‘Everybody stims. It’s normal! Stop labelling everything.’
Yes, I have gotten this comment before when I’ve shared the things I’ve learnt about autism since my late diagnosis. Sure, you could argue that everybody stims. But the intense way and the reason that autistic people need to stim compared to neurotypical people is vastly different.
What is stimming? Stimming is the use of repeated movements or repeated behaviours for sensory stimulation to keep calm or express joy. To put it simply.
For neurotypical people, ‘stimming’ is way to occupy oneself when bored or to sooth anxiety. Not too dissimilar to autistic people but it is usually less noticeable and less intense. For example, pen tapping or drumming fingers. These behaviours are totally ‘normal’ and not a singular cause for an autism diagnosis.
Stimming alone is not cause for a diagnosis, but there is a reason that stimming is a core feature of the autism diagnostic criteria. I would say that the general public don’t know what stimming can really look like – because I didn’t! - or can only recognise the stereotypical rocking back and forth and hand flapping behaviours. The reality is, stimming looks very different for every autistic person and can be especially undetectable in high masking people.
I can only speak of my experience as a late diagnosed, high masking woman, but I think sharing is helpful for others to see the different ways stimming can present. Something I’ve learned since my diagnosis is that stimming isn’t limited to physical movements but can include all the senses as well as the mind. So, here are my ‘unusual’ or less known stims that I do that I had no idea were stims in the first place.
Singing. I had no idea that oral stims were a thing and I’ve since realised that singing is a stim of mine. And a big one at that. I don’t mean random small bursts of singing around the house or singing to my favourite songs, which I definitely do. But I’m talking about needing to belt out in the car on my way to work to help with the uneasiness, the pain, of the transition. I would convince myself to get into the car to do whatever task I didn’t want to do, by telling myself I could sing. I would come home from work, have a 30-minute shower and belt out my favourite album, ‘Folklore’ by Taylor Swift btw, in order to calm down after a busy day. Because before that, I’m incredibly irritable, frustrated and exhausted from masking all day. I was especially reliant on this stim when I was a nurse during covid. The warm, soothing stimulation from the shower and singing loudly allowed me to calm down and regulate in the evenings when I didn’t feel human. It became a ritual, something I depended on. Looking back, I now know why.
I had never thought much about this behaviour before, especially because I imagine singing in the car and shower are pretty common things to do, but after I was diagnosed with autism and learnt what stimming was, it clicked that this was one of mine. I can date this exact same behaviour to childhood as well. I would come home after school and belt out ‘Love Story’ by Taylor Swift. Since my diagnosis, I’ve realised that I wasn’t singing ‘just because I like music’ but because I enjoyed the way my mouth and throat felt while singing. It soothed me, distracted me, calmed me down after pretending to be neurotypical all day and struggling to get through days of school or work.
Another less known stim I do is a mental one. I repeat phrases over and over in my mind when I’m overstimulated and can’t self-regulate. I do this mostly when I’m in public and feel as if I ‘can’t cause a scene’ or I can’t stim with my hands. These phrases aren’t anything wild, just mostly things like ‘I need to go home,’ or ‘You’re almost home,’ or a variation of those. I repeat them over and over until I’m in the safe space of my own home. Once I’m home after stimming like this, and I’m on the verge of a meltdown, I have to strip my clothes off, remove any jewellery, push my hair back from my face, removing any source of uncomfortable stimulation and lay on my bed or couch in complete silence for hours. It takes an autistic person hours, if not days, maybe sometimes weeks, to recover from a meltdown. Constant, or bouts of, stimming can be a way to lessen the severity or frequency of meltdowns. As well as removing the stimulus of the overstimulation that causes the meltdown. But of course, this isn’t always possible when the causes can be things like simple conversation at work or a noisy public space. (Because imagine it takes days to recover from a meltdown if you're having one once, or even more, every week. You can see why autistic people are exhausted and require accommodations in social and work settings.)
Another oral stim that I can date back to childhood is chewing straws. (Back when we had plastic straws). For as long as I remember I would chew the shit out of any straw I had. I enjoyed the repetitive movement of it and seriously couldn’t help it. Even when friends and family would say, ‘Ew, Tahnee why are you doing that?’. I didn’t have an explanation for them. Looking back, it was a ‘subtle’ (maybe not so subtle when people are commenting on it) or less known stim.
Another form of stimming is sensory seeking. Something I do constantly. I’m always looking for satisfying textures to touch. Things like velvet or silk. I love the feeling of rubbing that material between my fingers so much that I ‘seek’ it out. I had no idea that was also a stim. I love the feeling of having gel nail polish on and the feeling of rubbing the smooth surface of my nail. Or I really enjoy the feeling of rubbing my lips together with a specific texture of lip balm on. For as long as I can remember, I have only liked wearing certain textured lip balms. If it’s too thin or too thick, I hate it. There needs to be a silkiness to the balm that feels enjoyable to rub my lips together. I do this constantly. Being high masking, I have unconsciously done things like this for years as a way to hide my stims and the fact that I was autistic. Even from myself.
Seeking certain textured foods can also be a stim. I think it’s largely agreed amongst a lot of autistic people that crunchy texture specifically is the best. (That’s an anecdotal opinion of course). Crunchy things are superior, but occasionally there’s a time when crunchy textures are exhausting, so I’ll seek for something softer or smoother, if I have to eat. (Another ‘symptom’ of autism is that eating can be strenuous. Finding something that isn’t overstimulating or stressful to eat is arduous, so a lot of times we miss meals and sometimes find it hard to look after ourselves that way. Again, I can only speak for myself, but I think this is true for a lot of autistic people).
So, there’s some of my ‘unusual’ or unnoticeable stims that a lot of people wouldn’t realise are stims. When I started figuring out that a lot of my behaviours are not just ‘simple quirks’ but are a product of my neurodivergent brain, a lot of things started to click into place for me. It’s a really nice feeling to know why I do or crave certain things. I’m now able to recognise that if I’m stimming or sensory seeking more than usual, I might be really stressed and need to remove myself from a situation or perhaps I’m on the verge of burn out and need to allow myself to rest more. (Pretty hard to do without feeling guilty in a society that shames rest, or what they might deem to be ‘excessive’ rest. Which I find weird).
So many people don’t understand why adult autism diagnoses are important, not realising that once we have the knowledge with how our brains work, we can look after ourselves a lot better and have a greater quality of life. But I suppose it’s hard looking in from the outside when you have no idea what it feels like to mask a meltdown in public or go through constant cycles of burn out every few months. So, I hope with this blog that anyone reading who isn’t autistic will have a better and more compassionate understanding before saying, ‘Stop labelling everything’.
If you’re autistic and reading this and want to educate me or provide some feedback on this topic, feel free to contact me. I have only been diagnosed for six months as a 29-year-old, so I am still learning and open to feedback if you feel I have misrepresented or forgotten anything.
See you in the next one!!
Diagnosed with autism & ADHD at 28
How did I get diagnosed with autism and ADHD at 28 years old?
Hi! I’m Tahnee, welcome to my first blog post! I hope it provides insight or solidarity with anyone else experiencing something similar. So here goes…
My entire life, I had no idea that I was autistic or that it was even a possibility that I could be. I always felt ‘other’, a bit ‘alien’, compared to my peers but I thought I was just ‘quirky’. I had quite a strong suspicion that I had ADHD since my early twenties and had kind of accepted the fact. Talking really loud and fast, quick and intense emotions, having all-encompassing hobbies for a couple months where I couldn’t take care of myself (I lost 5kg when I taught myself to sew), struggling to respond to emails or missing them completely and paying bills late, as well as a slew of other things, were all traits that cemented the fact, to myself, that I had ADHD.
The autism traits, however, were not noticeable to me, nor anyone around me. This is where society’s expectations for what autism ‘looks like’ and the kind of people it presents in prevents a large population of autistic people from getting diagnosed. So, when I started getting videos on TikTok about what autism can look like, specifically in undiagnosed adult women who also have ADHD, alarm bells started to ring in the back of my mind. Because of these videos I’ve since learnt that autism can look very different, not just from person to person of different ages, but from men to women. (There’s a lot of reasons why that is, but I’ll talk about that in a different post.) So, when these videos consumed my feed in the early months of 2025, the idea that maybe I was autistic started to wiggle its way into my mind.
At the time I had no intention to get diagnosed, not only because I had ADHD and making appointments is really hard, but also because I was gaslighting myself that I was overreacting. I told myself there was no way I was autistic. I had graduated high school, graduated in a bachelor's degree of nursing and had a successful career in nursing where I was recently promoted to Clinical Nurse Specialist in my area of Anaesthetics and Recovery. Something I was incredibly proud of. I also had always had a group of friends that I was a part of, so I was able to make friends, and I had a successful long-term relationship and was now married- so there was no way that I could actually be autistic.
Until I had another giant meltdown. I came home one night after an evening of drinking (something I had not done for over nine months) and had a very loud and prolonged meltdown of inconsolable crying, classic stimming of rocking back and forth and hand flapping and screaming ‘there’s too many people around, everyone needs to leave me alone’. What’s important to note is at the time I was working as a bartender in a very busy bar where I was feeling very overwhelmed by the environment. (The reason I was a bartender instead of a nurse is because we moved overseas. Story for another time.) From busy Saturday nights serving hundreds of drunk people, to struggling with the management, I was overwhelmed and it was getting to me underneath, even though on the surface ‘I was fine’ and was forcing myself to push through it.
The day following this meltdown, where my husband had to help me through into the early hours of the morning, I was feeling very ashamed. I also thought that there had to be a reason for this behaviour as it wasn’t the first time this had happened. So, with the delusion that TikTok was feeding me the correct videos and with the shame of my behaviour, I searched for a way to get diagnosed.
We all know that getting diagnosed with autism or ADHD in the public system can take years. As I was living in a different country, the UK, where I wasn’t sure how long I’d be living there, as well as being very impatient, I couldn’t wait that long, so I started looking into the private sector. I knew that I needed to find a clinic that specialised in undiagnosed adult women because it is still quite a misunderstood sub-type of neurodivergence that not every psychologist is versed in yet. I wanted a specialist. I found one specialist clinic in the UK that offered a joint autism and ADHD assessment, and it cost around £2900!! (Which is roughly $6000 AUD). I thought it was an extortionate price especially when it was an online assessment and I wasn’t willing to pay that much when I still wasn’t sure if I was autistic or not.
Seeing as I am Australian, and I knew that even our private sector wasn’t that expensive, I thought I’d try looking at Australian clinics. I found at least three clinics that specialised in autistic and ADHD women and chose one that felt right. It cost $2500 (which is roughly £1,250) for the joint assessment, which is still a lot of money, but it was better than what was being offered in the UK. I still felt uneasy about spending that kind of money because I had so many doubts. What if I’m not autistic and I’ve just wasted all this money and I’m just a bad person who can’t control her emotions? But my lovely husband said something that stuck with me and convinced me to go ahead with the assessment. He said, ‘We would spend that kind of money on your physical health, so I don’t see why we can’t spend it on your mental health.’ And he was absolutely right. If me or my husband was sick or needed surgery, I wouldn’t hesitate to spend the money. So, I did.
I booked the appointment for a month's time and I waited, doubts swirling in my mind the entire time. A week before the appointment, the clinic sent a bunch of online assessments to fill out before our zoom call appointment. Going into the online assessments, I thought it was just a few forms to fill out and would take me less than an hour. Oh, was I wrong. It took me seven hours to finish the very extensive questionaries that I tried to answer as honestly as I could. One of the downfalls of autism assessments, I think a lot of people who have gone through this will agree, is that a lot of the questions are yes or no answers, and when you feel like you need context to answer it, it makes filling them out very difficult. I had no idea how to answer a lot of them. Especially because at this time I didn’t realise that most traits can present differently. Questions like, ‘Do you participate in stimming behaviour, e.g. rocking back and forth or hand flapping?’ And all I could think of was that I didn’t do any of those things, so I would click no, not knowing that stimming looks wildly different in every autistic person. So, I found a lot of these questions very difficult. But there was a large portion of the assessment where I could type my answer, which I enjoyed so much more because I could give a detailed response and convey my thought process to the question.
Once those assessments were done, I started curating a list of traits that I have and thought might be traits of someone with autism and ADHD. Because I knew as soon as I started the video call, all thoughts would fly out of my head and I’d be sitting there like a fish out of water unable to speak. I separated the list into four categories; Possible Autism Traits, Possible Stims, Food Aversions and ADHD Traits. A few things on this list included, being told I’m gullible, wearing the same clothes every day, listening to one album or artist for months or years, cheek biting, nail rubbing, hating the idea of eating yoghurt out of a tub and eating fruit without skin that has been touching on a platter. In the lead up to my assessment I would add something to the list when I thought of it or when I noticed it, so by the time the zoom call came around, I had multiple pages of ‘evidence’ or what I thought might be evidence seeing as I still wasn’t sure if I was autistic or not.
Within the first twenty minutes of the video call, the psychologist told me I was definitely AUDHD. After having gone through my detailed online assessments and speaking to me for even a short period, she knew that I was autistic. Let’s just say I was shocked at how quickly she picked it up and was happy to diagnose me then and there when I hadn’t expected to get the results for weeks.
This is probably when I should mention that my assessing psychologist, and the owner of the clinic, is also a late diagnosed autistic and ADHD woman. She was not diagnosed until after graduating with multiple degrees in her field and found it difficult to not only get a diagnosis but have people, even her colleagues, believe her afterwards. Which is when she developed the special interest to specialise in diagnosing other adults in more welcoming and less judgemental environments than what she experienced.
When I told her that I was surprised by the diagnosis, because, again, at this point I still wasn’t convinced, she told me she was very, very sure I was autistic. She said that I fit the criteria easily and she has had clients where she has not been able to give a diagnosis, (debunking the ‘You paid for a diagnosis’ crowd). And let’s just say, the weeks and months that followed the diagnosis did not go the way I thought it would. But I’ll write about post diagnosis in a separate post.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog and gotten a bit of insight into getting diagnosed late as a woman and maybe this will encourage someone to get their own diagnosis!