Written by Emma Marsh
You are trying to navigate a situation which requires immense focus, while your attention is being constantly pulled away by a chaotic sensory environment. Harsh fluorescent lighting competes with beeping monitors, wails of pain from other patients, a visual barrage of signage. A cacophony of PA system announcements crackle over carers attempting to comfort the sick, vulnerable and possibly highly contagious. Your name might be called at any moment. You are trying to listen for instructions while filling out forms, answering the triage nurse’s questions, comforting your loved one and managing your own heightened anxiety and emotional dysregulation.
After a while, even simple questions become hard to answer. Time becomes a blur. Your thinking slows. You struggle to process information you would normally understand easily. Your timeline of events becomes foggy. Even a non-autistic person might notice themself tapping their pen against the clipboard, bouncing their leg, or shifting repeatedly in their seat in such situations – small, almost automatic movements that help redirect focus, perhaps just long enough to finish the admission process.
Now imagine living in a world where your hyperconnected brain is being called on to respond to greater levels of sensory stimuli every second, and your environment is louder, brighter and more chaotic — not on that one rare trip to the emergency department, but every day. The weekly grocery shop. A workplace meeting. A birthday party.
This, for me, is where repetition holds true value.
In a moment of overwhelm, repetition re-establishes the comfort of low cognitive loading, low anticipation, low expectation, and low risk. When everything else feels chaotic, repeating something familiar becomes an anchor.
When sensory processing differences are your status quo, “restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour” are not useless pathologies as the DSM-V might suggest. They are highly adaptive and organising nervous-system strategies.
In moments of stress, uncertainty, or overload, repetition:
So repetitive behaviour is not pointless – it is regulation.
Indeed, people of all neurotypes rely on repetitive behaviours for comfort when under strain. This can look like pacing while on the phone, doodling while listening, tapping a pen, twirling hair when concentrating, bouncing a leg during a meeting, or swaying when public speaking.
In times of collective stress – pandemics, social upheaval, school transitions, family instability – we see repetition become even more vital for all neurotypes. It is how we stop our cup from overflowing.
During COVID lockdowns, millions of people began decluttering cupboards, reorganising drawers, alphabetising books, labelling containers, making daily sourdough, walking the same loop around the block, rewatching familiar tv series, and generally trying to control the only things they could in their environment. We didn’t call it rigidity. We called it getting organised. We called it self-care. We called it Marie Kondo.
We must ask ourselves why, then, is Autistic stimming stigmatised, when telling an Autistic person to stop stimming is a bit like telling someone they’re not allowed to block out some stimuli when they’re overwhelmed by it – simply because it looks odd to someone else.
If anything, Autistic stimming should be more accepted, rather than less so, because the sensory world can be louder and the cognitive load can be higher for Autistic people. Suppressing stimming doesn’t make an Autistic person “more functional”. It makes them less regulated and, in turn, more dysfunctional. Someone who stops an Autistic person stimming is taking away a very powerful tool and coping mechanism from them.
What’s refreshing is whose voices we’re finally listening to.
A 2025 participatory research study heard from Autistic participants that stimming plays an important role in social connection. In a survey of 131 Autistic participants, 63% reported that stimming helped them connect with other Autistic/neurodivergent people, and 73% of participants reported being able to recognise what another Autistic person might be feeling simply by observing their stimming.
A 2025 constructivist grounded theory review that centred Autistic young people’s own descriptions of their repetitive behaviours found something we’ve known for a while: from the inside, these behaviours aren’t experienced as meaningless symptoms at all. They:
Autistic participants described repetition as something they choose because it helps them cope with sensory overload, emotional intensity, and constant cognitive demand.
Professionals and caregivers, by contrast, were more likely to interpret the same behaviours as problems to be reduced.
That gap matters.
Because when you actually ask Autistic people what repetition does for us, the answer is simple: it helps us succeed.
Lining up our toys can offer a means of literally getting “our ducks in a row”.
For me, returning to the same things again and again isn’t about being stuck. It’s about the comfort of low anticipation and low expectation. Repetition means calm. It means organisation. It means success. When the world feels too loud and too demanding, familiar patterns give my nervous system somewhere to rest.
We’re often told that growth requires novelty, challenge, and constant change. But nervous systems don’t grow when they’re in a state of chaos. They grow when they feel safe.
Repetition creates a baseline of safety from which exploration becomes possible. Children ask to be reread stories so they can master emotional themes. Adults replay music to stabilise their mood. Autistic people repeat interests, movements, or phrases to regulate sensory and cognitive load.
This is not avoidance. It is self-preservation.
Don’t ask:
“How do we stop this?”
Ask:
“What is this nervous system trying to survive?”
Because repetition is not a failure to adapt. It is how humans adapt when the world is too loud, too fast, and too uncertain.
Morris, I. F., Sykes, J. R., Paulus, E. R., Dameh, A., Razzaque, A., Esch, L. V., Gruenig, J., & Zelazo, P. D. (2025). Beyond self-regulation: Autistic experiences and perceptions of stimming. Neurodiversity, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330241311096
Petty, S., Clegg, V. Expanded Descriptions of Autistic Repetitive Behaviours: a Constructivist Grounded Theory Review Exploring the Perspectives of Autistic Young People and Other Stakeholders. Rev J Autism Dev Disord (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-025-00505-1
The Reframing Autism team would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we have the privilege to learn, work, and grow. Whilst we gather on many different parts of this Country, the RA team walk on the land of the Awabakal, Birpai, Whadjak, and Wiradjuri peoples.
We are committed to honouring the rich culture of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this Country, and the diversity and learning opportunities with which they provide us. We extend our gratitude and respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and to all Elders past and present, for their wisdom, their resilience, and for helping this Country to heal.
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