How to know when to pause a particular stim in response to stress.

First of all, I’m autistic and if a neurotypical tells you to stop stimming that person deserves to be told off. They hide it for aesthetic reasons, nonsense ones. I’m not here to tell you to do anything of that sort. There is however a good reason to pause a stim under stress sometimes, and I say that as a fully proud autistic person that’s discovered when they can be counterproductive. That’s what this article is about.

Whenever we’re stressed, autistics will subconsciously stim. What exactly this invovles depends on the individual but certain common stims are:

  • Eating
  • Abnegation i.e putting everything else out of your mind to scroll on some dopamine inducing website like twitter or instagram. Or perhaps watching an uninteresting but fine show on Netflix.

This is ok if you’re in a temporary burst of stress and you just wanted to get out of the feeling for the moment but you will run into more problems if you keep using these stims for a longer time.

If you find yourself finishing snacks and opening new ones, or it’s been 2+ hours and you’re still scrolling then you should know that whatever you’re doing, it’s not enough and you need to try something else even if it’s more uncomfortable in the moment.

You’re bailing yourself out of a sinking ship with a bucket that’s too small, the waters pouring in at the same rate or faster as you’re getting rid of it.

In this case, continuing to use the same stim will be harmful and will prevent you from finding a better way to deal with the issue.

It can be too familiar to keep using the same stim over and over while it’s just not helping you enough. You need to stop/reduce the stress itself.

For instance, is your mindset causing you stress? You’re indulging in feelings of worthlessness and it’s causing you to zone out hard? Just stop, cut off the thoughts without engaging in them. No debate no arguing or agreeing with the thought, just disenage with it.

Is your job causing you stress? Just take a break. This is another thing that goes against our instincts (but in this case our instinct is bad for us). If we’re in a stressful situation we feel like we can rest when it’s over. That you want to do all of the bad thing first and get it over with and then just rest.

Unfortunately life doesn’t work that way. Sometimes the bad things last quite a while and if we haven’t rested in between we’ll be too tired to make it out without too much damage.

Forcing yourself to rest instead will help you recover a lot and even help you do the rest of things better.

It might also get you to consider that it’s not the end of the world if you don’t do what you promised. No matter how that might feel. It’s the right choice to make if you’re overwhelmed.

You might also be missing out on solutions like asking for help or dropping the thing entirely if you feel it’s just not worth it, that you wouldn’t have been able to think of if you just tried to power through.

What should you do if your stims aren’t helping and taking you into unhealthy territory? That is something you need to discover. A good therapist can help you with this, giving you options you didn’t think possible but will be obvious in hindsight. Or perhaps you could come up with something as well, if you had a little break to think something different in.

Whatever solution you come up with, I’ll be happy for you and now you know one more way to figure out if you’re stressed.

How to Start

What’s a good way to practically be able to do this when stuck in a loop?

Just get up.

Whatever you were doing, your laptop, your phone your snacks, leave them wherever they are and get up and walk in any direction, preferably out of the room you were in.

It will give you the change and start you need to think about what you’re doing, why, and what you should really do next.