I Thought Echolalia Was Only Spoken Words but I Was Wrong: Examples of internal echolalia from an autistic Black woman

Originally published on Medium

When I first realized I was autistic, I researched everything I could find about being autistic, including the concept of echolalia.

Echolalia, as I understood it then, is repeating what someone else said instead of using your own words. To professionals, it’s an obnoxious problem with no communicative value, so they want to train autistic kids to stop doing it.

But echolalia does serve a communicative purpose, like memes that friends share with each other. When you know the reference, the media snippet communicates an appropriate feeling or concept. It’s like sharing a moment to connect with another person.

I read those professional explanations and thought: Yeah, I don’t think I have that.

And then I read more experiences from autistic people’s perspectives and realized: Wait a minute, I don’t do it out loud but I do this mentally.

I repeat phrases from songs, movies, and other media all the time.

After that, I was curious.

What are my personal echolalic phrases?

So about a year ago, I started writing them down. Most of them are snippets from songs that I mentally repeat verbatim with the same tone of voice and rhythm. I rarely say these out loud unless I’m with someone who understands the reference or is already used to my random utterances.

I’ll share 9 of them in the following list. And to help you fully understand the phrase, I’ll first share the words or events that trigger the echolalia, then the specific phrase that repeats in my head, and the origin of the phrase.

So each list item will look like this: Trigger event/phrase — Echolalic phrase — Origin of echolalic phrase.

I hope that’s clear! Here’s the list:

1. Someone says “It’s the weekend” — “It’s the weekend, it’s the weekend.” — from a rap song I can’t find, so the reference is lost for now.

2. When I can’t find my glasses — “My glasses!” — Velma from Scooby Doo.

3. When someone asks where I learned something I read about on the internet — “Internet” — Timmy Turner from Fairly Odd Parents. This gif is not the exact sound snippet my brain plays but it’s close enough.

4. Someone mentions Boston or Massachusetts — “Boston Mass 02134, send it to Zoom!” — From the outro from the awesome 90’s PBS show Zoom.

5. Get in there — “Get in there, yeah yeah” — from the chorus of the dance song Wobble

6. Fight me — “You don’t wanna fight me, in my extra small white T” — from the song Taylor Swift ft. T-Pain Thug Story.

7. The word beach — “Vamos a la playa” — from the song Vamos a la playa by Los Joao song.

8. The word condo — “I got a condo in Manhattan” — from the song What I Like by Bruno Mars

9. The word gazebo — “Gazebo, zebo” — from the song Take You to Rio by Ester Dean.

I smile every time these echolalic phrases pop up. It’s like having an inside joke with myself.

And when I can share these with someone else who gets the reference? It’s a nice moment of connection.