@farah
I would like to suggest a slight, but significant difference to your bucket list, if you don’t mind. Rather than the term, sensory deprivation, I prefer sensory isolation. This was the original name for the tanks Dr. John Lilly proposed. The tanks do not deprive you of your senses, but instead isolate them from external stimuli, essentially allowing your brain/mind to generate its thoughts from purely (almost) internal processes. A slightly gentler way of looking at it, I think.
I’ve been reading about “stimming in autism”, which up until now was very confusing to me mostly because that’s the one point kept being repeated in the community being a must for an autistic individual. And I can’t relate to that at all.
Then I came across something that describes the purpose of ‘stimming’ is to deal with extra energy. Then it kinda hit me, I’ve never had the need to stim because I’m a low energy person in general.
I get overwhelmed with activities when they involve raising heart rates (yes, THAT too). I like quiet things, dead of night etc. Once at a time in my life, I was pretty sure I could hear flow of electricity.
So my question to the #ActuallyAutistic community: do you think stimming is a must for autistic people? Do you relate to it? Anyone know of any low energy stimming that gets overlooked?
@farah@actuallyautistic Typing as I gently rock back and forth to the faint rhythm of the electricity in my walls…
I think recognizing stims in yourself is kinda hard when they’re not the obvious ones that people tell you to look for. But stims can be auditory or visual or internal, too. Listening to the same song over and over. Looking for patterns in things, subtle movements or vocalizations. Sometimes stims are purely mental for me.
My obvious ones are the rocking, repetitive leg movements, finger tapping, pen fidgeting, tongue clicking, and a couple other really specific vocalizations or phrases with nice mouthfeel. The less obvious ones are things like finding and following rhythms in random sounds with my internal “drummer,” (the electricity in my walls has a sliiiiiiight wobble to it that I very much do hear and will idly move my body to), playing guitar is really stimmy for me, as is working out with resistance bands, looking for patterns in a floor or wall or plant or whatever, or touching things with good textures. My headmates and I all have different sets of stims, too.
On the other hand I do think the amount and energy level of my stims is also related to ADHD.