To think that stimming (especially destructive or very intense) is potentially not helpful or even harmful in the long run?

Quoting this to highlight it

autistic stims are NOT the same as repetitive OCD behaviours

My opinion is from working with autistic children and adults for the past 28 years and having postgraduate qualifications in autism and ADHD best practice. I don’t frame myself as an expert. I’m still learning, and people are unique individuals. It doesn’t bother me if people stim. I’m not sure why it bothers you enough to start a thread on the topic.

You sound massively ignorant.
I stim, it helps it doesn’t hurt anyone so why does it matter?
Why must we fit in a square that society expects? Posts like this are harmful, you evidently have no experience in the matter so shut up.

It's not so much unreasonable as irrelevant. I know you mean well, but you don't have expertise in this area so why should your thoughts on this trump an expert's opinion?

Even if it was harmful, it isn't as harmful as the results of what would happen without been able to stim and regulate oneself.
Trying to train someone out of stimming is veering into ABA territory, which is most definitely harmful.

My son is non verbal and a flapper and a bouncer. Mine is skin picking, so it is quite self destructive as it can cause pain and bleeding. But I've been doing it for at least 25 years, so I don't think it will be easy for me to be "trained" out of it.

Well you can have an opinion and other people can point out that it’s ill informed and wrong. A discussion isn’t where everyone agrees with you or gives every opinion equal consideration.

I agree - Tony Attwood has spoken extensively about this. ABA is marketed as a cure in the USA because therapists can make money from it. Most autism specialists in the UK recognise the harm it causes.

Op you sound ignorant. Is it possible that many of the Reddit threads have been posted by Americans who had intensive ABA treatment to make them appear more neurotypical. For many kids that has destroyed their mental health. And you need to research autistic burnout often caused by masking.

The patterns are difficult to break but they often can be. Look into response interruption and redirection.

The thing that is bad for the animal in that situation is not the pacing.

The thing that is bad for them is being confined in a small, stressful space with insufficient mental stimulation.

Stopping the animal pacing doesn't help them - quite the opposite, actually. If you stop them from pacing, it just means the only thing that can relieve their stress is no longer available to them and they suffer a lot more as a result.

What does help them is removing them from the inappropriate enclosure and rehoming them in a more suitable environment. Then their pacing generally either disappears entirely over time, or reduces considerably, because they are no longer under stress.

But the solution there is to create a better environment for them (which goes all the way up to taking them out of it altogether and releasing them) - not force them to stop doing it by putting them in an even smaller space where they can't pace/turn around/whatever.

You're not talking about making an environment nicer for somebody so they don't need to stim as much in a way that offends your sensibilities, you're just wanting them to stop - which is going to be about as effective as my mother screaming at me to stop biting my nails or somebody in the office putting in a formal complaint because I crack my joints (sometimes intentionally to relieve pain and stiffness)/my joints crack on movement, but going absolutely garrity when the suggestion is that I was moved to a small office of my own.

In UK-relevant research and broader meta-analyses, about 10–12% of autistic children/adolescents meet criteria for OCD. That’s not “very common” and stimming doesn’t cause OCD.

Ah, this changes the flavour of the whole thread.

OP, I have autism and OCD. You’re conflating two very different things. I understand your concern about compulsions and anxiety-driven loops, but autistic stimming is a totally different mechanism and serves a very different purpose.

Yes, OCD compulsions do worsen when reinforced, because they are driven by intrusive thoughts and threat reduction. Allowing them strengthens the belief that the compulsion prevents danger.
Autistic stimming doesn’t work like that. It isn’t driven by fear or intrusive thoughts, it doesn’t reinforce a false belief, and it isn’t about neutralising threat. It’s a bottom-up, nervous-system regulation response that discharges sensory or emotional load in real time.
Suppressing non-harmful stimming doesn’t reduce dysregulation, it internalises it. That’s why long-term masking is associated with burnout, anxiety, self-harm and worse outcomes, not better ones.

OCD and autism can absolutely be co-morbid, but that makes functional assessment more important, not blanket “wariness” of repetitive behaviour. The same outward movement can serve completely different roles depending on the underlying mechanism. Treating them as equivalent causes harm.

more talking generally

It is meaningless to 'talk generally' about an extremely complex and very varied set of neurodiverse conditions and behaviours, which affect and manifest in different people in different ways.

Even if you were an expert, which you are not, you wouldn't be in a position to make informed recommendations about the behaviours of neurodiverse people you've never met and examined.

It's hilariously big-headed of you to assume that you know people and their children better than they, and the qualified professionals who treat them, know them. And not only big-headed but downright dangerous to dish out advice based on your assumptions.

How does pacing or rocking harm you or anyone else? You might not like it, but it’s not harmful to the person doing it. We are not robots.

There is some degree of overlap between OCD and autism in some people. Autistic stimming helps to regulate the emotional system and are a source of comfort. There is no need to stop autistic people from stimming unless it causes actual harm, which is rare in my experience and can be replaced with something that gives the same feeling of comfort. OCD compulsions are experienced as distressing and can be treated with medication or therapy. It’s that simple.

So what? That doesn't qualify you to advise people.

What stimming is acceptable and what isn't OP. Yoo haven't clarified?

That’s because animals are not designed to be in zoos and pacing is their only coping mechanism.

So not a psych or doctor.

Autistic adults have been diagnosed with PTSD after harmful so-called therapies that rewarded them for suppressing stimming, so no, the science is very clear on this. Children who were left-handed used to be trained to write with their right hand because that was supposedly the norm. That was also harmful.

I’m a psychologist and specialise in neurodiversity. In 15 years I haven’t come across one person where this was harmful. The harm I have witnessed was from people trying to prevent individuals from engaging with their stim behaviours or try to’teach’ someone to be what others perceive as ‘normal’. So my experience has been the opposite - that stopping it causes harm.

Generally you do see the stimming increase as someone becomes deregulated and it may appear to be becoming aggressive or heavy handed. That is different to the stimming itself being the problem, it’s an indication that someone is trying to self-settle in a situation that isn’t working for them, and id be looking to reflect upon what about the environment (maybe including the people there) would lead to that increased distress and work to change that, rather than try to take someone’s regulatory strategy away.

I’ve never observed a link between stimming and OCD. Rigidity and need for routine and OcD like traits yes, but that links differently to OCD where someone has to engage with compulsions to prevent something bad from happening.