I feel like I sometimes stim mainly to communicate "I am autistic and feeling overwhelmed right now" to onlookers when I can't easily talk. Can anyone else relate?
Erikatharsis @ Erikatharsis @kbin.social Posts 6Comments 49Joined 2 yr. ago

Erikatharsis @ Erikatharsis @kbin.social
Posts
6
Comments
49
Joined
2 yr. ago
Perhaps normally I would do those things for those reasons, but there will always be times when I can neither talk nor leave, and don't have a communication bracelet or smartphone on my person nor a good 'helper' nearby. In those types of last-resort situations, something like trying to call attention to my stimming ends up being really the only form of communication permitted by the all-powerful Zakon.
It might actually be precisely because this "communicative stimming" is vague/indirect that draws me to it: indirect communication is for me not subject to temporary loss in the same way as the otherwise far more preferable direct communication; and because I so often need to interpret the weird body language of the neurotypical hegemon, I might end up deriving some sort of satisfaction from "turning the tables" in a situation where it's pretty much hopeless that I'd be able to communicate at all otherwise.
"The Zakon" (← RU зако́н 'law') is my all-encompassing term for rigid routines, as well as hypersensitivities and related behaviors, and the outwardly irrational behaviors related to masking-induced social anxieties/over-analysis. In summary, the Zakon is the compelling force behind every behavior that prompts people to ask why I don't do the obviously much easier and better thing.