STOP PUTTING WARNINGS ON STIMS: a thread

So most of you have probably seen a tik tok that starts like this (cropped out name bc in this house we respect anonymity)

There are several reasons why this is harmful, the main one being that it seems to be a pattern amongst the “self dx”/fake disorder community. The warning often comes before a highly unrealistic and harmful example of a stim, with no regard-

for what stimming actually is or what it’s purpose is. That, however, is not the point of this thread.

Stimming is very normal, both for NT and ND people, HOWEVER, ND people (especially those with autism) often cannot help or control their stims, and are ostracised for them no matter how minimal or harmless they are.

Posting a video of yourself stimming to raise awareness of what it is is one thing, but adding a warning at the beginning of ANY kind of video containing stimming implies that autistic people should be masking their stims around others or -

should be asking permission to stim, which is absolutely NOT THE CASE. Stimming should be normalised. It is not triggering, it is generally not harmful and autistic people already face enough problems in this world that the last thing they need is to have a -

comfort mechanism portrayed as something that needs a warning. Imagine an NT person who has no idea what stimming is coming across one of these videos. It’s their first exposure to stimming, and it’s immediately portrayed negatively.

This is not right! We cannot normalise something when we continue to treat it as a taboo. Autistic people deserve better and all this is doing is piling on the negative stigma surrounding autism/stimming.

Of course, if you’re portraying a harmful stim then you should include a warning, not for the fact that your stimming, but because harmful behaviour can be upsetting to others. This thread is not about those kinds of stims.

This thread is about stims that people are trying to portray as normal, whilst contradicting themselves by including a warning. I say “trying to portray” because of what I mentioned earlier in the thread.

So in conclusion, don’t add warnings to things that are heavily misunderstood and that people are fighting to have normalised. You’re not doing anyone any favours. I don’t care if you’re faking or not, you’re putting huge pressure on the rest of us who just want to live -

without fear of being ostracised for actions that we cannot help.

But if you are faking, please get help. You are hurting us, and yourself. It is not fair or right and no one deserves to have to put up with you invading our spaces and talking over us.