Stimming and rocking: what the movement is doing for you

Two words, one idea

Stimming

Small repetitive movement or adjustment. Shifting slightly back and forth or side to side, sitting or standing. Sometimes barely visible, sometimes not.

Rocking

A more pronounced rhythmic movement of the whole body or part of it, in a chair, cross-legged, or standing. Slow and soothing, or fast and urgent, depending on what the person is carrying.

Why we do it

The same movement serves several different purposes, and often more than one at a time.

Self-soothing

Repetitive motion regulates emotion, much as swaying settles a baby. It brings predictability and a little control into a situation that has neither.

Sensory management

In a noisy or chaotic environment, a familiar internal rhythm is something to hold on to while the outside world is too much.

Focus and energy

Movement gives restless energy somewhere to go, which frees attention for the task. Common with attention-related challenges.

Expression

Sometimes it is simply the feeling showing: vigorous when overwhelmed, gentle in deep thought.

Comfort and habit

For many people it became habit long ago, and continues for the plainest reason of all. It feels good.

Where you see it

• ·Ordinary stress and anxiety: waiting for news, sitting with uncertainty, managing a social situation that costs more than it should.

• ·Neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism, sensory processing differences and Tourette syndrome, where it is a way of processing input and expressing feeling.

• ·Mental health conditions such as generalised anxiety, PTSD and OCD, where it manages overwhelming emotion or intrusive thought.

• ·Chronic pain and some neurological conditions, where movement eases discomfort.

• ·Deep focus and relaxation: studying, reading, making something. Not distress at all.

Before you try to stop a body from soothing itself, it is worth asking what it is soothing.

When it is worth a closer look

Most of the time these behaviours are harmless and actively helpful. Three situations deserve attention:

It gets in the way

Daily functioning or social interaction is being limited by it.

It turns compulsive

The movement causes physical strain or injury, or cannot be interrupted without distress.

It signals distress

It has become the visible edge of trauma or untreated anxiety that needs proper support.

What helps, when help is wanted

• ·Understand the trigger first. Anxiety, boredom and sensory overload all look similar from outside and need different answers.

• ·Offer alternatives rather than prohibitions: breathing, movement, something to hold.

• ·Accommodate the sensory need. Weighted blankets, quieter spaces and objects to fidget with reduce the need for the rocking itself.

• ·Where something deeper sits underneath, therapy helps. Cognitive behavioural therapy, occupational therapy and hypnotherapy all have a place, and hypnotherapy is particularly useful for the anxiety driving it.

The goal is never to shame a body out of comforting itself. It is to make sure the comfort is chosen, and that whatever created the need is getting attention too.

Angela Pereira is a certified hypnotherapist and Parts Therapy facilitator in Mulbarton, Johannesburg South, working in person and online. She came to this work through her own hypnotherapy, for a driving phobia that had quietly organised her life.