 Good day and welcome back to the Forty Ooty podcast with your host as always, Mr Thomas Henley. Today we're going to be talking about something that I... well it's a bit of a special episode because this is going to be one of the first times that I'm having a guest that I've had on before come back onto the podcast. And basically me and Lauren Relissa from OTNL did our podcast before. It was an audio podcast for season one, you know season two. It's a bit more recent. We've brought in the video and all that. And we talked about autism and extraversion. Well today it's going to be a little bit different. We're going to be talking about autism and stimming. We're going to be talking about what it is, what kind of different categories of stimming that people can have, why it's important, what's the difference between stimming and sensory joy, all that kind of lovely stuff. So yeah, how are you doing today? I'm doing well. I'm really excited to be here. I love talking about this topic. You know your account has absolutely blown up since the time that we recorded it before. Do you want to tell us about some of the new developments that have happened since we last chatted? Yes. So previously on my Instagram as Autinell, I would primarily post AutiTips, which were autistic-centered coping strategies for getting through the day to day. And since then, I've kind of just started talking a lot more. My posts have gotten much more lengthy and they do include coping strategies. That's a very important part of my mission and vision is autistic-centered coping strategies and communities coming together. But at the same time, I realized that there's just so much information, so much research, and so many things changing in the field of autism. It always feels weird to say field of autism as an autistic person. Like different little groups, isn't there? There's like the autistic adults and then obviously there's like different social media sites that are all different. And then you have that compared to the autism parent groups and the researchers. It's crazy to be able to keep on track of everything that's happening. Yes, it's true. There's a lot going on. And so my posts have gotten longer. They include a lot more context about the different experiences that autistic individuals have. I still try to ground it in my own personal lived experience. And I've also been making some videos, some reels that I think will add some more fun and also bring in autistic joy through sensory experiences. And one thing that I think we chatted about a bit was your red instead party. Could you tell us a little bit about when you started doing that? And what is like the overall meaning and message to it? And what do you tend to do during that time? Yeah, so every World Autism Day, I try to throw an Instagram live party called the red instead party, red instead of blue, where the name came from as an autism acceptance, not just autism awareness. And I started this party. This will be the third year that I throw the Instagram live party. And I started it because I was noticing that often World Autism Day can be a very hard day for many autistics. It's a day that's really centered on us. It's really centered on what people kind of want to do to us. And because of that, I wanted to make a safer space where autistics could come together and celebrate where red I buy balloons and things like that for the background, I get a little too into it. And I invite other autistic self advocates to join me and kind of like a game show where I draw questions from a red bag and we talk about autism as a neutral to positive experience. So I'm really looking forward to that. I love that. Yeah, it's a great time. I love that word neutral to positive because I think it's very much an important thing to talk about because I mean, I think we're always having, I mean, obviously, it varies from each individual that you talk to, you know, with their experiences, with their knowledge, but it does seem that a lot of the content and things that we see tend to be like these inspiring posters, like they battled against their autism and they roast the top and on the other side, you have people and like, oh, look at these poor autistic people, they can't do anything and because of their disability. And I think it is really useful to have that because I mean, I definitely experienced that that sort of stress around, you know, the times like it feels like it feels a little bit like we're kind of pushed out, like from the conversation when, you know, really what needs to happen is we need to be in the center of it because it's about us. Like it's, you know, you have all these organizations or these groups and it's very much centered around what those people want to talk about and what those people want to do. So I really, I really like what you're doing there. I also remember that you were telling me about your Twitch streams. I'm actually, I'm contemplating getting a bit more involved in live streams, videos, not videos, like live things, whether it's on like Twitch or YouTube or Instagram, because I feel like that's something that not a lot of people have done or at least not to my knowledge. Could you tell us about it? Yeah. So I'm a gamer. I love to game. And I also used to and still do throw a little like Instagram lives, open up Instagram live chats with folks just opening up to the autistic community. I really like seeing folks interact in the chat and also interacting with them and connecting in that way. And so I thought, why don't I finally just go on Twitch and game and chat with other autistic people at the same time. So this is a pretty new endeavor. I'm pretty rusty at it. I'm not really a PC gamer. So most people are kind of watching me figure out the controls, but it's been nice just to chat even just about people's days or for folks to ask me questions about autism or just talk about their autistic experiences. And I typically try to play like Closier games. So that way, it's a more calming environment, sensory safety with an in mind. And yeah, so I started that just about two weeks ago. And I've been really enjoying streaming. I stream on Thursdays and Saturdays, if I can. Yeah. Yeah. Didn't you say that you I mean, I saw some stories of about it and stuff like Stardew? Was it Stardew Valley that you were playing? Yeah, right now, I'm mostly playing Stardew Valley. And I love that game. It's really relaxing, very repetitive. I think it's like an autistic dream in a lot of ways. And so I've been playing that on Steam. And it's kind of funny because I have been playing Stardew Valley for much longer. I think I have over 100 hours on my mobile game. And so it's been kind of a time warp to go back to starting the game and just rebuilding it from the ground up. And I get so frustrated. I'm always like, why don't I have a horse? Where's my horse? Why am I walking everywhere and like getting very frustrated? You have to pick all these individual carrots out of the ground. Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna pick my, I gotta water my own crops. Like in my mobile game, I have sprinklers. I don't understand what's going on. Yeah, I definitely, I made a video on my YouTube channel. This is before I sort of moved my content primarily just towards the podcasts, but I made a video on autism and renscape because for me, like that has been the game that's been pretty much consistent for me throughout my life. And it is, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that you can do. You can do like these crazy player versus player matches. You can do like player versus monsters. It sound like I'm doing an advert. I'm not, please do not get addicted to it because of me. But I was gravitated towards like really sort of simple mind numbing things like chopping trees or mining or you know, running a certain course over and over again. And most people like within the game, a lot of people pretty much hate doing that stuff, but it's like the reason that I keep coming back to it. So I have been thinking about possibly doing something like that, but I think that my anxiety is that people who are not within the autism space join those sort of spaces. And you know, sometimes gaming and particularly like online games that are so popular, they can attract some people who have some very questionable takes, shall we say, about things like autism and you know, so I will see. I may try and get into it if I can manage to sort my schedule out and stuff, but. No pressure. Well, yeah, it's supposed to be like a chill laid back kind of thing that you do. But really, to be honest, nowadays I'm trying to like set up my business and stuff. So it's, there's a lot to do. And I have not got a lot of time to do fun things, which I'm trying to, I'm trying to ease back into doing fun things now and again. But I think when you get very excitable about social media and work and you just fixate on it so much, it can be really hard to like take a step back and actually like shut your brain off. It's true. Yeah, definitely having to set personal boundaries around it is super important. Well, yeah, so the overarching topic of this podcast is around stimming, of course. I suppose the best place to start with this is what is stimming and what are some examples of it? Stimming is self-stimulatory behavior. And it usually has the focus of regulating through repetitive action. It used to be thought that stimming had no purpose, that it was purposeless, repetitive action. Thankfully, they figured out that it serves a purpose, that it is very regulatory for many folks, not only autistic people stem, non-autistic people stem, neurodivergent had neuro-typical people stem. Autistic individuals just tend to stem more often. Although stimming is not a mandatory criteria to receive an autism diagnosis, it's just very common. And it is one of the criteria, just not mandatory. So some example. I get a lot of questions. I don't know if you get these questions from autistic parents getting in contact. It's like, oh, what should I do? Should I stop my child stimming? Or they come home from school and they don't stim all day and then they get home and they start stimming. What does this mean? Should I get them to stop? Is this something that's bad for them? And pretty much always I always go back to them and say like, hey, look, we as autistic people, we tend to struggle a lot with emotional regulation or more than most people. And any way that we can reduce that stress and help regulate ourselves, it's so valuable. And it just boggles my mind that people are like, you know, just because it doesn't look like something that most people do, it's something that's bad. You know, I would even say that autistic individuals are masters at regulation. I think that due to many of our sensory differences, up to 90% of autistic individuals have sensory processing differences. Due to that and our social communication differences and those needs often not being met. I think that we are actually regulating so much all the time that we then, you know, have created all these different methods for working through that. It's almost like we start the day with way more to regulate than a non autistic person. And but what they see like the non autistic books see on the surface is you're not regulating like I regulate what they don't realize is I'm not experiencing life like they're experiencing life. I'm regulating, you know, the sounds of electricity humming in the walls. And they can't even hear that. So I guess that it's a matter of perspective. Yeah, I haven't really thought of it like that. I suppose it does it does make a lot of sense to me. Like, there is like, so much more that we have to regulate. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we're bad at it. It's just we do we do get a lot of, you know, we experience a lot of negative things in life. And the world isn't necessarily built for us. And there's all these crazy social norms and stuff that kind of don't really fit with how we like to live our lives. What would be really useful is to kind of go into some of like the examples for each of the senses. Yeah, I definitely would. Yeah, I can definitely talk about that. And I also just want to add to the definition of stemming. I think a lot of the time, folks think of stemming as something that autistic individuals do only to regulate negative emotions like frustration, overwhelm, anger, maybe like a routine change, different things like that. When in fact, autistic stemming often is an expression of regulating joy, happiness, and other positive feelings. So we might see individual stem in a variety of ways, using and tapping into sensory input from seven out of the eight senses. So we have eight senses. Most people think we have five. Sorry, mind blown. There's eight. And I can briefly describe each one. The first five are the easiest. So we have sight, which is when we take in sensory input from what we see. We have hearing where we take in sensory input of sound, smell, which is the whole factory sense, taste, which is the gustatory sense and touch, which is when we take in sensory stimuli from our skin primarily. And it's the sense and yeah, it's what clocks and things like texture, but also sometimes clocks and things like pressure, which is directly related to the sixth sense, which is not to be related to the movie, the sixth sense. We can see the ghosts, you know, we can sense that. I mean, some autistic individuals do have a lot of strengths in that due to our ability to tap into the senses. That is not what this podcast is about. Maybe for another one. Maybe another one, yeah. So the sixth sense that I'm referring to is proprioception or the proprioceptive sense. And I like to think of this as our sense of body-ness. It helps us know where our body is in relation to space and how close to get to something, how far away. It also really helps us with hand-eye coordination, as well as how much pressure to apply in the push-pull experience, like if you're going to push a ball or push a chair in or put a glass down. Then we also have the vestibular sense, which is the favorite. That's right. I mean, I really love the vestibular sense, too. We'll get to that. Well, I mean, it's good in a sense that I really enjoy stims that are related to it, but bad in a sense because I keep falling into stuff all the time. Yeah, so the vestibular sense is located in the inner ear, which is interesting because we often think of the vestibular sense as the sense of balance. It must be when we think of balance and we think of our legs or we think of our core. But if you were to spin your head around really fast several times, you get dizzy. And that's because the vestibular sense is located there. So this helps us to know where our body is in relation to gravity and the vestibular sense and the proprioceptive sense combine into what I like to call the senses of movement and they help us move our body in all the day to day. So we also have an eighth sense, which is not a stimmy, but it's the interoception sense, interoceptive sense, which I like to call the internal sense. It helps us clock our heart rate cues. It helps us to clock our hunger and thirst cues and whether or not we need to go to the bathroom. So that's a very important sense, especially in relation to self-regulation. But like I said, I'm sure there's a way to stem with it. I'm sure someone's stemming with the interoception sense. I'm sure it's happening, but there's not really a list. I don't know. Maybe plug your ears and count your heartbeat, things like that. I could see being a fun stimmy thing for some. But examples. So if we're stemming with our sense of sight, we might love to look at flashing lights, like your light there in the background or my microphone here. We might like to look at music visualizers that go round and round and round. And those sorts of things can be very stimmy. Maybe the 8D kind of. I know that you have things like ASMR streams and stuff. Oh, were they show? Were they show? I usually think of this out. Yeah, I think even gaming, we were talking about gaming before, they're in some RPGs. They're such fascinating and gorgeous and beautiful graphics that I've just paused and stared at a waterfall and an ocean and an RPG and just stared at it for like 10 minutes, like not moving my character. And I've actually started crying because it's so joyful for me as a stem. Me and my partner at the moment are playing through this game called... It's not a new game, but it's a good game. It's like an FMV. Because it's sort of like... It's called Life is Strange. And I'm sure that... I've seen that be played. I haven't played it, but I watched my friend play through so much of it. So I know a lot about it. Yeah. I used to watch a streamer called Markiplier, and I think he played through Life is Strange before. And I did really want to play it after I watched through it all, but I already knew sort of the base of the story. So that was probably like seven or eight years ago, which is absolutely crazy. But now I don't remember it at all. So we're kind of going through the story mode and stuff, and it's got this absolutely beautiful abstract kind of painting style. As you were talking about, looking at the waterfalls and stuff, it gives me similar feelings. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't really recognize or consider visual or sight based stemming because it's not really something that we see an autistic person doing unless we notice they're staring at visualizer for a really long time or staring at a flashing light for a really long time. But it generally doesn't affect other people. And since most folks, when they think about autism, they think about how it affects them as an outsider. There's not a lot of discussion around sight based stemming. There's also stemming through our sense of hearing. And the first thing that comes to mind with that is listening to the same song on repeat. And whenever I tell someone I've been listening to the same song on repeat, and they're like, Oh, I do that too. And then they look at my play count back when I used to use iTunes. They would look at my play count and they'd be like, Wait, you've listened to this song 10,000 times. They think that you're putting it in a playlist and you're sort of playing it around, but we're actually literally just got it on the repeat one just over and over again. And I would have maybe a really stressful day at work and come home and just lie down on the floor and listen to the same song on repeat for 30 minutes to an hour as a means of self regulating that stress. There's other ways to stem through the oral sense or through hearing, like just by playing sounds. I think we often think of maybe an autistic person who has an app on their phone that makes sounds and they like to press those sounds again and again. Like a storybook with the little things that you get. Yes, I totally forgot about this. That was a dream when I was a kid. A water, water or pebbles and like, I know it's a little bit sort of tactile as well, but I think definitely like the sound of water, you know, you get those sort of indoor waterfalls or fires or you know, I think for me that kind of stuff really helps. I hate silence. Like silence is really, really hard for me. Like I always have to have something playing on in the background or even whilst we're talking, I have like a Spotify playlist of, it's like chilled music that I play and I do it for pretty much every single thing that I do, whether it's like standing up and doing like some public speaking or chatting to people or I don't know, it just kind of, I think for me it fills up spaces, I think. I feel like I always need to be like stimulated by some kind of noise. Yeah, it can be really fun and exciting and also really calming and a lot of ways. And then we have smell. Simming through smell might look like using lots of essential oils on the nose and might look like, you know, just smelling everything, smelling the same thing over and over again. We have taste often when I think about stimming through taste, I think of that person who really likes intense, intense flavors and wants to like have all the spices in their food and they use them often. And then when I touch, I think of, you know, rubbing plushie blankets and maybe something that's rough. Yeah. Some people might even like rough textures or bumpy textures, just really tapping into that touch and taste often get confused with different proprioceptive senses or I mean proprioceptive stimming, because we might think of someone who chews on things constantly and think taste, but or think touch, but it really often is proprioception because that's to do with applying pressure to the body. It is a little related to contract and so using jewelry or just chewing on pens. That is a proprioceptive stem. Another proprioceptive stem is to use weighted blankets and different things like that. You might also have someone who rolls things a lot across the floor or across the table, lots tapping into that sense as well. We have vestibular. So we've got the spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning and swaying and rocking, maybe even pacing. Those stems are actually the ones that we think of the most when we think of autistic stemming and what's funny is that we often don't even know what sense that's tapping into. We don't know about the vestibular sense and so that's a really big one. I personally love spinning. I love walking on my tiptoes to challenge my balance. Not that I'm thinking about it when I do it, but it's getting me that sensory input and I also rock a lot. Then we had interception, but we also said that maybe plugging your ears and listening to your heartbeat. Maybe something like this. I think you could think of a lot of different things, but I do think, is there any of the ones that you want to talk about? I think I covered all the senses. I think I actually did that. When you were talking about the different senses, specifically using the scientific names for the senses and stuff, I was thinking about, obviously I'm not obviously, but I went to university to study Biomed. One of the modules was around senses and things like that. We were talking about all the inner mechanisms and even senses as we see and view them, they're very multifaceted. Good day, viewers and listeners. Apologies for my very rude introduction to our regularly scheduled broadcast. I just want to remind you that if you have enjoyed the podcast this far, please make sure to rate, subscribe, like, comment and share. All of these actions are pretty much the lifeblood of a small independent creator like myself and it will help me get most of my work, more of my work to people who really need it. If you want to stay up to date with my life, get behind the scenes content, check out my daily blogs, head over to the Instagram at Thomas Henley UK. You'll find a link to that down in the description alongside my range of neurodiversity clothing just like this strong powerful autistic hoodie that I love so much. And my website, of course, where you can find a contact email to book me for one-to-one orders and coaching, interviews, workplace training and speaking. So thank you very much for listening to this very annoying self advert and I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. You could think of, for example, the thing like to do with touch, you know, different neurons or different nerves are activated by different kinds of sensations and pressure and, you know, so like the light touch can activate different neurons than the ones that are involved in like heavy pressure. Even going so far as to things like nociception or like to do with like pain, you know, things like, specifically for me, I know it's not to do with stimming, but I feel sharp pain very, very intensely. And they're like related to these these group of neurons called alpha-delta fibers. And they're very like, they've got loads of lots of this stuff called myelin around it, which allows them to go like really quickly. And that's why when, you know, you get a cut or you get like a prick or something, it's like you jump away from it quickly because it's like such a fast sort of electrical signal. And then you also have like stuff around blood pain around the C fibers, which are like very, very slow, you know, the system doesn't react to them very quickly, but it's sort of like a weird sort of dull pain, you know, like if you have like an achy leg or something, you know, you banged it or something. And I don't feel that a lot. So it's, it's, you know, obviously it doesn't lend well to me taking injuries seriously. If I, you know, meet me being six, six free, I tend to, I tend to bash my head on a lot of things unintentionally. And I did not know you were six foot three. I had no idea. Yeah. And it's also one of the reasons I'm actually a little bit annoyed at that fact, because like I used to spin so much when I was younger. And, you know, being my height, it's, it's very hard to, no more than find a space to spin. Unless I'm like doing it on a chair or I'm going on like a roundabout or what are those cool park contraptions where you're sitting in and just spin around all of those. And also if, if I trip up, or if I mess up, I am like plummeting towards the ground at a very, very dangerous pace. So I tend not to do that a lot anymore. And a lot of my stimming tends to be sort of related to like exercise. Like, you know, as I was saying about the hyposensit to blunt, blunt pain. And that also kind of plays into a little bit, you know, in terms of like going to the gym and stuff. Because for me, I don't feel sort of that pain from exercising very easily. So it means that I can sort of push it a lot farther than most people can. Obviously, again, it's like a, it's a double edged sword, because I can injure myself and not know about it. Or, you know, unless it's like a sharp pain. So there's, there's a lot of ways that like sensory systems I think can be very sort of complicated. You know, I think even in terms of like the visual system in terms of like, no, we often see it as just visual, but there's the aspect of like the hue of the lights, like the colour of the light or the brightness or the contrast or, you know, there's so many aspects to like how we sort of interpret it in our environment. And, you know, I mean, I just want to put this out there because I'm just wondering what your thoughts on it are. Like, do you think that for, for an autistic person, or for anyone in general, who has sort of sensory differences, do you find that people gravitate towards stems that are related to things that are hyposensitive to? It's possible because they might be seeking more sensory input to it. So I don't get dizzy very easily. And I am constantly seeking like the spinning and the twirling. So it could be related. I would hesitate to say all the time. Because for example, I'm extremely sensitive to a lot of different kinds of lighting. But when there's a light that I really like, then I will want to repetitively look at it, stare at that visualizer and not feel really comfortable and very joyful doing that. My favourite one at the moment is this fibre optic light. Yeah, that's fun. I think another example is I'm hypersensitive to sound. But one of my number one, oh, don't apologize, that was beautiful. I thought you were pointing that out. That's funny. Yeah, thankfully, we have like noise-canceling things going on. But yeah, so it's sound I'm very, very hypersensitive to sound. But auditory stimming is one of my number one ways of stimming by listening to a song that I like a lot on repeat. So I think that we might see some stimming because of needing more sensory input in that place. But I also think there's that element of sensory joy when something hits just right. Because I am so sensitive to sound. I can tell really quickly when just the right sounds came together in just the right way. Because if they didn't, then I would immediately notice and be like, this is a wreck. What was that weird sound there? I think I'm super picky about key changes when someone does a key change. And it's not right. I would just want to like throw my speaker out the window. It's interesting that you say that because I think for me, like whenever I get myself into situations where I'm highly anxious or whether, you know, if I'm having a meltdown even, I always gravitate towards vestibular vestims, like for me. And I tend to limit like pretty much all of like the hypersensitive kind of side of me, which is pretty much everything else. So, but then again, like, if I'm, you know, I find a lot of, as you said, sort of joy in sort of the differences and sort of how I view things. Because, you know, as we're talking about like those game situations where you look at a waterfall or, you know, I can become very, very hyper fixated on something and just completely forget about my surroundings. If I'm at the rare occurrence where I go to like a rave or something, you know, there'll be one light that I see that's just a combination of colors and it has a certain movement to it that I just fixate on. And it's the same with like the moon or like stars or like, and that those things tend to be things that I gravitate towards to make me feel good, I guess. Whereas I don't always go for vestibular sort of proprioceptive stuff for me to feel good. That makes sense. Yeah, I think my vestibular stems, at least the stem dancing that I do in the twirling and things like that, are very, very much connected to sensory joy for me. I do rock back and forth when I'm stressed, though, or if I'm like trying really hard to process something that's difficult for me to process, I'll be more likely to rock. I also, this is more of a proprioceptive stem. Whenever I get very stressed, I tap my chest repeatedly. And so that taps into the proprioceptive sense. And I don't do that when I'm feeling good ever. So it is helpful for me sometimes to keep track of which of my stems I do when I'm in a different mood, because it's really valuable information. Because when you're little, and you're reading books about feelings, they say, Oh, when I'm happy, I smile. When I'm excited, I laugh. When I'm sad, I cry. But for me, my book would be when I'm sad, I tap my chest. When I'm happy, I twirl and clap and jump up and down, even as an adult. And those things were not really in those books. So autistic individuals are often not able to really understand feelings as my theory, because we're taught feelings in a non-autistic way. If we taught feelings through stems, it might be very different. Yeah, I think it's really interesting that you bring that up. Autistic people are more likely to sort of be a little bit more out of tune with connecting thoughts and events and stuff with emotions through things like alexithymia. Yeah. I was really sort of, I was having a chat with Paul, I can't remember, I'm not very good at remembering his last name sort of spelling, but Paul McCalleth from autism from the inside and we were talking about autism and sort of emotions and stuff. I think it's, for us, sometimes it can be very difficult to understand and how other people feel by how they look. As you said, crying, laughing, smiling, especially for me, I didn't hardly ever express sort of negative emotions on my face. Like a lot of the time it's very like a flat affect. I tend to very much sort of shut down like all of my face and my body and I tend to, as I said, when I have meltdowns and such, I do a lot of vestibular stimming. And I think that's, I think there's really, really interesting sort of connection because it's, I'm always interested in like, because emotions are such like a subjective thing. And it's a really important point of sort of relating to another human being. And when that sort of, most people that we go about life, we sort of assume that people feel like us. And they do things like us when we're feeling a certain emotion. And quite often for autistic people, there's like a really confusing disconnect between trying to get across how we're feeling to people who don't sort of see the signs. And I'm probably absolutely butchering this point, but it's okay. And I want to make sure that we get back to stimming, but I do have something I want to add to this. I think an example from my personal experience is that, you know, people say like, if someone is not looking you in the eyes, if they keep averting their eyes, that means they're interested in what you're talking about. But for me, if I'm trying to pay very close attention to something that someone is saying, I stop looking at them. Because it takes so much work to maintain the eye contact that I can't actually put as much work into listening. I put more of that effort into the eye contact. So it is hard for me sometimes to remember that if someone's not looking at me, that means that they're not interested in what I'm saying, because it would be the opposite for me. It's a really, really interesting point. I think we could obviously talk forever about like the different ways that we can relate to other people and express things in comparison to neurotypicals. But as I said, yeah, good point. Let's stick to the stimming. We're talking about something that's very, I mean, as you said, it is something that neurotypicals do. It tends to be different for us, I would say, because of our sort of like different ways of processing and our different sort of like sensory profiles. I guess what I want to ask is like, what are some like examples of like multi sensory stimming? Because we've talked about stimming in sort of isolated instances, like, you know, you do this and this is a visual stim and you do this, this is a auditory stim. Obviously, senses are not that sort of simple and straightforward. And a lot of the time it's a combination of different things. So what kind of, how would you, how would you go about explaining multi sensory stimming and what are your sort of favorite things to do? So I think a great example of a multi sensory stim that's good to start with is someone twirling in a circle with their eyes open. So if you're twirling in a circle over and over again, and you're keeping your eyes open and you're not spotting. So like, sometimes people like in ballet, for example, when you spin, you spot. So you look at the same spot on the wall. So then you switch around and then you look at it again. Yeah. So that way you stay and you like can stay focused. Now if you spin and you're not spotting, it's going to be a lot of visual input. I've never heard anyone talk about that before. I absolutely love that. Yeah. So, so that would be a vestibular and visual stem. And then for me, I like to do that. And I also like to add listening to the same song on repeat while I do it. So that's a visual vestibular auditory stem. And I think that other ones could be maybe if a person has a weighted multi-textured plushie that they like to hold, that would be a touch paste and a proprioceptive stem at the same time. Also, an audio visual stem would be listening to the same song on repeat while looking at a music visualizer. A stem that could be focused on smell and taste would be something that has a lot of fragrant spices that we eat again and again and again and again, like lots of bites of and or multiple times in the day, we only eat that same fragrant spicy food that would be smell and taste to me. And do you find that when when you combine different stems, is it something that helps you regulate more or gives gives you more joy? Or do you think it's very sort of dependent on like, because I know sometimes for me, especially if I'm hit by lots of different things with different that kind of, what does it stimulate me in a lot of the like hypersensitive senses that I have, I can find it quite jarring sometimes. So yeah, what do you think about that? Like the effect that it has to do that? Yeah, I would say that it depends on the state of mind that I'm in. So if I'm looking for a calming stem, I tend to just want to do like close my eyes, listen to the same song and repeat. But I might if I am maybe just like not as shaken up, and I just need to like stay in the zone and kind of just regulate a little bit, I will listen to a really, really loud song and repeat while drinking a hot drink. And that's like keeping me really focused in on the sensory input. And then I can calm the whatever rattling thing happened to me prior. I would not want to do that if I'm actually in an overstimulating environment at the time. So if I'm in a very overstimulating environment, I'll just rock back and forth. I'm not about to like plug in my headphones, blast heavy metal, rock back and forth and like, eat a spicy food all at the same time. I'm just going to be rocking back and forth. Yeah. So that's really interesting. I think it's definitely something that I need to think about a lot more because, you know, for me, anxiety, overwhelm, stress, it's pretty much like a constant battle every day for me. And I'm always trying to kind of think of different ways to sort of soothe myself in that way. That sounds weird. I think it sounds perfectly okay. Yeah, it's just me. So like, I'm thinking of trying to like find some, like I was saying about that thing at the, like some parks have them where it's like a seat that's like bolted onto the ground and you can just spin and spin. So I'm waiting to like, I should probably go ahead and get something like that because it does just absolutely melt away all of my anxiety. Like whenever I go to a theme park and I go on roller coasters or I go on any sort of like spinning ride, like the teacups, I'm always like, right, we're going to go faster and faster. Everyone gets really sick and they don't tend to want to go on with me because I do that. But yeah, I think I really do need to think a lot about that more. And I'm very sort of wary of the time and I don't I don't want to sort of go on too long about it. But I think it would be really useful to talk about sort of like a another aspect of stimming, which I think for some people it can be sort of like a sensitive issue, you know, particularly for me. What I'm talking about is sort of harmful stimming. And you know, for me specifically when I'm having a bad time when I'm having a meltdown. For me, I have quite a lot of harmful stims. And it's, you know, a lot of the time when I do those harmful stims, whether it's like hitting myself or pinching myself or, you know, hitting myself against something, it's almost always in a situation when it's a very, very intense meltdown, or I'm in a place and I don't feel safe. And there's no sort of place or there's no sort of aid for me to kind of, you know, I don't have a safe place to go to and I don't really see any way that I can sort of fulfill those those needs that I have that sort of regulation need that I have. And also particularly during during times when I'm feeling very down or when I'm feeling very negatively about myself and typically in very sort of low self esteem moods. It tends to be the case that that kind of thing happens. I know that there's things that are within sort of the harmful stimming label that could be perhaps relatively quite innocuous, like biting your nails or like whatever would be a good one. Pulling your hair or Pulling your hair is, I would not call that innocuous. No, no, not innocuous. Give me like tugging your hair or like pulling your hair out. Tugging your hair, tugging your hair, like, you know, it's just like plucking hairs out of your hand or something or scratching or doing stuff like that. But I also think that you know, considering that there's such a sort of a big overlap between autism and mental health conditions, you know, particularly for me when I was a lot younger, it was the case that a lot of the stimming that I did the way that I sort of dealt with my emotional difficulties and overwhelm from the day was, you know, things related to like self-harming, which was, you know, it's, you know, I think a lot of people that I've talked to have sort of shared that kind of feeling. And I guess what I want to sort of know is I've given a lot of examples and I've kind of taken a bit of the lead on it. It's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately and especially sort of looking back on my past. It's, yeah, yeah, Jesus. It is a really important topic. It's a really big topic and it's one that I also have personal experience with. And I think pulling from what you said, you actually brought up a lot of different ways that, not just like the way it looks, but different moments when people might self-injuriously stem. And so I want to bring some of that to the surface that there is a difference between a self-injurious stem that is not related to a feeling of anxiety or overwhelm, a self-injurious stem that is related to trying to regulate during a moment of anxiety and overwhelm or overload. And there's also a difference between that and self-injurious stemming during a meltdown. So during a meltdown, I don't think that there's really, if I've come to the point of having a meltdown, I'm no longer really in control of what stems or what actions I am taking. So if I only say if I were a person who only self-injuriously stemmed during meltdowns, my focus then would not be on how do I stop self-injuriously stemming during meltdowns. My focus would be how can I put in systems, supports, and boundaries so that I can practice proactive meltdown prevention. That would be my focus there. If I am self-injuriously stemming just because like this I think is rare, but it could just because it's like the thing that I do, like it's not connected to overwhelm or- I'm the same with biting my nails, like I love biting my nails. Yeah, so then I would say just looking for a replacement stem that meets that same need. So I sucked my fingers, I sucked these two fingers here since I was born, like it's a joke that I came out doing that. And I did not stop until the summer between the fifth and sixth grade because it was meeting my needs and I was really happy. And I did it when I was born. I did it when I was happy. I just did it because it was getting me sensory input, proprioceptive input is what it actually is that I needed now. However, society is not really accepting of children after a certain age, sucking a thumb, sucking their fingers, using a pacifier. So it was a big battle to try to get me to stop. And I was even like at some point having gloves taped to my hand and an attempt to make me stop. I had like my fingers taped together, things like that, an attempt to make me stop. It wasn't like, evilly intended. So I'm not mad at the folks who did that to me. But I think it just helps us to consider how stigmatized stemming is, that it would be like normal to do that to a child who is sucking their fingers. Eventually, I did recognize, okay, I'm going to have to stop this. Like I'm getting bullied. I'm getting a lot of coercion. I'm getting people like punishments for this stem. So I'm going to need to stop. Now does that mean that I just stopped and was like, I no longer need proprioceptive oral stem put, I mean stem put, stemming input, stem put. I'm going to trademark that. That is that is just a stroke of genius. I like that. No, that didn't happen, right? I didn't suddenly just not need that anymore. So I started to bite my nails. Now, you shouldn't bite your nails, biting your nails is bad, right? So people kept telling me, stop biting your nails. I started I started getting the same reaction to me biting my nails. And they stop you, they want to stop you from doing things, but they don't give you any alternatives. Yes. So I did stop biting my nails eventually. But I still needed that input. So I started taking my now long nails and slicing my gums with them to get proprioceptive oral stem put. I'm stem bud. I said it again. That wasn't an accident. I also I want to add it's not something that I that I've talked about before. But well, for me, I very much have something similar to that, like, like pressing pressing my nails against my my gums. Or like, you know, for a long time, I've had a real sort of love love hate back and forth relationship with like toothpicks. Because, you know, left to my own devices, I would just want to pick my teeth and gums all the time. Because it's like such a it's such a big, big sort of stem for me. It's it's very strange that you you're bringing up lots of things that I haven't like, I haven't like talked about for us. It's it's very feels very validating to me. Yeah, I mean, and I hope by us having this conversation, those who listen to it, I hope that they can see that they're not alone. And that this is not something that we have to continue to put behind closed doors. Because if we don't talk about it, then we don't talk about the ways we can support others in it, either. And so for me, in order to eventually stop the self injurious to me, because it was painful, I wasn't like hating it, but it was painful. And there are negative side effects to doing that. And I think also, in a way, you know, slicing my gums does, I think it opened an avenue for me to think of other like, okay, this pain is helping me, even though it wasn't actually pain, I just wasn't given access to this like knowledge or on proprioception and like all this stuff. So I thought it was pain. So I did wind up self injurious to me also by getting proprioceptive input through slapping my arms. So I had to really dial it back, really dial it back. And they got I got tied into anxiety as well. So I started like slapping my arms repeatedly when I had a lot of social anxiety, or social overload, or sensory overload that then caused me to have social anxiety. So it was all getting wrapped up together. And I had to really dial it back to get to a place of realizing like, where did where did this come from? And it was like, I just wanted to suck my fingers. Like, so did I start? Did I start sucking my fingers again? No. But I did start looking for replacement stems that would meet those proprioceptive needs. So chewing gum, jewelry, and drinking fizzy drinks and drinking hot drinks, that would stimulate that area. I have weighted blankets. Now I, you know, have things that I hug all the time, plushies and things like that. So getting a lot of those things into my life, figuring out what worked for me. Now it wasn't magical because habits, repetition can lead to habit and habits are difficult to change. And once it got tied to social anxiety, and social anxiety is very common for many autistic individuals, I want to clarify that I no longer really experienced social anxiety. But I did have it severely, I did experience severely from like, fifth grade until I was like, 27. So and I'm, I'm 31 now. So that was just like, I am. No, you're not. Yeah. Yeah, I am 31. And it's funny being on social media and being 31 and having people think you're a lot younger and or me being like, I was diagnosed at 23 and people like congratulations. Like, how's it been? And they're like, well, it was eight years ago. So it's been a lot of attorney to hear all that. But but yeah, so anyway, it did take a lot to then, you know, work through sensory overload, social overload, it's connections to social anxiety, all these things. But I do want to just say, starting at finding replacement stems that worked for me was a huge big step in that direction. Because if I was trying to work through many of those things, and still self-endurously stemming at the level that I had been self-endurously stemming, it would have been really hard, I think to work through a lot of the debilitating things that I was going through as a response to being autistic and unsupported. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I definitely encourage anyone who is, you know, wanting to avoid those kind of stimming behaviors to I guess it's I think it's really important for for anyone who has sensory differences to sort of get an idea of their sensory profile, but also, like, notice things in the life that they're doing, because a lot of people do things that are not typical for most people that are kind of related to stimming, but they don't like, especially when they're late diagnosed, they don't like, identify to stimming. They're just like, oh, I just do that because it's just, you know, like it and it feels good and, you know, everyone does it. Everyone says, doesn't it? Don't they? Like, Yeah, everyone's stimming. Like, everyone's stimming. Here we are. So I guess like a natural, you know, question to ask is like, because I know there's lots, there's lots of people and there's lots of people out there who have noticed over time, you know, watching or reading or listening to autism related content that I guess they're wanting to get into that world a bit more to understand what stims would help them and how to actually sort of incorporate it into their lives. What kind of advice would you have for those for those people who are kind of, they're a bit sort of on the fence because of like the stigma and they don't really know where to start? What would be like a good sort of way of getting into that world? I think a lot of people might fit somewhere into that category. Either they were forced to stop stimming and they want to restart, or maybe they are stimming and they have always been stimming but they're hiding it or having difficulty embracing it and feeling a lot of shame around it. And I would actually invite those people to, you know, just continue to lean into the stims and maybe document your joyful stims, document what stims make you feel good, connect them to those emotions. Like what I said when I'm happy, I stim in this way when I'm sad, I stim in that way and start to see that true value in it because one of the reasons why people, you know, shut it down is because they don't value it or they make or they, not personally, but other people will say that it's not valuable, that they will stigmatize it because it makes them uncomfortable to see it. And I think the more that I ground myself personally in the value of stimming and the importance of stimming in my life and the beauty of it, the joy in it and the self regulation in it, the more I can just really like push away maybe those past things I've heard where it's like stop, you look weird, why are you doing that? Or push away people who maybe are saying that to me right now and I can respond and say, actually, this is really great. Actually, if you want me to stop doing this, I'm gonna stop screaming at you. Or like, you know, different things like that where I can just say this is really, really helpful. This is really great. You're putting those boundaries in place and self advocating. And self advocating that to myself in saying like, this is great. Like, I don't want to feel ashamed of this because I know that this is beautiful and this is really helping me. And this is a wonderful form of expression. Brilliant. Thank you so much. It's been it's been really great to sit down and sit down with you and you know, it's been great to actually like connect and chat like since the last time that we spoke. But also, I guess to talk about something that you know, it's a very sort of big topic within the autistic community and it's something that I think's worth delving into a lot more. As I said, I think a lot of people are very put off by it because they don't see it as they don't see the value in it as you said. And also the kind of the scared like the scared of like they have social anxiety, you know, they struggle in those sort of public settings. They don't they don't know when to do it at home. They don't know what to do. So I think it's really great to sort of hear the ways that that you've understood, you know, this the stimming and the value in the stimming. And it's definitely for me. I mean, if if I'm to be honest, it's not something that I've, as I said, delved into a lot. And I think it's something that's that's worth doing a bit more digging in for me personally. I definitely do feel, if I'm to be honest, shame around it, particularly around harmful stims around sort of meltdowns and stuff. And I actually have I felt very sort of emotional talking about it with you because it is like it's a very sort of deep seated thing. And, you know, there's a lot of experiences and want negative experiences, which I've had that are around stimming. And it's it's been really good for me personally as well to to talk about it. So thank you. Thanks for sharing it with me. I mean, that genuinely, like, I appreciate having this conversation, this level of openness. Where can people find you? Like, which if you had to give people like, do you have like a link tree or anything that you can share with people? I can give you a link tree. Yeah, I do have one. I can also say something here too. Just you can find me at Autinel, A-U-T-I-E-N-E-L-L-E at Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch. And my website is Lauren Melissa Elsie dot com. You can find all the wild things I get up to, whether that's wonderful podcasts like this, or writing novels for neurodivergent young adults. So yeah, I'm looking forward to connecting with others. Yeah. Awesome. Well, of course, if you have enjoyed this, this episode of the Port Yoder podcast, you want to get in touch, you want to write in, you can always contact me through my email hi at Thomas Henley dot curate. Okay. Yes, it is a different email. I finally changed it. So that's also it. And if you have enjoyed it, please make sure to rate, subscribe, like, comment, do all of that stuff, because it really is the lifeblood of a small, independent creator like myself. And it really helps me get wonderful information like this out to people who really need to hear it. If you want to stay up to date with my life, the things that I do, you can head over to my Instagram at Thomas Henley UK, which is my main base of social media operations. And if you want to see the video version of this podcast, if you're listening to it, you can head over to YouTube, which is the 40 auto podcast. And likewise, if you're on YouTube, you can you can listen to it as well. But all of that stuff is down in the link tree below, you can click on that and it will show you pretty much everything, as well as some links that you can get in contact for things like autism coaching, which is something that I am working on. And it's going to be something that I go live with in April, as well as some public speaking and all sorts of other stuff. And I'm going to stop myself because I am just rambling. So I've got it as as cohesive and like, simplified down today. My brain is very all over the place recently. But yeah, it's it's been really lovely to chat with you. And have you enjoyed your second 40 auto experience? Yes, thank you. And I hope there's a third someday in the future. Of course, of course. Thank you very much for tuning in and listen to us ramble everything about autism. And I hope to see you in another episode of the 40 auto podcast. See you later, guys.