To me a stim is different than a fidget which is different than a compulsion which is different than

[@heyna1185]

I don‘t think this distinction is helpful or even true. The way I see it, everyone stims, even neurotypical people, because it’s - as you said - just self-stimulatory behavior. It happens in response to emotions and sensations or the lack of it. It can be a reaction to too much energy or too little. Autistic people often stim when they get overwhelmed with happiness or when they are uncomfortable. Both of those experience are an example of experiencing “too much“ and thus you feel the need to get the “energy out“ by stimming. Fidgeting is often a reaction to boredom, in which case you have too little energy and are trying to create stimulation yourself. Both experiences exist in both autistic and ADHD people, it’s just a matter of how often and how intensely it‘s experienced. In my experience it‘s not helpful at all when normal human experiences are gatekept behind specific diagnoses. All it does is make it harder for undiagnosed people to get the help they need because they lack the language to articulate their struggles and often don‘t even realize what is going on because they aren‘t officially part of the club yet. In a world in which stimming is just a part of everyone‘s vocabulary, it‘s much easier to look around and think: “Hey, I stim a lot more than everyone else. Why do I feel the need to do that so much? Maybe there‘s something going on here that I should investigate.“