Self-Destructive Behavior

Yesterday at the gym, I was on the stationary bike, on the program "weight loss". I had the earbuds of my iPod plugged into my earholes (or as my Bio Anth class would call it, my "external auditory meatus"). I wasn't playing any music because I had some reading for a class to catch up on. I only wanted silence.

About three to five minutes into my workout, I hear some grunting from the man on the elliptical behind me. The first time I heard it, it didn't strike me as anything out of the ordinary. Then, it became rhythmic. Every twenty seconds, two grunts, three grunts. I noticed this as something called "stimming." This is a behavior closely associated with autism. My brother is autistic, and he makes throat noises that are described as "popping".

Many people who know me may never notice this, but I, too, at times have a stimming disorder. I have, at intervals, had bouts of prolonged blinking, eye-rolling, lip-biting, breath-holding, and what I think could be the strangest: finger counting. When I was 14 and 15, I would go through these periods of plucking the top joints of my fingers to add up to the number five. I would pluck each one, one time for five. Then, two fingers at once, followed by the other three. Four fingers and then one. Needless to say, I probably looked like a freak. People never seemed to notice this last stim, but they would notice my eye-rolling and often call me on it (and not in a nice way).

I think stimming is common amongst siblings of mentally handicapped persons. My only evidence of this is what I have gathered from my own behavior and of a childhood acquaintance of mine. My friend would harshly blink repeatedly, so harsh that his head would jerk down whenever he did it. I'm undecided, however, if stimming is a behavioral trait inherited, or if it is simply caused my prolonged stress. My childhood friend and I, as siblings of severely, mentally handicapped persons (and we both lived in strict religious households, him more so) lived in VERY stressful environments. Looking back on it now, I kind of wish that we would have connected more on this shared struggle, but we were young and too interested in X-Men and basketball cards.

I thought I should add that stimming feels horrible. It makes you hate yourself. You try and stop it yourself, but it is impossible. For me, the only solution has been to physically remove myself from whatever environment was making me stim. This took a long time to realize.

Anyway, this guy at the gym was obviously stimming, but I wasn't sympathetic towards him like I probably should have been. Instead, I became angry. In my head, I was screaming, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" and after five minutes worth of hearing his cadenced grunting, I angrily slammed down my book and pushed play on my iPod, blaring Queens of the Stone Age into my head.

Now, I was pedaling faster.