30 Days of Autism Acceptance: Day 26

#30DaysofAutismAcceptance

Sorry this is short - for some reason I'm struggling to write today. As is often the case, with this month's posts, this is a topic I'm likely to return to at some other point.

Day 26:

Talk about echolalia and scripting.  Do you use echolalia?  What about scripting?

For a long time I didn't think I experienced echolalia (repetition of sounds/words, particularly those recently heard - ie. like an echo, hence the term), but thinking about it courtesy primarily of this prompt, I've realised that sometimes, I do it. Rarely, and certainly not obviously enough to be picked up on as something slightly unusual or odd, but I do do it. Growing up it was often words I'd not heard before, or rhythms that captivated my attention, or things I should have said when a conversation went wrong. These days I don't really do it as far as I'm aware, although I probably still do it a bit when I'm tired and/or stressed. For my friends who are reading these posts, have you ever noticed me being echolalic? If so, under what circumstances? I'm genuinely curious!

Scripting, on the other hand, has always been a constant with me and something I do quite a bit. I do it for a lot of things, especially things that come up in conversation on multiple occasions. Once I start I can't stop, it's word-for-word every time (for some, Gideon can recite my script word-for-word too, it's occurred so often...!) and if you interrupt me, it throws me so much I completely lose track of my point, where I was going with it, the entire conversation. Please don't interrupt me (unless there's some sort of danger or somesuch) and if you've heard it a dozen times before, please just bear with me and be patient. I get that it can be boring if you've heard it loads of times before, but it's not something I have much control over and it's just something I do because I'm autistic. There's also the use of certain phrases that I've picked up from books, films, etc that seem appropriate to the conversation and I don't always realise I'm doing it. In reality they don't always quite fit but in my head they do!

There's so much more on this subject and it's something I'd like to explore further, but as I said above, my brain doesn't seem to want to work very well today so I'm going to have to call it at this point for today. Apologies!