Though every single Autistic Person is different, many Autistic People make different noises, repeat sounds, or make other vocalizations. In today’s video, I’ll discuss three main types of Autistic vocalizations: echolalia, palilalia, speech loops, scripting, and verbal and vocal stimming.

Despite being 37, I still have all three of these (as well as several other) NeuroDivergent speech patterns.

First, I will define each item, then explain more about these experiences from a human perspective, starting with echolalia, the vocalization I experience the most. If you would like to know more, please stay tuned.

NOTES/DISCLAIMER: It’s important that we all understand that, as Autistic People, there is not a unified autistic experience. We all have different opinions and very different experiences, and I think it’s great to share those things.

If you’re a NeuroTypical watching, remember that this is just my experience as a NeuroDivergent Person. I encourage you to listen to and read as many Autistic experiences as possible to best understand Autistic and other NeuroDivergent People.

This video is based on a Substack post published on July 13, 2023.

Substack Subscribers, Patreon Subs, and YouTube channel members had access to this video on Tuesday, July 30, 2024. The video will be released publicly on Friday, August 9, 2024.

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Transcript:

Lyric Rivera: Hi everyone, I’m Lyric Rivera.

I am the best-selling author of the business ethics book, Workplace Neurodiversity Rising, and I’m an Autistic adult.

Today, I’m going to be talking about my experience as an Autistic person with speech patterns that are common in Autistic people, such as echolalia, palilalia, scripting, and vocal stimming.

And if you would like to know more, please stay tuned.

intro-musich,

Lyric Rivera: Though every single Autistic person is different, many Autistic people make different noises, repeat sounds, or make other vocalizations.

There are three main types of vocalization that I’m going to be talking about today: echolalia, palilalia and vocal stimming.

Despite being 37, I still have all three of these, as well as several other common NeuroDivergent speech patterns.

First, I’m going to define each item, and then I’ll explain more about my experiences with these, from a human perspective, starting with echolalia, the vocalization that I, personally, experienced the most.

 Echolalia is defined, medically, as the unsolicited repetitive vocalization words, or sounds made by another person, animal, or object.

Lyric Rivera: Echolalia is a common part of early childhood speech and development but for many Autistic people, we may continue to echo throughout our adult lives.

Echolalia is a big one for me, so I’m very familiar with this.

I echo things I hear around me, whether it’s a word, phrase someone has said, quotes from TV, movies, commercials, songs on the radio, elevator dings, computer notifications, crosswalks that, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, that. I even echo animals.

If there’s a sound I like, I echo it. I don’t even realize I’m doing it a lot of the times.

When I hear a sound, if it tickles my brain the right way, I will repeat it.

Someone will say a word, or a phrase, or I’ll hear this sound, and I will mimic it, repeat it back echoing it in the exact same tone, and rhythm, that I heard it in. It’s like a replay in my brain.

Sometimes I will repeat the things in my head, if I am very aware of my surroundings and, don’t want to draw attention of other people. I will just like quietly do this under my breath too.

There’s immediate echolalia, where I may immediately repeat the sound, right after I hear it- similar to yelling into a canyon and hearing an echo right away.

There’s also delayed echolalia, where I may echo a sound on a delay, long after hearing it, because something I encounter in my day to day life is going to remind me of this sound.

And then I will, on a delay, sometimes hours, days, weeks, or even months, or years later, I will echo that sound again, coming back with the same tonality and all of that as the first time, even though a lot of time may have passed.

As an Autistic person, in a romantic relationship with another Autistic person, who happens to hang out with lots of other Autistic people (more than I hang out with non-Autistic people)… many of us echo. We echo each ,other and we echo each other’s echos, and I love that we echo each other’s little noises, words, and sounds.

I feel like it’s a way that, at least with me and some of the people I’m closest to, when we embrace this fact that we echo one another, and it’s not used as something that is shameful, it’s this really wonderful way for us to bond, and share with one another.

I think that’s really powerful, because I used to be ashamed of my echos, but they have become something that I am really learning to love, and accept, and appreciate, about myself, and my Autistic loved ones, and my romantic partners.

I now realize that it is part of how my partner and I bond in our relationship, because we both now understand where these echoes come from. However, if one didn’t know better, one might think my partner and I are mocking each other, because we’re constantly going around miming each other, like little mockingbirds, but we know, so it’s kind of like one of our own little love languages.

I do sometimes still worry about this in public with strangers who don’t understand me, or know me, or my echoes.

The fact that I can sometimes not have a lot of control over my echoes. So, or if I’m stressed, you know, anything that- that brings those filters down, right?

When, when the brain is occupied with other things, and I’m really excited about something, whether that’s happy excitement, or fearful excitement, or just stress excitement, like my brain is worried about the stress. I don’t have the ability to filter, control, camouflage and mask as much.

I do worry sometimes still depending on the situation, but that’s why I try to stay in really safe environments, where my echos and my verbal stimming and things like that aren’t a problem.

That’s my ask for you, if you are not someone who echoes: to remember this next time you say something and someone mimics or repeats back what you just said, or if you hear someone copying a sound, they’ve just heard, please don’t think automatically that someone is making fun of you, if they’re mimicking you.

The phrase “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” -if you’ve heard it, is especially true with people who echo.

It is really essential for you to understand the echolalia is most of the time, subconscious. That means I, and those who echo, often don’t have complete control over the echoing.

We’re not doing it to be annoying. We’re not doing it to be obnoxious.

Those stopping my echos is something it’s difficult.

I can do it, with great focus. I can stop myself from echoing, but then I’m just like thinking really hard about being very still and quiet. I’m no longer engaged in the world around me when I’m focused on not echoing, and being still in quiet.

If I’m in an environment where I know that I need to be very quiet, I’m generally just going to be a very tense person. I’m just focused on holding myself together, so to speak. That’s because I know that’s an environment where I can’t relax and be myself, and it’s not really an environment that I want to be in or enjoy being in.

Something else that is similar to echolalia, that people get confused with echolalia.

As I know, because I used to get these two things confused early on in my discovery journey, is palilalia- and I hope I’ve said that right. That’s when a person is involuntarily repeating themselves. So palilalia is when you’re repeating your own words and phrases.

So for an example, if I’m repeating something, I may say yes, but it’s not just one.

Yes, it might be. The yes. And they might kind of like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Often, you know, there’ll be like a few different “yeses” that just keep going after the first. Yes. And you’re not meaning to say a bunch of extras.

Usually when that happens, at least with me, when it happens, like I’ll start saying something and I’ll get kind of stuck. And it’ll just get kind of stuck and will get quieter and quieter as I like kind of trail off at the end.

If anyone else has palilalia I’d love to know your experience and what it’s like for you, but I kind of just grow quieter and quieter with each little repeat -if I’m repeating them audibly.

It also, it might just not just be a word I might repeat. I might repeat the whole phrase or a couple of words or a sentence a few times. So I’ll try to think of another example because this one’s kind of funny. So someone with palilalia might say, “I would love for you to come over here- come over here, come over here, come over” and then it just kind of trails off at the end. This, this is very frustrating, because it’s like, just like a CD skipping in my brain. That’s the best way I can explain what this is like for me. I’d love to know, what what’s what it’s like for you.

For me, it’s a subconscious thing, and I often don’t realize it’s happening (with either the echolalia or the palilalia) until someone points it out to me. I think I have more control over the echolalia than the palilalia, or maybe just more awareness. I’m not really sure.

Something else that can happen to me that I have very little control over… and this one is the one that frustrates me the most is: and this happens, especially when I try to make a point, or I think I’m not explaining myself clearly… I get stuck in these little loops of speech, where I’m just looping, and looping, and looping, and I might repeat back the exact same words, like over and over again, but other times I might get stuck on the same thought, and so the thought is looping and I’ll keep repeating the same thought, but the words will change.

So I’ll just be stuck in a thought loop, and I’ll just keep circling back, describing the same thing over and over again, using different words, because it’s just looping, and I’m feeling like I can’t get it out correctly, and then people are just like, “why are you repeating yourself over and over again?” Or “okay, I got it the first time!”

People get really annoyed with me when I get stuck in these little circular loops, and I don’t realize I’m doing it all and so that one, I’m really annoyed that I do this. Like, begrudgingly. Begrudgingly. I don’t like that. This happens to me because of, I guess, honestly, I’m going to admit – it’s because of how it’s perceived- as condescending, it’s perceived as all kinds of things it’s not, and it’s just me like kind of getting stuck in a circle, spiraling in my head.

Uh, so yeah. Um, I have no idea I’m doing it until someone’s like, okay.

“You just said that five times that’s enough!” which is like really kind of embarrassing, personally, when someone points it out, because usually they pointed out and they’re annoyed, by the time they’re pointing it out.

I don’t have the ability to recognize when it’s happening on my own, without someone nudging me from the outside, and that’s just really hard, because people think I’m belittling them.

So, for me, that’s why, when I’m doing this video here, or when I’m having an important meeting, I use scripting, which is another thing that’s really common in Autistic people.

I literally have a script in front of me right now, and I’m reading, paraphrasing off the script, to make sure I don’t miss any of the bullet points and I still get stuck in loops, but, you know, cause it’s editing, I’m going to go cut them out.

Then when I’m doing a presentation, I’m like word for word, no improvisation allowed, because I know I might get stuck in a loop if I do that. In calls and in meetings, I might have bullet points to make sure I just get the points as much as possible and I am like just following it so I don’t get stuck in loops.

It really is something that takes up a lot of energy. Then I can’t just relax, because I spent a lot of time preparing and often rehearsing scripts, like literally like a play a script. I come from a theater family, so the scripting thing kinda came naturally to me, it’s something I’ve been doing since long before I knew I was Autistic.

It was like one of the things I was like, oh, this might be an Autistic thing, when I was first wondering if I could be Autistic.

With these scripts, for me anyway, they can be really elaborate or they can be simple. Whether it’s bullet points or like word for word scripts, they just helped me keep on track, and stop the looping.

The other thing I experienced is vocal stimming. This is something I probably have the most control over, out of all the other vocalizations and vocal differences I’ve mentioned today.

Vocal stimming, medically, is defined as when somebody is soothing themselves, by making different sounds with their mouth or throat, such as grunting, singing songs, or saying comforting words, or phrases.

There are verbal stimming stimming with words and vocal stimming. Stimming with sounds. Although technically vocal stimming can include verbal stimming but I wanted to make sure to just differentiate the two because there’s a little bit of a difference there.

Because words are sounds, I use the term vocal stimming, and I will be using that term moving forward, instead of verbal stimming.

My vocal stimming include phrases and scripts from a lot of my favorite movies, TV shows, a lot of it is songs, which I find comforting, and are often a lot more intentional for me then echolalia or palilalia is.

I might sing to myself, grunt, growl, groan, make animal noises, little clicks, squeaks, speaking, funny accents, and funny voices, talking to myself.

I’m just really exploring and playing with the sounds on the closeup level, studying them, having fun, listening to, and experimenting with, my voice.

I’ve done this since I was a young child. It’s how I learned to speak, and say a bunch of words. I still play with my voice to this very day.

Since I was very young, a lot of my vocal stims were related to music, and singing was one of my first ever vocal stims. Singing and stimming with music is still something I do today. It’s, it’s one of my main stims.

Rhythmic stimming -stimming with music, or stimming in a a rhythmic, musical way, is something I do a lot.

Do you do the rhythmic stimming too? Do you stim with music or to music, or do you sing to stim?

For me, an example of this is, and this doesn’t happen as often now, but especially when I was younger. If something would scare me, I had this tendency to shut down on myself (and that still happens). That does still happen, unfortunately, but the part that doesn’t happen as often now is, if I’m really kind of scared, I might start singing, and so I might just loop one or two lines of a song, and comforting myself with that song.

So for me, one of my songs is three little birds from Bob Marley. I would just sing, “Don’t worry about a thing, because every little thing is gonna be all right.” And it would just be that, but like really quiet kind of hush under my voice, probably a bit quicker and just that over and over again, just the chorus, not the whole song.

In the, in those moments I don’t know the whole song. I just know the comforting “everything’s going to be all right” part, and it’s just an instantaneous, repeated, soothing stim, that when like that kind of stimming happens, I might not realize I’m doing it, because I’m really upset and really stressed, but I don’t just stim when I’m stressed or upset.

A lot of the vocal and other types of stims that I do are when I’m excited, and when I’m joyful.

When I’m relaxing at home, and it’s just Dave and the dogs, I constantly stim vocally singing little songs, repeating lines from my favorite shows, TikTok videos. I – I do a lot- I have a lot of TikTok vocal stims and echoes nowadays.

 I’m really, really happy, my overwhelming joy shows, but that’s not always appreciated by people around me.

People have “happiness checked” me throughout my life, telling me that my reactions are “too much” for the time and place, so I’ve learned to tone myself down in certain situations, pretending to be calmer than I really am, which almost always includes suppressing my vocal stimming.

Like with echolalia and palilalia, my vocal stimming can become harder to hold in during times of excitement and stress… or when I let my guard down around people in an environment where I feel safe.

Though I have some control over my vocal stimming, there are times where I might start vocal stimming, then only catch myself when I hear my own voice through my ears.

People have told me that my vocalizations inconvenience and annoy people but they are things that I need to do. Vocal stimming, using my voice as a tool, with phrases, mantras, sounds, can be. Potent- if I access it.

Stimming is how I regulate my energy- my sensory energy, my emotional energy, and is as natural as breathing to me, and holding in my stims is like holding my breath.

My brain takes in a lot of information at once. Sometimes the world can be overwhelming, and stimming lets me focus myself on one or two sensory experiences, grounding myself and bringing myself into the present moment and canceling out other unpleasant stimuli.

Stimming, for Autistic people, has a function and echolalia isn’t meaningless either, and shouldn’t be discouraged.

I have different songs and phrases I sing and say, when I’m joyful, afraid, thinking, or uncomfortable.

My echos and vocal stimming are a way that I express my feelings and communicate. Since those vocalizations relate to feelings and thoughts, they are a hint at what’s happening inside my mind.

Growing up, my vocal stims and echoes were how I would play, learn, and grow. I would sit and stim with words I echoed, to learn and memorize those words.

I would pick a word and say it repeatedly, exploring the sounds out of close up level, until it didn’t sound like a word anymore, forever embedding it in my mind.

I might’ve never learned to speak, communicate, and use language, if I had been discouraged from echoing or vocally stimming.

Do you do any of these things I’ve mentioned today? If so, which one is the one you do the most? And what’s it like for you? I would love to hear your experience.

All right, everyone. Thank you so much.

This video was shot on Tuesday, July 30th. I’m going to try and get it out for the Patreon and other paid subscribers today. It’ll be out for everyone else about a week or two later, when it’s finally finalized, and prepared, and ready to go.

If you ever have requests for video topics, leave them in the comments, because I like to talk about things that you’re interested in learning about. This is a recently requested topic, and so that’s why I’m revisiting it.

If there’s anything you would like for me to revisit, or visit that haven’t visited- let me know.

Talk to you later. Bye.

and I’ll see you in the next video.