I watched a couple of videos of a girl with autism talking about some aspects of how she experienced it. One topic she discussed and gave an example of was what I think is called echolalia. I don’t know but, for as long as I could remember, even up to today, I have always enjoyed repeating lines of dialogue or noises I have found funny. Not necessarily immediately but, often when I feel the situation feels appropriate, though most other people won’t understand that since they cannot read my mind to get the context I’m referring to. Basically these repeated noises or lines can be triggered by responding to some sort of stimulus, like the topic of a conversation. This has got me thinking about whether this is a symptom of autism.
For example, yesterday when I was preparing some food to take for lunch on my day trip, I heard a typical news story about the American’s blowing hot air about returning to the moon. Now of course that story begins with a reference to the original Apollo program, including Kennedy’s Rice University speech. In middle school, during the 50 year anniversary of the program, this commercial played nonstop of the clip from the Rice speech where Kennedy says the word “moon.” At the time, I thought the way he said the word in his New England accent was funny so I repeated the word as an exaggerated “moo.” When I heard the context of the news story, I started to say “moo” in reference to the Rice speech. This then runs into a stream of monologue that I’ve gone through before, all of which I find funny but, to a stranger would seem quite unusual.
Then another time today, when two people near me were talking about cars and mentioned a jeep, that triggered the specific memory of a one-off character on an episode of MASH I saw 12 years ago. It was the way the guy on TV said the word jeep that made me copy and remember the sound. Then my mind went to remembering the rest of the dialogue. All during that moment, I lightly held back the urge to say the words I found most funny out loud because I knew that would make me look unusual to most observers.
I can do this when talking to people or more often, when I’m talking to myself, even in the vicinity of others. I know this probably makes me unusual in their opinions of me but, part of me just doesn’t care since I know from life experience most of them would still ignore me if I acted the way they wanted me to be. In those cases, I usually chalk it up to acting like a jokester to get attention but these videos made me reconsider that a bit.
For additional context, I had some college officials at the child autism center suggest I get evaluated but, I was turned off by the runaround with trying to find local adult resources for this issue (I love stress and procrastination). The same thing was suggested by my high school guidance counselor after a rough year where I reverted to taking my ADHD meds to improve my grades, though my mother felt insulted at the suggestion given to her by the evaluators that she just dropped it there and never explored it further.
I don’t know. I’ve heard that autism can vary from person to person but, I guess one thing that keeps me doubting every time my suspicions bubble up is comparing myself to my college roommate, who was diagnosed during the time I lived with her. She showed symptoms that I don’t have and that has reassured me in saying that I do not have autism.
So I guess I’ll ask if these instances I’ve described above sound like symptoms of autism? There are plenty of other times I’ve acted like this in everyday life but, I wanted to provide a couple of concrete examples of what I’m talking about so I provided the most recent examples I could remember.
Also, does repeating certain words you latch onto occasionally during a time of stress constitute a symptom, because now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve been conscious of doing that for at least 15 years or so. The word or phrase tends to change every couple of years.
I appreciate your input on all of this. I’m so isolated all the time that I never get to compare notes with peers.
Edit: I just thought of another example right now. When I hear a certain type of doorbell sound, that gives me the strong urge to say the phrase “quorum call.” That one again comes from when I was a teenage lib and watched C-Span on occasion. I don’t know the exact thought process but, that’s a thing for me and I try not to say it out loud in front of strangers.
yes.
vocal stimming is extremely common with autistic and other neurodivergent people. AuDHD people exist/are not uncommon. being adhd makes it much more likely that you’d also be autistic.
I regret not having people in school go over this with my mother when the resources for this were more readily available.
same here dude. my mother just thinks that other people (neurotypical people) are inscrutable and cruel. (she is also autistic/adhd)
Sometimes I think she might be neurotypical too. One time her neurologist, after her telling him about the school psychiatrist diagnosed me with ADHD, suggested she get a screening. She was insulted at the prospect. Idk, she grew up in close proximity to disabled and neurotypical people at a time when it was still heavily stigmatized. I guess that still weighs heavily on her.
Yes.
Yes. Also, just because you don’t jive with one particular autist at one point in your life doesn’t mean you’re not autistic too. Especially getting to adulthood without being diagnosed, you will have developed a wide range of coping skills that may make it more difficult to recognize. Since you’re already watching videos of autistic people, id dive into watching videos of a wide range of adult autists. If some of them click with you then look further. I would love to just tell you to go talk to a specialist, but adult autism isn’t something that many are qualified to diagnose, but plenty of doctors think they can tell you you don’t have it, when they really don’t have the requisite knowledge to make that determination. So look into it yourself first so you know whether to push.
But yeah, I’ve not seen neurotypical people behave like that. But my daughter and I both do similar things.
I’ll probably have to look into further like you said. I hate how the resources for these issues are consigned to the realm of child specialists. It’s the same with ADHD. I say to myself: “what happens when the child grows up, to they just change or disappear?!” It’s so frustrating, that’s why I didn’t pursue it any further in university. My roommate did, as she suffered academically from that and a bunch of other issues the poor lady was juggling all at once but, I didn’t. Instead I just failed out of a graduate-level certificate program and gave up opportunity to become a classroom teacher.
I don’t know if that incident was caused by some issues with undiagnosed autism, untreated ADHD, or both but, a lady whom the therapist I was seeing referred me to at the university autism center suspected it based off my fidgeting and lack of good eye contact.
It is rather frustrating that there’s not much out there for us. I went for 30 some years not knowing, and it’s not for lack of being looked at. Sometimes it’s nice to have explanations and answers. Hopefully you’ll get some.
The last bit about the stress response is what stands out to me here.
Idk I’ve always had fun with mimicry and get oddly specific recollections, sometimes I pop off with goofy remembered pronunciations and have to explain afterwards. Nobody’s ever suggested i might be autistic, although I absolutely have adhd. But the stress word-focus thing isn’t something I’ve felt before.
Incidentally this habit led me to an interest in voice acting, which always seemed ironic because I’m normally a pretty quiet guy. Just thought I’d mention that in case you’ve never considered it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD and took meds starting in Kindergarten.
For me, now that I’m thinking more about it, the stress response can also be a jumble of words that don’t really make sense to anyone. And it can happen when I’m nervous of how I presented myself in a social situation after the fact (either verbally or things like eye contact) or even following sending something like a very important email.
The concept of “winning the argument a week later in the shower” is ubiquitous enough that I assume most people sometimes ruminate on how they phrased stuff. Verbalizing for its own sake or verbalizing something nonsensical does sound like a distinct thing.
Also “quorum call” rules, fuck the haters
I can say something nonsensical as a part of being stressed and ruminating about something I said. It’s mostly that while I think about it concretely in my head.
Quorum call does rule, they play some cool classical music while they read off a bunch of names slowly. I used to be able to memorize every
and 
in the Senate during the 111th Congress.
I’ve had basically the same questions about myself forever, me and my siblings all, with other various neuroatypical symptoms, will repeat things in that way. Sounds stick really hard in our brains, we all have played music and we can memorize songs easily.
I’ve never been formally diagnosed but my therapist thought I was likely neurodivergent. But in relation to:
Also, does repeating certain words you latch onto occasionally during a time of stress constitute a symptom, because now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve been conscious of doing that for at least 15 years or so. The word or phrase tends to change every couple of years.
This happens to me but not necessarily a specific phrase for years, but something like a single line from a song or phrase will repeat endlessly sometimes when I’m distressed, as if I can hardly hear my actual thoughts over it.
This happens to me but not necessarily a specific phrase for years, but something like a single line from a song or phrase will repeat endlessly sometimes when I’m distressed, as if I can hardly hear my actual thoughts over it.
I think I should rephrase that by saying sometimes I say a random-sounding repeated word or phrase and when I’m stressed I could say that or just say a string of those words and nonsense words, during which I try to calm myself down if I need to do so.
yup that’s an autism thing.
