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An early childhood memory of my father rapidly jouncing his leg is overlaid with my mother’s swift criticism, silencing his behavior. Interestingly, this memory is prominent in an otherwise blank recall. I must have worked hard to bury my fidgety behaviors, and I didn’t acknowledge them until my fifties, long after my father passed, leaving me with a vast Family Legacy load to hack and release.
First, I acknowledged my jouncing leg and identified it begins with a rapid tapping of my foot. Next, I switched my focus to a sole tap and slowly learned this repetition could send signals to the rest of my body. Next, I used a piano pedal visualization to dampen the intensity, then slowly progressed to air drumming in which soles and hands connect through rhythm and intent.
Then, I addressed an ever-increasing need to slide my hands up and down my thighs. By this time, Autus People were in the news, requesting neurodivergent status instead of a disorder label. This was my first introduction to the term stimming, a self-soothing behavior. As I read increasing testimony to the challenge of unmasking and validating these behaviors, I acknowledged the impact of witnessing the silencing of my father’s self-soothing habits.
The road is long. That’s life. Each of us has our challenges. One of mine has been acknowledging my father’s leg jounce was likely a desperate attempt at self-soothing in a society bent on masking and suppression. So I’ve become interested in what extent my fidgety behaviors exist. Why, exactly, are they self-soothing?
