echopraxia/echolalia

Post Reply New Topic

Who engages in this? I'm engaging in this all the time. When I'm in the midst of a conversation with someone, I always get an image that just pops into my head of a person and positive feelings about the person emerge and the person performs an action and I perform that action and that person speaks with a certain tone of voice, a certain cadence and I speak with that tone of voice and cadence, though in my own words. It seems to work pretty well for me, as it gives me an affect I wouldn't otherwise have; according to my records, when I was a kid, I would have a flat affect.

It's like I enter into symbiosis with that person, who is sometimes a fictional character or a person I haven't met in a while, it's like their soul enters mine and helps me with my presentation, as though I don't have my own affect/body language but it is of the people I've met. It's a positive, helpful experience, though it makes me think I don't have much of a sense of identity.

I do, but it doesn't happen as intensely as when I was younger. I have read that this is fairly common with Aspie females.

I think this is a large part of what makes HFA different from AS.
Someone with HFA might not be able to pick up on the subtle differences in peoples vocal patterns, whereas most people with AS that I have met (including myself) are pretty good at adapting to different people's styles
See this thread for more about the differences between HFA and AS

I find myself accidentally or subconsciously mimicking the movements of people around me. I find it quite embarrassing as, once I notice, I worry that they have noticed and might think I am taking the piss or something. Is this not observed amongst NTs also though?

Yes, it's a little bit embarrassing...although it made me good at acting as a child or teenager (I was a drama scholar at secondary school) because I could easily mimic people, especially verbally. Then there is the difficulty that I'm only me when I'm on my own...whenever I'm with someone I switch into someone else...I also used to adopt behaviours from fiction which used to cause a few problems because I wasn't aware that fictional behaviour isn't always acceptable in real life....I'm still not very good at that one.

...and my mother always said I should be an actress when I was a child. Hah.

I recently caught on to why I do this, just as I recently discovered I'm an Aspie.

In school, I was severely bullied for being a "fake" and a "poser," though I never understood why. It hurt a great deal to have the few people I had considered to be friends suddenly turn on me with such malicious intent. I regularly found my pictures all over their social networking circles, Photoshopped and ladened with ugly, hurtful words. How was high school for everyone else?

I suppose that an undiagnosed Aspie (misdiagnosed as BPD) placed into DBT five hours a week for two years with a rigid set of behaviors to learn WOULD do very well in that situation. Apparently, in my prime, I was so good at it that the psychologists never realized that was what I was doing all along, thus evading proper diagnosis and help. By the time I graduated, my primary therapist said it was like I had been 'cured' of Borderline. It even got to the point where I didn't even realize I was doing it anymore. Six months after DBT ended, my 'skills' were failing me and I went right back to my previous self, albeit less destructive.

Once I connected AS with how I performed in DBT, I realized that I was just copying what my therapists did and said. Without them around, I had no one to look to for.. "inspiration?"

I catch myself mimicking people I admire, TV characters, and characters in books. Occasionally, I've been caught performing the same actions as someone in a show I'm watching while engaged in watching it. People think its funny, but I find it terribly embarrassing. I don't watch TV with people anymore.

I try not to, but I do it quite often sometimes. It was always from television commercials when I was little, but now it could be from a broader range--whatever associated with what I'm trying to get across.

I do this. I tend to repeat things my husband says to the dog, often making the words into funny sounding versions of themselves, which sounds odd now that I'm typing it here. Also, if I'm around someone for a couple of hours I'll start taking on their vocal habits, phrases, etc so that I start to sound like them after a while. That's actually annoying.

OTOH, I'm a terrible mimic when I try to be. Like doing fake accents? I'm horrible at it.

*sigh* *raises his hand* It gets embaressing when I get caught reapeating phrases to myself.