What do you usually think about/see when doing your movements?
My movements for the most part are IIM. Usually I am visualizing scenes in my head. What I see often varies on stimuli I have been exposed to. If I have watched something animated my images are often animated in the same art style as what I just watched. Most of what I see when I am performing my movements are my own creations. It's like watching a movie that no one else can see. My mom often says that I go off into my own little world when I stim. When I am reading
(I always perform my movements when I am reading) I don't see anything because my movements just help me focus on the material in front of me. |
There really isn't a usually, I can basically be thinking about anything. I write, so I tend to get scenes from whatever novel/story I am working on at the time. I also tend to get scenes in my head that are somehow based of a movie/TV show that I watched recently or a book I read recently... or not recently, some of the scenes that are in my head are based on books I read in elementary school. If it is triggered by a task, I'm thinking about whatever task I'm doing, and if it is triggered by emotion, I'm not thinking about anything differently than I would be if I weren't doing the sterotypy.
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Things I could do, or the way that something could be. For example, how I plan to work on an art project, how a dress I drew would actually move, what it would be like if I were in the movie I'm watching, what it would be like to be an international spy, or a performing in a musical on stage, or even what my completed math assignment will look like when completed.
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It varies. When I was a kid I would make up stories and have adventures in my head. Now it's often imagining myself doing something great like performing or having a conversation with someone- for example, if I'm mad about something I might imagine myself telling the person involved how I feel. But I can also have weirdly repetitive thoughts about noticing someone's new haircut. These are thoughts that don't really go anywhere. It's almost like repeating a word but in thought form.
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It can be anything from imagining me singing on stage or thinking about doing somthing practical like sending money to pay for an eBay auction I just won! 95% of the time my movements are caused by something positive in my thoughts. On rare occasions I might be upset and imagining telling someone about how I feel, for example.
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