Modern life, stimming, autistic behavior
Published:
I just made a connection that is strangely super exciting to me. I've noticed lately when I get trying to focus on studying, or working on a programming problem, things like that, I've been reaching for crunchy snacks a lot. Today it occurred to me that it's 90% + for sensory stimulation, not due to hunger or even food cravings of any particular kind: it's the crunch I'm mostly after, followed slightly by taste.
This lead to some google searching, and the discovery of "chewelry", and a bunch of tumblr pages full of teens raving about their new chew toys, and... well, the internet is a strange place, we'll just stop there.
Apparently the need for oral stimulation is pretty common in kids, especially kids with sensory processing disorders, or on the autistic spectrum. (Most of my google results involved information for adults to help kids in therapy, in fact.) I've wondered in the past if I might have some mild SPD, or mild autistic tendencies; if so, it hasn't been a big obvious impact in my life, but there are things that make me wonder. Reading about kids chewing or sucking things brought back all kinds of flashbacks from my youth (hair chewing, sleeve sucking, etc) and suddenly connected to motivation for idle habits I still have in adulthood - excessively thorough tooth picking, playing with necklaces in my mouth, rubbing or chewing my lips, etc.
A lot of the behaviors described in the articles I saw today are associated with autism. Seems just rampant in kids today, although - everything seems rampant when you can find all the information about it instantly on the internet, instead of depending on your personal experience to judge frequencies. Still, it makes me wonder. Are these actually abnormal coping behaviors, or just a symptom of modern life having such low sensory stimulation that the brain looks for anything it can find?
I don't have good answers, but I wonder about these kinds of things.
Anyway, I'm excited to draw these connections, I might get myself some "chewelry" soon and see how I like it (now that I'm thinking about it in that context, I had a number of frequently worn necklaces that were often on my lips, etc. Never occurred to me that there might be a self-stimulating behavior involved in that, but it makes sense.) And it reminded me that I bought a couple fidget cubes back in the day when they were new, maybe they will help me cut back on calories throughout the afternoon :D
