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Key Takeaways
- Many autistic individuals suppress or mask stims around other people out of fear of judgment or harm, limiting their ability to self-regulate.
- Addressing overall social anxiety, challenging your beliefs about stimming around others and support from loved ones can make stimming around other people feel more approachable.
- Stimming may not feel accessible or safe in all environments. Some autistic people may camouflage stimming behaviors, using more discreet stims to meet their needs in these contexts.
- A psychotherapist can help you make an individualized plan towards unmasking and feeling more comfortable stimming around people.
Stimming, or self-stimulatory behavior, is self-regulating behavior common among autistic individuals. Autistic people stim for many reasons, including combatting sensory overload, interrupting anxious thoughts or satisfying sensory-seeking needs.
When thinking of stimming, many people imagine rocking or hand flapping. These are common stims, but stimming can look many different ways. Stims can include behaviors like playing with a fidget toy, pacing, jumping, repeating words or phrases and many, many more.
While many autistic individuals frequently engage in stimming, it isn’t always something that they feel comfortable doing publicly. Often, stigma and mistreatment make us autistic individuals fear judgment or harassment when stimming around others. Stimming comes along with benefits, including helping us manage sensory input, regulate our nervous systems, unmask and live more authentically. However, it can take a lot of work to feel comfortable openly stimming. Read on to learn how to get comfortable stimming around others.
How to get comfortable stimming around others
Stimming can be especially important in social environments where an autistic person may have less control over sensory inputs. In these environments, an individual can greatly benefit from the sensory filtering and regulation that stimming provides. Being able to move your body authentically around others can also be rewarding, allowing you to stop masking and live as your authentic self more completely.
Some autistic people may have legitimate concerns about their safety when stimming publicly, worrying that strangers’ misunderstanding their stims could lead to harassment or unwanted, harmful interactions. The work towards getting comfortable stimming around others should not overlook these concerns. Rather, it should acknowledge your comfort zone and slowly expand it, rather than shattering boundaries and creating situations where you feel unsafe or panicked.
Address your beliefs around stimming in front of others
Honing in on what’s uncomfortable about stimming around others can help you move past the discomfort. Identify your beliefs specifically about stimming in front of other people. Why is it uncomfortable or anxiety-inducing? Are you afraid of people staring at you, judging you or mocking you? Naming these fears can help you come up with counter-thoughts that allow you to chip away at the discomfort. For me, telling myself, “It doesn’t matter what strangers think of me,” has proven helpful when I feel anxious about stimming publicly, and I’ve come to truly believe it.
As you do this work, you can practice stimming around others in small doses—perhaps starting with stims that feel less intimidating to do in the presence of others, but still push on the walls of your comfort zone. For example, you could try repeating something in your head versus out loud, or playing with a small fidget instead of hand-flapping.
Getting comfortable with stimming around others is a long-term process. Approach it gradually and take care of yourself. Working with a psychotherapist who can help you navigate this and monitor your progress is a great way to ensure you have the support you need.
Work to reduce social anxiety
Researchers estimate that as many as 50% of autistic individuals deal with social anxiety. Social anxiety can make stimming around others feel more stressful, or even impossible. Addressing underlying social anxiety can help autistic individuals feel less fearful of judgment or rejection, related to stimming or otherwise.
Approaches used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be highly effective at treating social anxiety. CBT works by helping an individual identify unhelpful beliefs they hold—for individuals with social anxiety, these could be recurring thoughts like, “I am not likable,” or “People are judging me.” CBT helps people notice these thoughts when they arise, and then challenge them with more supportive counter-thoughts—in this example, these could be “I have likeable traits like [I am funny, I am kind—whatever feels true for the person]” or “I’m thinking way more about what I am doing than anyone else is.”
Over time, these healthier, more helpful thoughts will slowly become more dominant than the initial negative beliefs. A therapist can help guide you through this work in a way that feels meaningful and helpful for you, reducing social anxiety symptoms and empowering you to be your authentic self.
Strategies for regulation and reducing overall anxiety can also help address social anxiety. Grounding techniques (such as the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise) and deep breathing exercises can help regulate the nervous system while you are feeling anxious in a social situation. With practice, exercises like these may be able to reduce some of the physical symptoms of anxiety, such as elevated heart rate, sweating, nausea or chest pain.
Plus, you can even use stimming as a way to cope with social anxiety, engaging in some more discreet stims while in anxiety-provoking situations. For example, you can play with a fidget of choice while you’re at a social gathering or when you’re talking to a cashier at the store. As your overall social anxiety lessens and you learn to care less about being judged by others, you might feel comfortable stimming more in public.
Exposing yourself—in manageable doses—to social situations that scare you is also key to combating social anxiety. Plan to practice coping skills during social engagements where your anxiety will be elevated but manageable. Some ideas include:
- Striking up a short, simple conversation with a cashier
- Attending a social event with a trusted person
- Speaking up in a meeting at work
Make sure to plan time to care for yourself after these engagements. Dedicate some time to be alone or with a close, trusted person, and prepare some tools or strategies to help you regulate, such as:
- Listening to music with noise-cancelling headphones
- Using a favorite sensory item like a weighted blanket
- Doing a grounding exercise.
Build a supportive community
Building a community that supports you and understands your needs can go a long way towards helping you feel more comfortable stimming. Growing more comfortable with stimming around those close to you serves as a bridge toward feeling confident with stimming in more public environments. However, others may find it easier to stim around strangers they never expect to see again rather than people they see often—it depends on the individual.
If you are comfortable doing so, educating people in your life about stimming can help them understand what stimming behaviors mean and why they’re important. Understanding builds acceptance, and some autistic people may find these conversations affirming and comforting. Sharing this knowledge with people close to you might help you feel more comfortable stimming around them. Having the support of close friends and family may also make it more comfortable to stim in more public spaces when your loved ones are with you as a support.
Adapt stims where you need to
Sometimes, stimming the way you’d like to around others may feel too far outside of your comfort zone or unsafe. In these situations, stims that blend into neurotypical norms—like listening to music in headphones, playing with your hair, chewing gum or fidgeting with a pen—can offer some regulation and sensory filtering without drawing unwanted attention to you. These stims may not be as effective as the ones that feel more natural to you, but they can still help.
How Prosper can help
Prosper Health’s knowledgeable and compassionate clinicians specialize in adult autism. They can help you navigate challenges common among autistic adults, including unmasking, getting more comfortable with stimming and coping with social anxiety. Your therapist can help you identify what’s holding you back from stimming around others and work to address any barriers in your way.
Therapy with Prosper Health is 100% virtual, and is covered by insurance in most cases. If you’re ready to get started, click the button below to get connected with a neurodiversity-affirming clinician within days.
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