I have spent years trying to explain to people what stimming is and why I do it.
As a child I'd never heard of the term 'stimming', so I just called it flapping, since this was my most common and most noticeable stim (since I was literally jumping up and down and waving my hands about in a sort of trance).
I was constantly asked why I did it, if I could control it, and whether I did it consciously or subconsciously (but in more child friendly language).
My entire life I've never really been able to give a simple explanation, but I think I just thought of one.
Flapping is like laughing. Or smiling. Or frowning. Yes, you can laugh on command if someone asks you to, but it doesn't feel quite the same as laughing in the moment when you find something funny.
Now I invite you to answer me on the question: Why do you laugh?
Not 'what makes you laugh', but specially WHY? Why do you do it? Maybe because you're finding something amusing, yes, but why does that amusing thing invoke this specific physical reaction in you? Do you know why you physically do it? After all, we could just acknowledge inside of our heads that we found something funny and not have a physical response, but oftentimes people can't help but laugh. Why does our body make us do this?
I'm not actually sure of the real reason why we laugh, or if we stim for the same reason or not, or if laughing maybe is technically a form of stimming. But I'm hoping that maybe people can understand that sometimes their bodies do things in response to an emotion and they're unsure of the real reason why they do it, and that stimming, (at least for me personally), is a very similar experience.
Tl;dr: The questions people ask about stimming can also be applied to laughing.
