“The Analogy Of the Goblin Guest!”
“The Shadow Of the Demon Lord!”
“Roches Stores!”
So what do these phrases have in common? What analogy is this goblin fellow trying to make? Is someone trying to summon some sort of demonic entity? And what has a supermarket that was a mainstay of Patrick’s Street for decades got to do with any of this? Well, what these phrases all have in common, is that, for whatever reason, they sound pleasant, or funny, or joyful, when I say them, and they feel pleasant or soothing in my vocal cords when I say them. This is vocal stimming.
Seriously, Roches Stores? Yeah, I don’t get it either. Often times I don’t “get” why a phrase sounds good to my ears or feels good in my vocal cords, but often times, I don’t need to understand, anymore than you need to understand why the precise combination of ingredients in your favourite meal combine to make a taste you love so much.
“Crouching Baboon!!!!!!!”
That’s another one. I like the sound of the word “crouch” a lot, so a lot of my vocal stims contain the word crouch. I also like words for animals, so baboon, chimp, lemur, octopus and pigeon are words I say a lot.
I have a very early memory of, I suppose, a really epic vocal stim. I must have been about five or six years old. I was in the car, on my way to church with my family. And all of a sudden, I started saying the word “ham”. Over and over again. My family became worried that I wouldn’t have stopped by the time we got to the church, and, this made me want to do it even more, me being all mischievous and stuff. So, I must have said the word ham, fifty, maybe sixty times at least. I don’t recall my vocal cords being in any way tired, I don’t recall any difference in distance between each utterance of the word “ham”, I think you could have gotten out a metronome and observed that the rhythm with which I said the word “ham” was perfect. That was my first memory of a really seriously awesome vocal stim, but I’ve been told there were others when I was younger that I don’t remember.
“Paradox of the spleen pigeon!”
So, does everyone, or most people vocal stim, or is this something that only autistic people do, part of our domain, and if neurotypical people try to enter our domain, a seven headed goblin will block your way, shouting “None Shall Pass!”? No, I think there are, I suppose, less obvious ways that allistic (non autistic) people vocal stim. Let’s take an obvious one. Let’s say you’re having a really bad day. It was a hard day at work, then the bus was late, and then, to top it all off, when you get home to your cold house, the heating doesn’t work. Thinking of the fact that it could take a day, maybe more of shivering before you get it fixed, you get overwhelmed, and all of a sudden, you just shout,
“Oh for fuck’s sake!”
To me this qualifies as a vocal stim, because you’re not trying to communicate any information to anyone, you might even say this while you are on your own. You have been overwhelmed by negative emotions due to your bad day, and you use your vocal cords to bring you some temporary feeling of relief. I think this is an example of a vocal stim.
Or what about you get some really good news. You might shout out the word,
“YES!”
It serves no communicative purpose, you are not trying to answer in the positive to anything, so I think this can also be best described as a vocal stim.
What else? What about singing a song in a way that doesn’t, for want of a better way of putting it, serve a musical purpose? When someone is doing a task and they all of a sudden sing maybe half of a line of lyrics from a song they know. Not a complete verse, not even a complete line? I think this is also a vocal stim, because it’s not, and isn’t meant to be, a complete musical performance, it’s just that singing a small fraction of a song you like brings you some joy, and maybe the sensation of singing feels nice in your vocal cords.
Of course, if we go back to the “Oh for fuck’s sake” example, it demonstrates that not all vocal stims feel good to say. Shouting an expletive, does not feel good, your throat might be a bit soar afterwards, but in that moment you decide the emotional release is more important than whether your vocal cords feel nice!
Since 2021, when I finally realized I was autistic, I’ve been having a great time with my vocal stims. If I’m bored waiting for the kettle to boil, I’ll pass the time with a few vocal stims. (Yes, bored waiting for the kettle to boil, have I mentioned that I’m extremely impatient?) I like to try out vocal stims in funny accents. Sometimes I’ll take a vocal stim I’ve already done, and see what it sounds like in an American accent, or a really high pitched Cork accent. But it took a while before I was comfortable with it, because for many decades I was ashamed of any and all things that made me different from others.
I’ve been in situations such as a place where I used to work, where I was bullied for talking, not vocal stimming, just bullied for talking, in any capacity, and the only way I could get any peace was to literally sit silently at the lunch table. So vocal stimming was out the window, even talking could get me abuse. And in secondary school, and sometimes in primary school, I’ve gotten abuse for what I said, with no clear explanation of what I said that had annoyed people so much. So there was no way to simply say something different that wouldn’t get this response, because I didn’t know what it was that had caused this negative response.
And I remember, in my early twenties, when constantly trying to repress my vocal stims, accidentally letting one out, quietly, and the laughter that followed. This taught my a valuable lesson that I didn’t really take on board until much later in my life.
Unless you’re brilliant at masking, not just good, but brilliant at it, you can’t win. The fact that you are different will sooner or later show itself, and then you’ll be rejected. The only way forward, and it’s a much better way, is to find people who accept you for who you are, not the “masked” you, but your genuine autistic self. And if a person is brilliant at masking, well, in a way I’m even more worried, what mental health consequences are there to pretending to be something you’re not, 24/7, for years, for decades? What kind of message are we sending to autistic children, that they will carry into autistic adulthood? Be something you’re not! Never be your true self! The way you are is wrong and you need to repress it, all the time!
And it is all the time. I have suppressed vocal stims, when I was on my own, no one could have possibly heard me. It had reached a level that I’m so glad I have taken steps to pull myself out of. I wasn’t just afraid other people would see or hear what I was. I was ashamed of what I was. I didn’t want to be myself, even when the only witness was me.
“Jumping Lemur!?”
This one you must say in a high pitched, incredulous voice. Yes, I know there is nothing out of the ordinary about lemurs jumping, but you must sound incredulous when you say it! Just trust me on this!
Some of my vocal stims are words I made up myself, like:
“Zoochie grimies!”
Some are a combination of already existing words and words I made up myself, like
“Crully a dancing squirrel!”
Or some are already existing words, mostly, sort of, but it’s like, what? Such as:
“Chimpy attach!”
What does that even mean? An attachment that has a chimp like quality? Some vocal stims don’t just sound pleasant to say, or feel nice to say, sometimes, you are taking a feeling of joy and delight in complete absurdity, such as:
“Rotating cucumber priest!”
I just came up with that one now! Why is the priest rotating! Is it that the priest is a cucumber, the priest simply really likes cucumbers, or that the priests congregation consists of cucumbers? I don’t know, and that’s why I love it!
A lot of my vocal stims are bizarre. Maybe it’s because for so long I found the world to not make sense, so it’s my way of saying, “Fuck you world, I’m going to not make sense right back at you!”
So, in 2021, in May, only a few weeks after accepting my autistic identity, I can remember the first time going for a really proper, completely unrepressed vocal stim. It was during Covid, but the temporary reprieve of restrictions during Summer had began. So I cycled to the Nagle mountains. I’ll often not encounter a soul up there, it’s so quiet. There was nobody there who could judge or shame me. So as I walked through the beautiful mountain landscape, I started growling.
Just growling. “GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” The landscape around me was so beautiful, the colours, the sounds, how could anyone repress their true self when confronted with this wondrous world around me! And it got better from there. The growling was a work in progress stim, that I still use sometimes, but now I have developed so many that I have a lot more to choose from.
I make a high pitched squeal when I see pictures of baby animals. Or sometimes when I see them in real life!
“Grooching charge!”
I remember that one, that was when I got my giant octopus plushie. I love that plushie!
“Squanch croots oh chimp!”
I love how squishy those words sound and feel! I even have vocal stim songs. Like this one!:
We can save the ointment dentist if we try!
We can save the ointment dentist if we try!
We can save the ointment dentist, we can save the ointment dentist
We can save the ointment dentist if we try!
And now, I don’t know whether this refers to a dentist who uses ointment on their patients, or whether it is the case that ointment has teeth and so requires medical care. I don’t know why the ointment dentist requires saving, or why everyone else is so convinced that the ointment dentist can’t be saved, and the only thing that will persuade them otherwise is a rousing song. Come to think of it, I really like analyzing my own vocal stims, maybe part of the joy is the challenge of figuring out what I just said?
In my late thirties, I broke out of repressing my true self. And the more I vocal stimmed, the less I heard that horrible voice in my head saying, “Do you have any idea how stupid you sound!” I think that voice will never go away entirely, but I think as time passes it will grow quieter and quieter. And now I’ve decided to give that voice a name, “Poopey Stupid Face”. So yeah, if, and when that voice decides to give me trouble again, well, at least my name isn’t “Poopey Stupid Face” is it?
I hope, I hope more than you can imagine, that my story of breaking out of my emotional and psychological repression is a common one, that the vast vast majority of autistic people manage to do this. But sadly, I have talked to autistic people who have told me, they have repressed their true self so much, that they no longer know who they are. I have even met autistic people who have elected themselves as “one of the good ones” they are proud of how much they repress their autistic selves, and shame other autists for embracing their true self. Perhaps this doesn’t sound very high minded of me, but while I have a lot of compassion for such autistic people, also for good or bad I’ve got a lot of contempt for them. It’s not enough for them to repress their true selves, which in and of itself, doesn’t irk me, but they have to go one step further and shame other autistic people, like the proverbial lobster who cannot escape from the lobster cage so pulls down another lobster who makes a big for freedom. (If I look it up I’ll probably find out the lobster thing is a myth, but, just take it as an analogy.)
And what annoys me about all this, is how completely arbitrary the definition of “normal” behaviour is. If an autistic person vocal stims, well, that’s worthy of ridicule, of shaming, or making their life hell, but for some reason, screaming at a television when your favourite team misses a goal is “normal?” I’m not trying to shame that either, but it just goes to show that “normal”, is arbitrary, “normal” is hypocritical, and “normal” is genuinely difficult to even follow for neurodivergent people.
So, whether you’re neurotypical or autistic (and as already stated, some autists are part of the problem), you can be a part of making a postive environment where neurodivergent people can be their true selves, or for that matter, where neurotypical people can, it’s not just autists and other ND people who are frustrated, and tired, and sick to death of the arbitrary definition of “normal” that controls our lives. Most of the time, I am surrounded by wonderful people who do not judge my “strange” behaviour, and you can be that accepting person to someone else! And if you’re an autistic person who masks a lot, look, I’m not saying take the mask off in a job interview, sadly it looks like this world will be unaccepting of difference for years, if not decades to come, but try, even if it’s just when you’re on your own, even if it’s just when you’re in a small group of accepting people, to carve out a space where you can be you. Because, and I’m hoping I’m wrong about this, but it does look like from other autists I’ve talked to, that your true self is like a muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So even if you can only do so under a very limited set of circumstances, find one corner of your life where you have the complete and total dignity of being your true self!
And now, a world premier, a vocal stim I have never uttered before!:
“COURAGE OF THE BANK TOAST!!!!!!!!!!”
That felt really good in my vocal cords! And now I’ll leave you with my favourite quote from the Shawshank Redemption. If you think it was something else you’re remembering it wrong, you can’t pretend otherwise:
“Get busy stimming or get busy masking.”
Ponderings Of An Autist 