What Is Echolalia? (Autistic Traits)  

I was crying one time and this guy walking past me said "damn you be okay or what, girl?" It's been YEARS and I still mutter this to myself at least like twice a day. It's just been stuck in my brain forever. Bright side is I say it when I start crying and it makes me laugh

Echolalia is a huge part of our ND family life. We can have whole conversations, just quoting and mimicking favourite scenes, songs, expressions and random vocalisations we've picked up over the years. It must be very odd for NT visitors to our household! 😂

Internal echolalia makes a lot of sense to me. Repeating my favourite lines from movies/TV shows/songs is something that I do silently in my own head unless I'm at home. My absolute favourite form of echolalia is repetitive singing!!! Especially a single line from a song where I have to go from my true voice to my falsetto. I get a sense of control that's very calming 😊

As someone who is heavily masking late diagnosed, I have a lot of internal echolalia. I think since I was repressing my stims, my brain turned to internalized forms. I find I get just a few words, a phrase, or a bit of a song stuck in my head over and over. My theory is that it is satisfying to hear that part of the song, or the way a few words go together so my brain does it on repeat to soothe me. I'm trying to take it as a sign that my brain is under stimulated and needs an activity or is overwhelmed and needs something familiar and soothing to calm it down. It's hard to feel like it is okay to outwardly stim and I'm trying to learn to let myself stim, but it's so hard!

With certain people, I echo their words back over text, in the same way as I do with spoken English. Eg, if my friend says "good news, I picked up all my dirty socks!", I respond "socks!" as a way of saying I'm as excited as they are that the job got done. I think it saves the brain power that crafting a more complicated response like "well done!" or "are you proud of yourself?" would take. They've begun doing it too which is really sweet

I have an internal echolalia. I have had it my whole life and only recently I found out what it was! Usually it’s just songs and phrases from movies or books or from dialogues I had recently with people. But besides that I constantly have music playing behind in my mind. I don’t know if you can place it to echolalia too, because it’s just like constant whole radio in my head 😂😅 I love it actually. And even if I sleep, in my dreams there is always music and songs on the background. And when I have some phrases in my mind I feel and urge to repeat them aloud.

Omg! The bit about repeating songs struck such a chord with me!!! I’m always doing it & I have a running catalogue of songs & conversations all day,every day going through my head. I find it extremely comforting and if it goes quiet it disturbs my thinking process. I can’t imagine not having music whirling around in my head,it’s pure joy to me!! I’m slowly piecing bits & bobs together about myself & your videos are invaluable,thank you so much

Thank you PE! It's been about 5 yr since diagnosis ( age 59). A lifetime of denial and masking is hard to reverse. I'm an expert at ignoring my autistic traits which means I've conditioned myself to ignore behaviors that define who I am. You often help me see past the "clinical" definitions of a trait and recognize my expressions of these traits as real behaviors, no clinical. I've had a very difficult time doing this alone. If it was not for others in our community sharing their insights and experiences, it would be a near impossible task to heal from our past.

I have internal echolalia as a result of masking. Nobody was singing songs or repeating words around me, so I stopped it myself because of shame. At some periods I had just random noises in my head, not even a melody. That was really annoying. Recently I tried to externalise echolalia a little bit and that helped to make this noises more clear and understandable. I use internal echolalia a lot even now, but with more joy and play thus this is no longer strictly repressed.

Kinda raised by the TV and always been very "quotey", speak in accents a lot etc. Most of the internal ones I have are movie quotes with odd triggers, for example if trying to motivate myself to go so something, I almost always internally recite a bit from 28 Days Later ("Frank?" - "We have to go..." - "Yeah." - "GO F*****NG WHERE?!")

I definitely experience internal echolalia. Sometimes words or phrases will repeat so much that it becomes incredibly distracting to the point where it can actually cause me to feel overwhelmed. For me the echolalia doesn't always feel calming but almost like a form of OCD because I can't always get the words/phrases to stop repeating. When this happens I usually will have to switch up my environment or do something I enjoy that will pull my mind away from whatever it is I keep repeating internally. On occasion it can also be useful. More often than not it's just something I've picked up from my environment. You've seen Atypical! It's like when Sam keeps repeating "twat" hahaha. Sometimes the internal will become external, too. Especially if I'm not concentrating on NOT saying it out loud. Much love to you Ella

I don't know much about internal echolalia but I do repeat what someone has just said to me in my head if I can't respond to them with a script. It helps me to try to process and make sense of what I have been asked or told. If I don't understand I will either ask what they mean or say what I think they would want me to say. I am learning recently that this might help me to fit in but leads to miscommunication both ways and eventually lead to problems.

I was doing this for years before i knew what it was. I didn't know why i was doing it, but felt i needed to. Repeating names of people, pets and doing accents because of how it felt. I am nearly 50 anf trying to get a formal assessment. Living in China so it's proving difficult

Yes, internal echolalia is when listening to someone speak to me, I repeat every word you say in my head to slow down processing and make sense, pattern chain of words together, distill your meaning and respond. I have noticed when I don’t internally echo, I cannot follow your meaning, words fall apart quickly and I may have no idea what you just said :)

Had "gorilla the spinner" and other variations of that phrase stuck in my head for over a year and it's become both a fun stim AND a kind of communication within my entirely ND friend group

I resonate with internalized echolalia. Sometimes if I am listening to a song I will catch a line and only be able to focus on thinking that line over and over, it also happens when I am reading sometimes where I have to stop reading for a moment because I just keep repeating the line I read over and over in my head. I also find it happens when I have negative intrusive thoughts sometimes where I compulsively repeat the thought over and over again like a broken record and I feel like I can't stop.

Especially when I was a teenager I used to silently repeat what either I or the person i was talking to had said- as in if they said "would you like a donut?" I would mouth the words "like a donut". Lots of people mentioned it to me but I was never aware that I wad doing it. I also get words stuck in my head on repeat. Especially words that are new to me or just words that sound good to my brain. I love learning languages and will often get words or phrases stuck in my head. I feel the need to say the words out loud but the 18 years of masking before I was diagnosed with ASD stops me and to quell the need to say it out loud I say it over and over in my head, sometimes for days at a time. For example when I was studying spanish I had the spanish for "where is the library?" in my head for days and would also say it out loud when I was alone for about a week when I was having meltdowns in a class I then dropped out of. It feels a lot more like stimming than when I have a song in my head (though sometimes it does happen with songs). But it 's almost painful to purposely try to stop it.

Hi and thank you for sharing. I’m 51 and just realizing the situation I’ve been begging for help with my entire life is autism. I’ve been researching and learning a lot, as is my way. I’d like to share my experience with internal echolalia; Until sometime in my late 30’s my brain echoed every word and sentence I heard, fully absorbing everything said to me or around me. I think it was my subconscious attempt to translate and make sense of the random way in which people seemed to talk. They figuratively never follow the rules. It was part of what exhausted me in social interactions. It probably started very young, but it isn’t something I paid much attention to until the realization that other people did not do this. I can speculate that I started doing it sometime after realizing that I was having great difficulty with figurative speech. Around 5 years old. I am now semi-proficient in figurative speech. I think it also helped me with the discomfort of adding slang into my interactions. It dramatically tapered off around the age I started caring less, as seems to be a normal human stage. It also coincided with dramatic reduction in memory, which I believe has a lot to do with the life stage of no longer giving a damn. My spouse has informed me that I have unknowingly been using echolalia out loud, and that he thought that I was mocking him. But we realize it was just one of the things bleeding through my mask. Thank you for listening . Respect, appreciation and love always, Robby

Cool! Nice to cover traits! If you do pedantic speech and capacity and tendency for big words - I vote you make sure people know it's not just about one-upmanship or showboating, trying to prove or gain status in an intentionally rude or destructive way, deliberately treading on toes and showing-off - for me it's often when I am trying to explain something that is difficult, worried that I won't be understood or taken seriously, and a degree having the capacity and the enjoyment of the words if not always the fluency/pragmatic skills nor 100% accurate meanings, so I will just enjoy playing with them sometimes.

Just found you through tiktok, thank you for these uploads, I find your delivery just perfect 🥰

Thankyou for this. I found your channel because my children are both autistic and they both have ECHOLALIA but in different ways. The primary school has been judging me , reporting me to social services simply cos they don't understand autism or ECHOLALIA. Your page gives me comfort thankyou

I absolutely have internal echolalia and it's sometimes how I think about things in my internal dialogue in a sing-songy way but don't need to voice it. Sometimes I'm even nonverbal either for a migraine reason with coordination and proprioceptive challenges coordinating my mouth to speak or anxiety reasons of being in my head and unable to speak and it can be regulating to just hear my sing-songy repetition without having to go through the overwhelm of figuring out how to voice it when I'm nonverbal for whatever reason. Sometimes the speaking itself would dysregulate me because of how many spoons it takes to figure out how to do but thinking the sing-songy echolalic thoughts is still regulating to hear in my head :) without the dysregulation of trying to speak.

I wonder if “internal echolalia” is actually a potential symptom of OCD. Though admittedly I could just be projecting my interpretation of my own experiences. I know I’m autistic, but I’m less confident that I also have OCD, and I haven’t been officially diagnosed. I definitely use echolalia as a stim-very much like how you describe in this video. But I also tend to get stuck on internal thoughts, phrases, noises, abstract ideas, etc., repeating them over and over in my head. Sometimes clearly in a stimming way, like as I’m working on a project, but sometimes it feels more like a compulsion that I just have to get out of my system. Idk, I guess I might be experiencing both.

As I look back on how I was as a kid & seeing who I am now as a person who now knows I’m autistic, echolalia was one of the first & most salient traits I remember. Now, I tend to tell myself “this feeling is temporary” repeatedly to calm myself. When I was young, I definitely imitated my favorite tv characters, no matter the shows’ genres. (I’m from the US & I very clearly remember how much I loved the show, “The Facts of Life,” & that Jo was my favorite character… she was a real badass, hard to get to know, often sarcastic (which I also learned about from her!), and just the right mix of tough tomboy & vulnerable human when it came to her family. My mother would ask me why I was “being so difficult” or some such nonsense & I never knew how else to answer except that I had just heard Jo say something that resonated with me so I was just repeating it. It felt like trying on a new self & I really enjoyed that bc I never quite knew who or what (or why, I guess…) I was. I never cared much for the other characters but Jo was definitely part of who I wanted to be. (& as it turns out, I’m a gender-fluid queer human who wishes I’d been given a name that was just…so much less feminine & more like Jo, Joey, average-joe… just one simple syllable that stood for who I am, I guess. So yeah, echolalia has some really far-reaching qualities doesn’t it! Thanks, Ella!❤ (Edits for typos & repeated words n stuff…)

I've internalized a lot of echolalia out of necessity/fear/masking. For instance I count to 4 repetitiously every time I'm walking up or down stairs. I have many examples like this that I've done all my life, most were outloud at one point.

It's fun to discover things like internal echolalia... because I do that, I think it's because echolalia is awkward to do in society so I don't do that, but in my head, where nobody can know what's happening, i'm free do to it, and in fact i do that a lot more than "simple" echolalia... the "simple" echolalia i do it only when i'm sure nobody can hear me... so i guess it can count as masking most of time when i'm doing internal echolalia, and that internal echolalia is exactly the same thing for me (calming, making me remember the thing i have to do while coming home etc)

Thank you for making and sharing this!

I actually came here to learn about this because my husband has it and I'm pretty sure our daughter has it. It was nice to finally have a word for it. I wanted to understand it more to be more patient with our daughter because her repetition causes sensory overload for both me and my husband (we're both ADHD) However, after watching a couple informational videos, I'm starting to discover that I may have it as well. It's not as prominent as it is for my husband or daughter, maybe because it's mostly internal, but I'm definitely connecting the dots.

Unfortunately when I repeat things back people think I am mocking them. It has gotten me in some hot water. I am glad this just another part of me to understand. Thanks for the lesson purple ella 💜

when I hear a tune or fraze from the song, especially when it's simple and I knew it before, it plays again and again in my head for hours or even days. I have to listen to a lot of other music to get it out. sometimes it's nice when it's a song I like at the time, but most of the times it's really annoying.

Wow incredible detail. I thought echolalia was simply direct repetition of a word or phrase but clearly there's much more to it than that. That is what I was originally taught as a SP. A very interesting topic and video. Great to have a synopsis as sometimes I prefer shorter vids. Thank you.

im 35 years old and only in the last few years after my son has been investigated for autism did i realise I'd been suffering with autism for years without myself or any of my family members knowing. I'd been having echolalia for as long as I can remember and could never understand why I did it or for what purpose. After looking into the traits of autism it's helped give me an understanding of perhaps why i act in certain ways and definitely my behaviours especially as a child. It doesn't bother me too much as I have managed to get through life without having a diagnosis but with having an understanding of it I can do things like offer advice and tips to try and help my son get through difficulties i see him having that I too experienced. These videos are very useful and i want you to know how much you've helped myself and no doubt others - much love and respect

I haven't been diagnosed as an autistic adult, but I have my strong suspicions. I thought i was crazy by singing out loud some verse of a song while, for example, walking to the kitchen or doing something else. When walking down the street I also repeat words I hear or read when nobody is around, or I quote videogame quotes in my head over and over again. This is because I am experiencing high levels of stress, as my country is very insecure and this is my way of dealing with said stress. It is also important to note that I also plan interactions before speaking. For example, before passing by the building security guard I will think about what to say, or before I get to class I think of clever ways to say hello... usually goes like "Ok, I am saying hello in a cheerful way. Or not, lets quote a greeting from that funny movie I saw two days ago..." It is good to know that my constant mind chatter and repetitiveness of words in my head is actually a form of echolalia; probably as a masking mechanism to not seem "crazy" by speaking weird quotes out loud. Thanks Ella, much love.

external echolalia, and it really is a bridge for me to communicate with my son.

Great vid, had no idea how i could explain some of these things even to myself!

I repeat nonsense phrases sometimes singing them dangerously close to other people hearing them and totally on my own , say when I am driving sometimes shouting them when I'm completely alone- it feels like an affirmation that I exist- my close friends have got used to it- very difficult to say out loud if I have an audience- peldring turc parlabed- dunno what it means googled it no results but makes me comfortable- after what I have just heard feels like this stimming thing- thank you!

I experience internal echolalia. For me, it occurs most often when I'm falling asleep but also happens at random during the day. I'll repeat a single random word or a whole phrase or count from one to ten over and over in my head. My favorite thing to say aloud is "beep beep, I'm a sheep" and my strangest internal one so far was "a tisket, a tasket, a burning man in a basket." I didn't think anything of it until recently when I started looking into autism and watching autistic creators talk about their experiences. At some point I came across someone talking about echolalia, and there was a little light bulb moment for me when I realized that's exactly what I do...just more in my head than out loud. I have a feeling mine became more internalized because I was told so often that I was "too loud" by the people around me while I was growing up.

I am undiagnosed, but am very sure I am on the spectrum. As I read and watch videos about autism, I see more and more traits in myself to confirm this. I have heard echolalia mentioned quite a bit, and thought that I didn't have it. I honestly just realized out of the blue today that I have internal echolalia. I often have a phrase repeating itself in my head. I found this video because I did an internet search to find out if this is considered echolalia, since I never do it out loud. Thank you so much for posting this.

Thank you for this extremely helpful video

Thank you for this explanation.

My psychologist said it was a tic or a form of Tourette’s syndrome, thanks Purple for the info!

Great video, thank you Ella! 💜

My echolalia is in my head. Sometimes when I watch a show on my iPad I have to rewind multiple times to hear a phrase until I am satisfied. And then I will think about that phrase later on. I am still not sure that I am autistic but I do stim every day.

I love this video thank you doing it Ella

Quality content, thank you!

i find myself absent mindedly doing whispered echolalia. when its in my head its my way of controling what im focused on. its so i dont forget the thought process eg, when i get up or move to a new room for something i always forget what im doing and why, so il repeat the reason in my head.

I do something different which seems like it could be a sub-form of echolalia. I often repeat sounds that animals make (especially bird calls and my cat's sounds). This is one of my stims that I tend to use when I either feel like the animal did when making that noise, or I want to feel that way (e.g. I purr when anxious to help soothe). I also do the internal thing you described, and I think (for me) it's because I was diagnosed as an adult and so learnt to mask heavily as a child. Internal echolalia is a way to engage in a behaviour that feels natural to me, while trying to keep it inside my head so others don't mock me for it (or think I'm mocking them!). I often move my tongue the way it would move if I were saying the words. I just try to keep my mouth closed and vocal chords relaxed.

That was very informative.

I have experienced internal echolalia when I was in a shutdown. It's sometimes whole phrases, sometimes just the endings echoing in my head. For example "Are you okay?" And then my brain would repeat "okay, okay, okay, okay" and I would glance at the person with a feeling of confusion and feeling trapped inside. It's terrifying when this happens and people get angry with my not responding. Most of the time, people automatically believe I am not responding because I am angry with them and then get angry because of that assumption.And then I get the full force of their negative emotions and thoughts which is horrible for me.

I do scripting. I thought it was normal. I am an esl but I do the same in my first language. If I have a verbal "hickup" my brain does not know which language to use (I know quite few but that does not by any means mean I can fluently communicate in them) I go back to where and when I heard a sentence with said word, but it is more like feeling blindly. I have to go back to the emotional state I was when I first heard it and then I check if the expression somehow correlates with what I want to express. It is very confusing and it is a hit and miss a lot. I just figured that out. Before you, Ella, stating it like this, I had no clue it even has a name to it. I literally love that you put those things in your vids. I must also add that I don't necessary agree with all you post, but I learned to just turn those off. Before i learned that and before i was ok with that, i was getting so anxious about those things i could not watch your vids AT ALL. Now i just don't watch those i don't agree with.

Now I'm questioning if my earworm are echolalia. I've always been the kind of person who can remember jingles all the way back to childhood and, in conversations, someone will say a word or phrase that triggers an earworm that I'll be internally and externally repeating until the next one. The current one is "How bizarre" (sorry to anyone I just triggered). It's not always music, sometimes it's just things that are fun to say. I like "sps" words like wisps, and crisps. ✨

i internalize echolalia quite often. the earm worm relaiton is a good fit. but its not always music, or songs. sometimes its just a phrase to a movie or show, maybe a headline maybe ab advert - really anything. but im saying it in my head ot mask to the public

I have experienced internal echolalia since I was little (I’m now 27 years old). It’s either a single line from a song, words, sounds, phrases or sentences I’ve heard from somewhere. Sometimes even images and it keeps going on repeat over and over. My experience with this has been rather rough because it usually happens when I’m becoming too sensory overloaded or feeling overwhelmed in some way or another. At its worst I can’t calm myself and I recall sitting in the hallway at night crying as a child because it wouldn’t stop.

I have internal and external echolalia. I always repeat words throughout the day. Sometimes my echolalia reaks havoc along side my internal OCD. I will have words or song snippets on repeat all day in my head, can be a little overwhelming lol. I often use silly voices aswell along side echolalia 🥰

I'm not autistic, or at least, have never been diagnosed as such. I was, however, diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome when I was four. Now that I'm 35, I've come to understand that parts of the syndrome also manifest, in my case, as echolalia, echopraxia and palilalia. It's sometimes stressful to recognize I've begun echoing around unfamiliar people who don't understand, but my close friends and family all tell me it's unobtrusive or even cute.

I do internal echolalia. My main one I know I got from a cartoon as a kid at some point cause I don't ever remember not doing it. It's when someone is going about their day and they start singing a song's melody but are just singing "do do do do do" . Well, I do that without a melody. Sometimes it can be as I'm doing something, like every step, or every time I touch something. It doesn't always happen, but it's often enough. I'd say at least 3 times a day. It also feels good when I do it. I also get phrases stuck in my head and I'll rock side to side with the repetitions. Sometimes if I start rocking like that it triggers the echolalia. Also a friend of mine from Tennessee got mad at me and stopped talking toe cause I started talking in a twang. I didn't realize I was, but she thought I was making fun of her. 😢

I think I do also experience internal echolalia. Although it's even harder to explain. I don't even realize unless I'm thinking about it. It's part of the cacophonous choir of voices that are always clamoring in my head and if I'm able to single any of them out some of them are simply performing echolalic functions repeating things in my head and not contributing any logical content to the cognitive inner monologue. But they are definitely there. In fact when they slip out of my mouth in real life is when my mask is down.

I attended Aces (autism center for educational services) therapy. Met a boy who was very childish. He’d ask the same question “what’s your favorite color?” I mentioned a color and he’d ask: “Is burgundy you’re favorite color? Oh yeah that’s right: Rainbow.” He caught himself realizing and remembering my favorite color? Echolalia

I love your braces, i just got mine. Thank you for the content, what I do is when somebody says something that reminds me of a line from a movie I’ll just say the line from that movie out loud. people don’t usually get it but I’m not really concerned

I never know if this counts as echolalia but...I am often given credit for being very articulate and well expressed when the reality is that I am also a good mimic and can repeat and remix stock phrases. Specifically, I come from a family that quotes movies incessantly and often does so for entire conversations. We will jump across movies to do this and part of the point is that we will include the reference as part of our intent. I can't watch many movies but I can quote most of a movie after as few as two viewings sometimes... and I will often use the tone/pitch/cadence of a movie line with different words that fit the correct number of syllables as well. The point is that it is all intensely aural and vocal/verbal and most people that aren't my family don't realise I'm doing it. Especially if I end up using adaptations of high literature... I often sound very wordy and pedantic. An example would be if someone is being questioned about something and they respond "I'm positive". I would respond to that with "Only fools are positive"... which is a quote from Fern Gully. My family would get it and also get that I'm joking. Other people end up thinking I'm weird and overly serious... ☹️

I substitute the words for tones. The best way to describe it is like strumming a guitar in time to a person singing.

This was interesting. While I was listening I thought of how this understanding will no doubt lead to more respect and compassion for people diagnosed/ misdiagnosed with what is called schizophrenia

I repeat things my family used to say to the family cat. Long after he has passed away, and completely unrelated context, sometimes these phrases that make no sense to anyone else will come out of my mouth. It's so hard to explain those personal ones to others but the same thing happens with advertisements and memes and and song lyrics

Mine is mostly internal. Like it's just songs I've heard over and over and the last words that someone said to me (especially if I feel that I'm likely to see them again soon), or commercials, or something I heard when I was a kid, or a line from a movie. I've been trying to say them out loud more often because it feels like it helps me keep my mind less cluttered.

The Mario theme song plays in my head often, I hum it out loud, or my dogs names.

I do not yet have an official diagnosis, but I will hear words or phrases and get them stuck in my head..which I thought everyone did that lol. I also will hear someone say something with an accent and will repeat it out loud over and over. I also tend to see someone make a facial expression on a tv show and I have noticed I sit there and continue to practice that expression while I continue to watch the show.

Internal echolalia, yes! I feel conscious of wanting to mask it, typically when stuck in traffic with the car windows open, repeating inside my head.

i grew up just sort of repeating things over and over and over again in my head to remember certain things -- i.e. if my mom wanted me to wake her up, ill repeat "8:50" over and over and over again in my head until it's exactly 8:50. it fills up my entire thought process and sometimes it can be the only thing i focus on, and even at work for like short-term tasks that need to be fulfilled i still do this. i also just repeat out loud words i see on signs, or sing theme songs for ads or even today i say "get to del taco, we have fre sh vacado!" whenever i see a del taco sign. sometimes i have this one particular hook in a song stuck in my head and ill play it over and over and over in my head (and if it's accessible to me at that moment, ill play it on repeat on my phone to further satisfy my itch for this string of music). up until recently, i had no idea that this is not something that "normal" people do lol

I do it internally most of the time and it's often words or phrases that stand out in some way. Or like in writing when I'm not sure how i should read it? It just loops and loops. Most recently a co worker of mine expressed that she disliked that another co worker used a certain curse word so much. It's the worst one you can say in my language so she just said the first letter of the word and i had no idea what word she meant so someone told me, since then every time i see her i can't stop wanting to use it haha. She knows my situation and she's kinda ok with it. (I'm Dutch and we use diseases to curse with, the word in question is "cancer". We use it in the same way that "fucking" is used. So instead of "shut your fucking mouth"we'd say "shut your cancer mouth")

Im new to this but am a genius as per my iq score of 145 averaged over 3 tests. I have adhd and was diagnosed as an adult with ADHD combined type and ive for a few years suspected autism spectrum disorder due to my aversion to eye contact and my internal voice and its way of processing my thoughts silently to mask my outward confusion and frees up my social self. I tend to forget stuff but at the same time have a perfect memory when spacial memory is involved. Ive never reviewd notes ive taken but can remember facts easily by just hearing it or readimg or seeing it. The echolalia only happens in my head or if im very stressed or scared. I repeat phrases as to remember what i need to do. Its something i wondered about because my younger cousin had aspergers and used mouth the end of a sentance after saying it like he was pondering if it sounded right. He also had adhd and is deceased due to the fentanyl crisis and has been a year as of may 28 2022. I miss him. I make dialogues in my head because i need to be prepared for things when i dont know what to say. And it is only in the past 2 years where ive recognized i have asd and got screened for adhd.

I dont have an autism diagnosis but my dad would always repeat phrases and sometimes even sing. I also do this a lot and i'm trying to cut down on it because i realize people around me find it annoying. I mostly repeat phrases with made up words that sound kinda silly, but it's kinda cute to me? i do it to my cat boyfriend a lot.

I used to be verbal about repeating words but people would notice and say it’s weird. So I started internalizing it. Like a new word or new name I repeat it until I feel comfortable saying it.

I absolutely have this and had no idea it was a symptom of anything. I do it as both a stim and a prompt to stay on task. The stim is probably the stranger one, though. I will get a word or phrase stuck in my head and repeat it for no reason, sometimes for weeks or longer until I forget it or replace it with another one.

"it's fine, i'm fine, i'm totally fine, im fiiiiiinnneee" -me daily lol

I don’t know whether I experience *echolalia* as such, but I do use a *lot* of phrases I’ve picked up from movies, old Simpsons episodes, comic strips, issues of the NME music magazine from 30 years ago, etc etc. And I do latch onto phrases that “sing” to me and think about them or say them to myself repeatedly for days (last week it was “two conversational roombas bonking gently off one another”, from a social media post I’d read). And I have music (a “mental jukebox”) playing constantly in my head. But I’m still unsure whether all that would fall within “echolalia” or be something else.

Idk if what I do is internal echolalia or not, but I repeat what other people say right after they say it to me and only move my lips, my sister is the only person to ever point that out as even I was unaware I did that. But since then I noticed I do it very often.

I have music playing on repeat all day every day and I'll unconsciously hum or sing sometimes Not always the same song but almost always the same verse from specific songs I still remember when I started living full time at my dad's after high school he heard me humming and asked "are you in a good mood today or something?" Not rudely, more confused lol I said "no I always have music playing in my head so I didn't even know I was humming" He was even more confused like "that's weird" I said "do you not have music playing in your head" He said "no not really" I was mindblown I thought this was normal 😅 I do it with tasks too ill repeat over and over what I'm gonna do like 50+ times

That was really helpful and informative and I think I do internal echolalia but I wasn’t aware that’s what it was. Like I have what I call mantras that I’ll repeat over and over in my head like how you described the “I’m fine I’m fine” one, so I have ones for when I’m anxious or scared to calm me. Then how you explained the order of doing things, my dad taught me to drive with saying “mirror, signal, manoeuvre” and I would then repeat that each time and he made clear I couldn’t say it out loud, so it would be in my head. And even after driving confidently for over 20 years now, I still have that go round my head 😂 and they definitely feel different from having ear worms of music. Then sometimes there is a phrase of a song that I just love to sing out loud because that part just *feels* so good, like better than the other parts of the song. Does that count?

For me, when I get the urge to repeat something or say a phrase/word/song from something, i can literally feel myself suppressing it and the urge to say it out loud feels like it's bubbling up inside me. I feel relief (and connection to someone) if they say what I was trying not to. For example every time potatoes are involved I have the urge to blurt the lord of the rings quotes about taters 😅 I do remember being told as a kid not to repeat others and I did have a hard time with a repetition stutter that my parents got me speech therapy for. I wonder how much of that has contributed to me masking or suppressing stims. I also noticed when I listen to ASMR I "feel" like I want a word/phrase repeated because it sounds good and when they repeat it I feel calmer. Some sounds or music might annoy or irritate me, but I might still want to repeat it, which I find interesting. When I'm alone I tend to talk or sing a lot to myself, but I also absolutely love music and almost always have a song in my head.

I feel like I have internal echolailia, but it's like I have mutism as well. Like, I want to sing and repeat words and make interesting sounds, but there is a disconnect from my brain to my voice, and I also want to be quiet as well. I'm not sure where this comes from. There is no one telling me to be quiet, I live on my own, and haven't had anyone telling me to be quiet for quite some time. But still, just have this weird dicotamy of singing In my head but needing to be quiet at the same time. Shrug

I repeat sounds, it's a habit of mine, my examples are: .my dad has a notification sound of a dalek saying "MESSAGE", and I repeat it almost immediately after in my best impression of the dalek voice .ring doorbell notifications, I repeat .I repeat phrases from the IT crowd because I find them funny and just yeah, I point at the window and almost shout "A DEAD FLY" it's embarrassing but funny lol

I used to have an internal voice and I used to repeat stuff to myself to calm myself down and remember the order to do tasks etc. Drs put me on some meds because I had a problem with a repetitive ear worm for 9 nights. I’ll admit I enjoyed the ear worm at first. It was only when I couldn’t sleep that it was annoying. It felt like I was singing 8 lines of the song over and over but just the vocals not the music although half of the song was na nahs. The problem is that I lost my internal voice from the meds and that was kinda disabling to me. I became a lot less independent because I couldn’t think through things to repeat to myself to remember things (basic stuff like phone, purse, keys) or how to do things (like at 5pm it’s time to have dinner for example) or to more carefully choose my words before speaking. I think I described it as losing my internal filter. I’m on different meds now and I think I’m slowly getting my internal voice back but I still can’t visualise pictures very well (I mean like close my eyes and try to imagine a shape like a square or a beach for example). The Drs made me feel like people don’t have an internal voice/filter because the Dr. said that is not normal.

I experience internal echolalia as part of masking But then it gets too much and I have to release it externally. Usually by singing a phrase or rhyming words my mind like to find within objects around me 😅

My echolalia is something about my autism I cannot mask. No matter what I do it happens regardless of where I am. When I repeat words it's always in a high pitch and child-like voice. It's also unpredictable. I never know what words I'll repeat or how many times I'll repeat the word. I almost always point at the thing I repeat as along it's something that I can point at. I have noticed that I repeat more than once if I can't point out the object or person. My mood can sometimes affect the number of times I can repeat.

Until i was diagnosed, i actually thought i might have tourettes, because i have crazy urges to make certain sounds or phrases. The difference was that i *could* stop if needed, and tourettes is neurological/involuntary. In my head, i constantly repeat phrases from games/shows that are relevant to what i'm doing, and externally i tend to say "everything is fine!" in a cartoony voice. There's a few other words as well, but yes I know the struggle! My other half is autistic as well, and he repeats almost every single thing i say to him lol. I used to think he was playing but it helps him understand/converse better. Fun fact he has Aphantasia, and I have hyperfantasia! So i joke that i'll just visualise everything for him! xD

I also experience internal echolalia because I'm afraid others may judge me or gatekeep me if I do it externally. And I sometimes use nonverbal echolalia when I'm in a safer environment. It's totally real!

I do that in my sentences sometimes

I think I have experienced these repeating patterns with conversations that I have with family members I’m currently struggling with reclusiveness and speaking with the few outside contacts that I have which would be family members usually becomes uncomfortable repeating the conversations in my head.

vibrant 👍

I do a lot of internal echolalia. I also do verbal. I always joked that I come from a family of noise makers... Little did I know this was a sign of autism 😅 my dad being the main focus. We were all silly so we did a lot of things that seemed extremely normal to me growing up. I still do car horns, animal sounds, anything sudden, sounds in video games or movies. I don't necessarily do them very loudly, I sometimes say them to myself quietly like a whisper. Probably a symptom of masking. Internal echolalia is very relaxing to do. I can do extended/repetitious sounds (machine sounds and clocks) and household appliances in my head and it feels like humming or an om sound. Very meditative.

I think I might do internal echolalia. I’ve been wondering for ages why noises and music especially sometimes things people say on tv or in person, play in a loop in my head, not even sounds I necessarily like. It’s annoying at times, as soon as I hear a tune I replicate parts of it in my head and sometimes I’ll be laying in bed replaying sounds over and over. People I’ve asked say they don’t do this so perhaps this could explain it?

I've been singing under my breathe at work lately.

I think I may do internal echolalia. I have been told in the past that it is annoying to repeat the same phrases and words and song chords repeatedly, but if I don’t get them expressed somewhere I feel like my brain is stuck trying to move past so if I feel a phrase or saying coming on that I just need to say I’ll think about it over and over while outwardly trying to move past as far as other people can perceive. I don’t know if that makes sense it’s sometimes like a background loop like I need to have a front burner conversation but secretly my back burners are repetitioning what I want to “get out”.

When something unpleasant is happening I internally repeat the interaction and phrase “bloody fuck you bloody” from this video of two Indian men arguing with each other

Ive been doing this all my life lmao. I do it in my head and out loud constantly. Every time i hear something i do this subconsciously all the damn time… im an adult now and i still do it lol I dont know why i do it i just do it… Mine is for non communication helps me stay happy

I am fighting echolalia but it’s so hard because I just forget.

My grandfather used to always repeat phrases or sentences in a whisper. I write them with my finger on my leg or table as I hear someones comnveesation. Or for my own little pleasure, as I love words and writing. Ive always thought i got this trait from my grandfather. I wonder if this is a type of echolalia.

I've done variations of echolalia most of my adult life and have seen many others do something very similar too. I doubt if many of these people were anywhere on the autistic spectrum but simply use it as a 'go to' way of managing particular situations. I cannot help but wonder whether echolalia is a perfectly normal process that most people indulge in to a greater or lesser degree?

I do the internal I always thought it was normal and that everyone does it sometimes I will repeat out loud etc but usually I do it internally

What if it’s not a sound you have heard externally? I repeat letters and sounds that I like, or words with the letter “g.”