Stimming, Liberation, and the Refusal to Behave: A Somatic and Anti-Oppressive Case for Letting Bodies Move

In trauma theory, anti-oppressive practice, and disability justice, one truth keeps resurfacing: the body already knows what it needs, but culture keeps getting in the way. Stimming—rocking, flapping, tapping, humming, pacing, chewing, spinning, fidgeting—is one of the clearest examples. It is an act of self-regulation, expression, and sensory equilibrium, and yet it is one of the most policed behaviors in neurodivergent bodies. To understand why stimming is pathologized instead of supported, we have to look at both the nervous system and the systems of power that decide which bodies are allowed to move freely.

Peter Levine’s somatic trauma work gives us the first half of the picture. In Somatic Experiencing, trauma is not defined by the event itself but by what happens—or doesn’t happen—in the nervous system afterward. When the body is prevented from completing instinctive survival movements like shaking, rocking, or orienting, the incomplete activation becomes stuck. Animals shake off fear responses; humans are taught to “hold it together.” Levine’s central argument is that regulation requires movement. Completion of the cycle isn’t optional—it is physiology. When neurodivergent people stim, they are not being “disruptive” or “immature.” They are doing exactly what Levine teaches therapists to help trauma survivors relearn: allowing the body to discharge energy, reorganize, and return to safety.

The problem, then, is not the behavior. The problem is the cultural context that frames regulation as misbehavior. This is where Jennifer Mullan’s work becomes essential. In Decolonizing Therapy, Mullan argues that the demand to remain still, quiet, composed, and emotionally contained is not a neutral expectation—it is a colonial one. The suppression of natural bodily and emotional expression is part of what she calls “the pathology of professionalism.” Behaviors that make dominant culture uncomfortable are labeled inappropriate, disordered, or disruptive, while compliance is rewarded as maturity. From this lens, forced stillness is not just a therapeutic error—it is a form of bodily colonization.

bell hooks connects these ideas without ever using the word stimming. hooks wrote extensively about domination culture, the politics of silence, and the demand that marginalized people make themselves acceptable to those in power. In Teaching to Transgress, she writes that “the first act of violence that domination enacts is that we are forced to surrender our bodies.” To deny movement, she argues, is to deny selfhood. Respectability, as hooks frames it, is the emotional and behavioral price of social permission. To belong, one must behave. To be seen as human, one must not disturb. The quiet body is not just a polite body—it is a controlled body.

Stimming lives at the intersection of all three frameworks. Through Levine, we see that stimming is a biological completion impulse. Through Mullan, we see that interrupting stimming is a colonial demand for bodily obedience. Through hooks, we see that obedience is not benign—it is the mechanism of domination. To tell a neurodivergent person “quiet hands” is not simply a behavior correction. It is a message: “Your way of existing is unacceptable unless it is made palatable to us.” What looks like a sensory-motor cue is actually a social contract enforced through the body.

If we take these thinkers seriously, then supporting stimming is not just a therapeutic preference, nor is it only a disability accommodation. It is a refusal to participate in the politics of containment. It is a rejection of the demand to earn belonging through bodily discipline. It is a recognition that liberation is felt, not only theorized—and that healing requires more than insight. It requires movement.

A trauma-informed therapist who does not support stimming is missing the body’s own treatment plan. An anti-oppressive clinician who polices stimming is reenacting the very power structures they critique. And anyone who claims to support liberation while demanding stillness has fundamentally misunderstood what bell hooks insisted upon for decades: that freedom is not an intellectual project. It is a lived, embodied experience.

So the question is not “How do we reduce stimming?” The question is “Why were we ever taught that regulated bodies must be still?” Stimming is what the nervous system does when it is allowed to complete the loop. It is what the colonized body does when it stops apologizing. It is what hooks called “the practice of freedom”—not as metaphor, but as movement.

If we are serious about trauma-informed care, disability justice, and decolonizing practice, then we must let people have their bodies back. Let them rock. Let them flap. Let them tap. Let them stim in public without shame. Because the alternative is not calm—it is compliance. And compliance has never been the path to healing.