NEUROQUEER HERESIES: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities by Nick Walker

Author:Nick Walker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Autonomous Press, LLC
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

On the Practice of Stimming

When I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I needed to include a definition of stimming. I couldn’t find one that satisfied me, so I wrote my own from scratch. In case anyone else also has use for a good definition of stimming, here it is. I wrote the original dissertation version of this piece sometime in 2018. The version I’m sharing here has been newly revised to enable it to better stand on its own and to make it a bit more readable.

A major defining feature of autistic embodiment is the tendency to engage in repetitive physical movements or other actions that provide specific forms of sensory stimulation. In conventional disciplinary discourses on autism based in the pathology paradigm, such actions have traditionally been referred to as stereotypy or self-stimulatory behavior, and are regarded as pathological symptoms that are best eliminated. In a crucial step toward taking back ownership of narratives about autistic embodiment, autistics transformed the pathologizing and rather ungainly term self-stimulatory behavior into the more graceful and less medical-sounding term stimming. The root word stim functions as both a verb and a noun: “I stim by rocking back and forth; rocking back and forth is my favorite stim.”

The infinite possible varieties of stimming include, but are certainly not limited to:

proprioceptive or kinesthetic (e.g., rocking, pacing, waving or flapping one’s hands, seeking physical pressure or impact);

tactile (e.g., touching objects and surfaces with appealing textures, stroking one’s own skin);

vestibular (e.g., spinning or swinging);

visual (e.g., gazing at running water or rising smoke);

auditory (e.g., listening to running water or loud music);

olfactory or gustatory (e.g., sniffing or tasting things);

verbal (e.g., repetition of particular words or phrases);

any combination of the above (e.g., drumming, which combines the kinesthetic, the tactile, and the auditory).

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