What skill can I learn while stimming?
Instead of biting my nails or playing with a fidget toy, is there a skill I can learn/practice?
Like rolling a pen/coin through my fingers or something like that.
Instead of biting my nails or playing with a fidget toy, is there a skill I can learn/practice?
Like rolling a pen/coin through my fingers or something like that.
Lockpicking maybe? Just recently got into it as a bucket list hobbies but it’s actually really entertaining. They sell practice cutaway locks that fit easily in one hand as you fidget about with the lock picks.
This is a great idea! Lock picking is fun and super impressive to laymen (haha).
Just don't tell anyone but your closest, most trusted friends (haha). Also, tell them to keep it a secret! Why? So your neighbor doesn't knock on your door at 2AM because they locked themselves out of their apartment.
Also, you don't need cutaway locks! They're neat toys but nothing more. What you really need is a variety of locks to play with.
Head to your local hardware store and pick up a bunch of cheap locks. Or just ask friends if they have any old padlocks they're not using (most people will have one or two).
True, cutaway locks aren’t needed. I recently heard of a neat idea where you can call around various storage businesses and ask if they have cut locks from people who lost their unit. It won’t be useful to lock anything but great for practice. Unfortunately the one near me throws theirs away regularly so I need to call around more to see what I can find.
You can get training locks where the back of each cylinder unscrews so you can put in as many or as few pins as you want, and try it again with different pinning each time.
Yup! Thats like the one I have from Sparrows. I got their Tuxedo Reloaded set and it comes with all sorts of driver pins and keys to setup yourself.
Whenever I have my lockpicks and a few padlocks available, I end up picking nonstop while doing things like watching youtube
That’s what stimming is for, kid!
Stimming is a natural source of the “try mind” zen practitioners speak of. Do a perfect impression of Jon Stewart. Why? Why?? Hell no there’s no why.
I drum with my fingers. The first time I picked up a tabla someone was pissed that I got it “immediately”. No! That’s the result of hundreds of hours of practice.
Stimming is a fusion reactor in the autistic mind, just waiting to be hooked up to something useful. We can practice a task orders of magnitude more than most people can, because we literally can’t get tired of it.
If nothing else, go play some music. Stimming with music is how culture began. Somebody’s gotta drag these numbskulls through their passivity to new levels of beauty. Stimming is the hacksaw that cuts the prison bars shoddy workmanship.
Absolutely knitting or crocheting. It's very soothing.
After I quit smoking, I wanted to do something with my hands so I bit my nails until it hurt.
Crochet was/ is something I can do with my hands and at the end I get a cool hat or a nice scarf. Yarn gets expensive, tho.
Not a useful skill, but you could try speedcubing
More of a slowcuber myself
My most frequent stim for YEARS involves me playing along doing saxophone fingerings to whatever music I'm listening to or is stuck in my head. So, maybe a wind instrument!
+1 for almost any instrument
What do you mean by "stimming"? Being on stimulants?
Edit: In case it was not clear, I am literally asking what this word means as I have not heard it before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimming
Thank you! I thought it might have been new slang that I was unaware of rather than something that I may have experienced and may need to look into further.
I hadn't heard of this before either, but after seeing the Wikipedia article, I'm not sure if this is correct, but I'd summarize it as the activity of fidgeting.
Fidgeting in a repetitive way that provides sensory feedback.
ADHD here. Speedcubing. It's a wonderful hobby for me. When I'm interested in it, I can learn some new things and time myself to see how I'm doing. When I'm not interested in it, I can solve it and it helps me to focus on watching TV. Even if I'm not solving it, it feels great just to twist in your hands.
Look up a good budget speedcube (not Rubik's branded) and invest yourself as much or as little as you fancy.
Just recently learned CFOP from someone (still really slow at it) and it's a great fidget. I use it during a few of my more droning zoom meetings and it makes me feel like I'm doing something semi productive while I fidget.
At some point soon you're going to solve it in front of someone whilst you're fidgeting, not even really focussing on it and you'll blow their freaking mind and you'll feel great.
Remember the GM of a TTRPG session I was playing was running a session and he noticed I'd been solving it when he'd assumed I'd just been fidgeting. He literally interrupted the session to exclaim 'Oh my God, you solved it!' and it took me a good few seconds to realize what he was talking about, as my attention was primarily on what he was saying and I was just idly solving.
Enjoy it when it comes :)
I learned to count to 31 on 1 hand using binary. I've gotten more than a few free drinks via bar bets with that skill lol.
I'm going to learn this skill and wonder why people are counting to 4 in front of me.
4 and 5 are some of the most popular numbers out there, apparently.
Was it a bar at a software companies happy hour?
Who would bet a drink against your ability to count in binary?
Shit talking and making odd claims about talents are a good way to pass the time drinking in bars with strangers/acquaintances.
That's... Barely a skill
It’s a little over 30
Coin tricks. Especially knuckle rolling coins and learning how to change the position of the coin between various palming techniques.
Drumming
I've thought so much about this because I stim by bouncing my leg and strumming my fingers on stuff; I'm already basically playing drums!
Related: get a Digitakt or Syntakt from Elektron and make music while you stim with clicky buttons 🤩
Digitakt is awesome
You might be already doing this. If you strum your fingers of your right hand by pressing your index, middle, ring, and pinky to your desktop, and then do the same thing again starting with your thumb, you've just counted from 0 to 9. Do the same on your left hand and you've gone from 00 to 90. It's really easy to do simple math this way by counting on your fingers.
For stimming purposes, you might just start by counting up or counting down, then maybe counting up by twos or counting down by threes.
This is the approach that I've known for many decades now. I've seen YouTube videos of kids doing amazing fast calculations like multiplying large numbers using what looks like a different method in that their hands are in the air. I'll leave it to you to Google the other approaches if this direction interests you.
Shuffling cards, rubix cube, ukulele, traveling coin,
Maybe knitting?
I second knitting, and its 100% something you can do while watching tv without needing to devote much concentration, its almost subconscious once your going.
I've gotten pretty good at rolling a pen through my fingers just through fidgeting over the past twenty years. So it's definitely possible!
While I'm unfamiliar with your condition, it seems simple magic tricks, like having a playing card appear in your hand from thin air (when it was actually just well hidden) and making it disappear again.
Drawing. I set myself the strict rule to be completely unambitious about my coloured pencil drawings. I do them only for myself, and the enjoyment while doing it is the main purpose. So sometimes I just draw some squiggles and then I fill them with colours, one layer over another. One drawing can take weeks, I do a bit every evening and it is so relaxing. Now with time they start looking really neat as a cool side effect, so I have been thinking about framing them.
Look into flow arts! There's something for everyone, and it's great exercise!
Also for those who don't feel like Googling it: flow arts include juggling, spinning, baton/staff/whatever spinning, fan dance (?), and more.
TIL there's a general term for that.
Wouldn't the coin on the knuckles thing count?
Coin on the knuckles is tangential but not usually considered flowarts, which is usually more of a whole body activity. However it's close enough that I wouldn't be surprised if I saw someone showing off at a gathering. Similar to like hackeysack or balisong (butterfly knife).
Flow is also a gateway to fire performance, aerials, acrobatics, and other circus arts
Begleri is a cool skill toy
Balisongs are cool too
Think you just answered your own question.
Seriously though, coin rolling is great for dexterity and you can move on to some simple slight of hand magic
Pen tricks too. I also had one of my psych patients who had dermatillomania learn to make those paper stars. They also make "paint by sticker" books.
Compulsive skin picking for those who don't want to have to Google it.
I did magic tricks as a hobby, I would practice some card techniques with whatever I had at hand, e.g. credit or parking cards. There are several things you can do with cards or coins that are quick and cool.
Archery
Manager: "So, welcome to our office, you'll be working her..." Arrows flies between him and his interlocutor
New hire: "WHAT THE..."
Manager:"Oh right, watch out for Stimmy Jimmy, he shoots arrows all over the place, helps him focus."
May I ask what sort of work you do?
Tech stuff, so I'm sitting in an office
I was thinking something I could do at work without being too distracting
Kegel exercises
Practicing touch typing.
I don't know how many times I've absent-mindedly "strummed" my fingers by tapping out "This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is only a test. In the event of a real emergency...", a TV memory from my childhood.
When I first learned touch typing, I did consciously practice this way. ASDF, JKL;. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Get a balisong/butterfly knife and just practice opening and closing it without looking and with minimal movement
annoying