Stimming Quotes

“Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.”
- Bell Hooks”
― Win Quier, Jeremiah's Journey: Gaining Our Autistic Son by Losing Him to the System

“Before the accident—BTA—I didn't know anger and pain could feel the same. I didn't think physical pain and emotional pain could simply be extensions of each other. Now, I could hardly separate the two. And I wanted to crash my fist into a kitchen cabinet or my knee into a chair. Find a more harmful way to stim. Either make the pain worse or make it go away.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Even If We Break

“Four decades later, my stimming is often discreet. You’d have to be watching closely to notice.”
― Cynthia Kim, Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate: A User Guide to an Asperger Life

“Will's brown eyes are suddenly trained on me.

Stiffening, I stay as still as I can and attempt to look like a person who cannot feel themselves being studied like a bug in a jar. I'm being a normal human, right? This is how people sit, isn't it? Am I jittering, rocking, bouncing, clawing? Has Will noticed that I'm just copying his body language and facial expressions, or is he thinking how pretty I look in the sun? Does he like me, or is he faintly creeped out by me? Is he interested, or bored? Is he considering kissing me, or wondering why I look like I've only been given this body recently and still have no idea how to drive it?

("Cassandra seems to believe she might be an alien.")

It's all a complete mystery.

All I know is the longer he studies me, the more confused I become. Also, the sheer effort of not accidentally playing piano fingers on my ice cream is exhausting: it feels like I'm fighting the Colchian dragon and hoping nobody will notice.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Taking away a child's stims doesn't take away their need to self-regulate; instead, it forces them into new habits that can cause long-term side effects and harm, including severe anxiety disorder, depression and emotional dysregulation. In 50 per cent of cases where therapy is used to stop an autistic child from stimming, the child has come out with symptoms that meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“Stimming is a bit like scratching an itch. Perseveration is more like trying to handle your itch by scratching someone else.”
― Kaelynn Partlow, Life on the Bridge: linking my world to yours as an autistic therapist