On Stimming

[Guest guest]

I was reading something the other day that made me think about stimming.

Simply put it goes like this. There are two stages of sleep: Deep and REM. In

deep sleep the body remains still. During REM, the eyes move but so can the body

in twitches and jerks (and sometimes sleepwalking, etc.). There is a circuit of

sorts in the brain that keeps the body from fully acting out the dreams, most of

the time. However, if that part of the brain is damaged, that safeguard is gone.

Animal studies have shown that if that part of the brain is damaged, then the

animals will indeed act out their dreams in full.

The author put forth the idea that this same bit of the brain works during the

day as well. It functions to keep us from acting out our thoughts. In most

people it is imperfect. Thinking often manifests as fidgeting, twiddling thumbs,

pacing, and the like. This might not so much be acting out what one is thinking

but is a spillover of the nervous energy be generated by the brain.

So perhaps stimming is related to this. Since people with Autism tend to spend a

lot of time in their heads, perhaps the energy of all that thinking is spill out

as stimming, which is itself just a more pronounced form of what others also do.

Perhaps the filter is faulty and lets more movement through (testable by

watching REM sleep movement), perhaps the " thought energy " is of higher power,

or perhaps some other Body/brain disconnect. After all, many people on the

spectrum either dislike being touched, have a need for more physical sensory

stimulation or the like, so perhaps that is part of it, though I haven't thought

that angle through yet.

Perhaps stimming gets worse when exposed to sensory overload because it is

taking more mental effort to block it out and continue to focus on what they

want to focus on. More mental effort means more bleed over of energy thus more

stimming. Perhaps meltdowns in part because the body can no longer handle all

the energy overflowing from the brain.

Being distracted here so I'll try to come back to this later. But my basic point

is that perhaps stimming is simply a sign of thought in Autistics as fidgeting

may be a sign of thought in NT's.