About 20 years ago, my daughter and I were at a movie theater, waiting for the movie to begin. She placed her hand on my knee:
- Please stop it. It’s annoying.
I had been tapping my feet on the floor for I don’t know how long. Yes, that’s probably really irritating, let me focus on not doing it.
Moments later she looked at my hands, and stared at me with an expression of “seriously?…” on her face.
I felt embarrassed. Only then I noticed that I had been tapping my fingers on the chair, certainly annoying her. I stopped.
For the next two hours I wasn’t aware of doing any repetitive, irritating sound or movement. Actually, I was, but either she gave up requesting me to stop, or the new ones didn’t annoy her as much, or, and that’s what I believe happened: they were silent. The problem, for her, was not the repetitive movement. It was the noise.
That was long before I even learned what autism was, let alone know that I have a few neurodivergent features.
I probably had them forever. At some point, I realized that I am always doing something with my hands. Even while working, between bouts of typing, I perform these repetitive, symmetrical movements. Most of the time, they are completely silent. Here is a list of what these movements include:
Pulling fingers. Usually, all fingers from one hand are pulled, one by one, and then all the fingers from the other hand, in the same order, for the same length of time;
Locking and unlocking hands in a certain pattern, and then locking them in the mirror image of the previous lock. This one tends to be repeated many times in a row;
Flexing and extending wrists, one hand and then the other, inverting which hand goes on top to pull back the joint. Alternatively, each finger can be stretched, also in precise symmetry between hands;
Putting rings on and taking them off;
Doing snapping (but silent) movements with each finger and their opposing thumb;
Picking up a pen or pencil, performing whatever with it, then doing the same thing with the other hand;
Sliding the nail from one finger, in one hand, under the nail of another finger, in the other hand, and then inverting hands;
Play some rhythm with my hands on the thighs at the same side.
This is just a small fraction of the infinite things I do with my hands during all my waking hours. At some point, I suspected they were another manifestation of what one psychiatrist believed was OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Indeed, these are forms of obsessive compulsive behaviors, but they are far from a disorder. There is even a term for that: “benign OCD”. The term is contradictory and a bad choice for a concept: either it is benign and adaptive, or it’s disordered and maladaptive.
The first time I noticed there was something peculiar about this aspect of my motor behavior was when I was about 12 years old, and I counted the number of times I checked if the turntable was turned off, if the front and kitchen doors were locked, and washed my hands again. That night, when I counted the seventh time I did these things, it had my attention. Why was I doing that? My rational explanation was that my short term memory was really bad, just like my Dad’s. Being unsure whether I had locked the door or not, I had to check it - whether “again” or not, I didn’t know. So I decided to resist the impulse of doing all these things and it worked: eventually, I stopped checking the door a dozen times before finally falling asleep. It would be great, if I hadn’t substituted it for checking if I turned off the gas on the stove.
I was never medicated for any of this. Maybe they were silent enough to not bother anyone, maybe there were other, more concerning issues that psychiatrists and neurologists chose to treat, or maybe I was too “high functioning” for these repetitive movements to be seen as “symptoms” of anything. That’s the most likely hypothesis.
Children, and particularly children with intellectual or motor divergences (“disorders”, according to mainstream psychiatry nomenclature), are the focus of “stimming concern”. Stimming (“stereotyped or repetitive motor movements”) done by these children bother typical parents and their hired enforcers, “special needs” educators and therapists. They probably bother this segment because they are predisposed to seeing any behavior from the children as maladaptive, and therefore the object of a fixing strategy.
Up until she still could do several harmful things and count on my lack of ability to communicate them to anyone, my mother was the director of the fixing team. From daily verbal invalidation and gaslighting, to handing me over to pedophile physicians while watching and approving their abuse, she did everything in the “fixing bad attitude” playbook. Maybe she didn’t think my repetitive hand movements were relevant. Maybe she didn’t even notice them. They were too disconnected from the attitudes and behaviors she was determined to repress: being critical and analytical of her discourse and actions, not engaging in her “approved childhood behaviors”, such as smiling, giggling, saying silly things, or running around doing excited screeching sounds, being too literal, being too judgmental, being aggressive, among other inadequacies.
Today, autism is a buzzword and anybody who watched Big Band Theory immediately recognizes me as “a Sheldon”. I even had the nickname “Sheldon 2.0”. Everyone is quite confident in dismissing my bored, expressionless face to dad jokes as an “autism thing”, the same way they do when I decline invitations to anything minimally crowded, refuse to entertain irrational conversations, and deny others a face-saving way out of a conflict.
The technical evidence on stimming offers zero support to the assumption that this behavior is detrimental in any way to the autistic individual. There is also no argument to justify its repression on the basis of disrupting collective behavior. The “war on stimming”, is a war on deviance and divergence, and it grants privilege to those deemed “high functioning”.
Autism is no longer classified according to “functioning” parameters. Instead, it is classified according to the level of support the autistic person needs. “Asperger’s syndrome” has also been dropped from the technical jargon. Privilege based classifications don’t get dropped so easily, though. Those of us who are skilled at speaking and writing, even if we are a disaster in terms of social games and rituals, are still on a different category. We are still considered “better” than the autistics who don’t speak, or who have cognitive difficulties in the neurotypical educational environment.
These repetitive, compulsive behaviors are not a symptom of autism, although they are associated with it and used as a diagnostic cue, but not a criterium. They are not sufficient nor necessary to diagnose someone as autistic. In other words, they can and will happen among other neurotypes. The claim that “I’m doing this to self-regulate” is now popular, but most, if not all the people claiming it have no understanding of self-regulation.
The reason stimming is used as a diagnostic cue on intellectually and motor challenged children seems to be part of the deficit-oriented language and perception directed at autistic people.
Acknowledgement or dismissal of stimming behavior belongs in the same class of claims about neurodivergence that have produced a myriad of popular and false autistic features. Like sensory hypersensitivity, digestive problems, food intolerances, joint hypermobility, stimming does not characterize autism. Some of these features may be more prevalent in the autistic population, but there is not a lot of scientific evidence on how much more prevalent. Many behavioral features that were claimed to be prevalent among autistics (and amplified by the “autistic educators”) were, for decades, associated with adverse childhood experiences (ACE), for example. That makes sense, given that ACE is more prevalent among autistic children.
The danger of reifying stimming and turning it into an “autism feature” is that it is a cue for early intervention. Early intervention, at least in the United States, usually means ABA - applied behavioral analysis. ABA is a harmful, ideologically-inspired approach to “fixing” autistic children, producing life-long trauma.
Exactly what triggers stimming is unclear. However, autistic adults seem to agree that it is helpful, pleasant or necessary. It probably is. It also seems to be associated with communication efficiency. I wouldn’t know that: I am always communicating something to someone, even if this someone is an abstract reader or even myself. All I can say about my stimming habits is that they just are, or they are “a thing I do”. Time has shown me that they will happen whether I want it or not, and I have no idea what it does to me.