Amongst other things for different kinds of stimulation, I am occasionally able to get my wife to do tippy taps when I can make her delightfully surprised, and it’s the most adorable thing ever.

My mom has brought it to my attention that I do hand motions when I’m stressing a convo with her. So now I’m aware of it at times. Kind of looks like I’m doing poor imitations of like Naruto hand jitsu stuff. Likely have some other stuff but I’m not aware of them.

My stims mostly occur when I’m emotionally aroused, the most I notice stress stims and happy stims. I generally knead my hands, i.e., I open and close them repeatedly. My mood factors into this by how much I use gravity-defying behavior. So when I’m stressed I generally hold my hands down to my sides, but when it’s a happy stim I hold them up. Stressed and Happy also are different as stress causes me to completely tense up, while happy can make me be springy, almost jumping up and down. Apart from that I also do vocal stims, mostly short hums, sometimes melodic. One other sensory stimulation thing I like is blankets, so I always have a fleece blanket on the sofa, and I even have one at work.

I’ve heard the term “stimming” before, and never had a clear answer on what it meant. After taking a look through this thread, I now have yet another thing to add to the list of obvious symptoms I should have seen in myself years ago.

I have a tendency to take things apart, or move whatever moveable pieces are on something. I’ve made little toys/implements to enable this at work so I’m not just taking pens apart.

I tap my fingers, usually on my thighs. I also have a bad one for high anxiety situations where I’ll rub my thumbnail into the pads of my other fingers. I have actully cut my fingertips open this way in high stress moments.