Leah Taylor on Stimming

Join Leah Taylor, Autism Consultant, Actually Autistic advocate, Labels go on Soup Cans, Autism is a Diagnosis, as she shares her favourite stims.

This video is funded by the National Disability Agency.

Transcript

[Music]

Hi everyone, I’m Leah Taylor and I run a page called ‘Labels Go on Soup Cans, Autism is a Diagnosis. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago, it was the best day of my life, I have to admit, and I have been contacted by Reframing Autism to talk to you about stimming, which is a fantastic stimmy thing to talk about. I absolutely love stimming, anything to do with it love it.

I was asked what my favourite stim was. I have been racking my brains for a couple of weeks and I cannot pick one, I can’t pick my favourite stim and I think that’s because in regards to stimming you have different types of stimming that you do in different types of scenarios, with different types of feelings and emotions connected to them. So for instance, being out in public, standing in a queue I will start to rock and hum and my humming becomes quite loud the more anxious I am, the more busy it is and if the lights are just a horrible yellow colour, it doesn’t bode well with me, so I start to do that. So that’s more of a pressure stim, when I feel like I’m under pressure and I’m a little bit trapped. Then you’ve got stimming where I will be, like at the moment, I’m finding it really hard not to sit here and do this. Cause I rock – this makes me feel so calm and makes my brain able to just slow down and get my words out without going blehblehbleh and let it all out all at once, but I tend not to do this while I’m on the phone, especially FaceTime, because when I sway it makes people feel a bit sick because of the motion, so I tend not to do that, but I normally do that when I’m chilled out, I’m sitting in the garden with a cup of tea or I’m sat on my sofa watching some telly I, will start to stim.

Then you’ve got bedtime stims. My bedtime stims. I will rub my feet together and my knees and my legs and I’ll just rub them like this. And now with rubbing my legs and my feet together trying to get sleep, that’s me trying to switch my brain off, because I struggle to fall asleep, because I suffer with intrusive thoughts. So, while my brain is concentrating on my legs and it’s not concentrating on intrusive thoughts, that helps me get to sleep. There are other ones that I randomly do; one music, love music, can’t live without music. When I listen to music I will go, I will literally just sit here and just do that. I will just, with my hands I just do this, and I and I stim dance with my fingers, I love it. Stim dancing is amazing and a lot of Autistics do stim dance and you’ve probably seen a lot of stim dancing videos out there.

The other thing, um my other stims are just things that I love, so how I, how I source out the world and how I discover things. So if I saw a tree, I really like the tree, I would go and touch the bark of the tree and I will touch the leaves of the tree. When I was a little child I would love sitting in the grass and feeling all of the blades just go over my hand. I absolutely, anything nature. I love investigating any kind of surfaces or um shimmery surfaces. For instance I’ve got a few things on my desk now, so everything I buy in my house, majority of things, I buy because visually it’s so stimulating and I will play and look and move the object so I’ve got this, is is, this is just a coaster for my cup, but I only bought them because they’re glittery – look at that. And I can sit there and look at that for ages. While I’m talking to you guys I’m playing with my unicorn and he is amazing because he’s full of water beads and that helps me, so if I’m talking to someone and it’s really important and I’m really anxious, because I’m like oh my god, what if I don’t say the right thing I will just play with that.

Um, just a couple more things, I’ve got water beads again in a jar just for me to look up at the light and look at them. I’ve got like even down to look, my pens. I bought this because of the colour and because of all of the beautiful ridges in it. I love it, just feeling it, it feels lovely. Uh so yeah everything I buy, I will always, I’m like a magpie I will just go to the thing that I’m like, oh my god that’s super stimmy I could look at that for ages and I’ll get it.

So yeah, trying to find my favourite stim is really difficult, so I haven’t got a favourite one, because I stim to regulate through my whole day for different scenarios and different emotions. Some of them are negative stims and some of them are positive. Uh, they’re high, I say that they’re they’re my high stims are the ones that make me happy. My low stims are the ones that help me regulate in really hard situations that I’m really struggling in.

So yeah, if you want to see any stim videos, feel free to go onto my page and I have loaded some up already of all the items that I buy and I love and I was like look at this, it’s glittery it’s shimmery, it’s colourful it’s this. So yeah, just pop over and have a little look. And I think many Autistics will agree that it is really difficult to find one favourite stim, so yeah, that is all the information that I have to give and I really appreciate Reframing Autism reaching out to me and I feel it’s an honour that you’ve asked me, so thank you very much and thank you so much for watching my video. All right, take care, bye everyone.