Internal Echolalia

I have really bad internal echolalia/palalalia. I've been googling it and been finding very little and what I do find isn't consistent. One site says that echolalia is repeating what you hear others say, while palilalia is repeating what YOU say, however I also saw that there is no such thing as "internal palilalia" because by definition it is spoken, not interal.
So, what, there's no such thing as internally echoing what you say? It apparently hasn't been written about much, but it sure annoys the freakin' heck out of me. It's gotten worse too. I'm not sure why. My inner dialog consists either of made-up conversations, or echos of what I either said or even just thought, and it'll repeat over and over in my head. It seems like when I try to stop the conversations the echoing gets worse. Both are quite annoying.

I never did have spoken echolalia or paralalia even when young, but perhaps that's more because I had Selective Mutism as a kid, and I never did like talking much.

Has anyone dealt with this, and/or had any success in making it stop or slow down?

I have this too. Sometimes I hear completely random conversations that make no sense, and that I've never heard before. I know they are in my head though, so they are not "hallucinations". One particularly strange one I remember from a few years ago was a male voice saying "You are now the king of the kangaroos."

I don't have this kind of thing too often anymore, though I still do the repeating. My mom said when I was young I used to repeat TV commercials, word for word, so she put me in acting. I think this probably helped me a lot in learning interactions.

I have the internal echolalia quite a bit now, though. Often the last word(s) I heard will repeat over and over until I hear something else. I converse quite often in my head too, and rehearse what I will/should say. Keeping conversations up in my head seems to keep the other echos out some.

I am looking up in my University's online database to see if I can find anything useful for you. I'll post what I can find.

I have something like this as well, although the form mine takes is mostly in the area of daydreaming. I'll "make up" conversations, in general, in my own head with someone..or replay a conversation I had (either being segments of a conversation or full conversations) a large number of times.

In terms of how to calm it a bit...I'm honestly not sure the "best" way to do it, since I still do it. I personally find that some kind of meditation-like practice helps me to learn not to pay attention to the internal dialogue quite so much. The only problem for me is that I need to be consistent on the meditation (e.g. meditate every day), and try to remind myself about the practice through the day for it to really have any benefit. Another thing that's kinda helped me out a bit is asking "why" (Like "Finding your own North Star" recommends) a few times to try and drill down why I'm replaying this kinda conversation over and over again. I usually then try to remind myself that thinking about it, or replaying the conversation, isn't going to help me in the long run.

This kinda stuff helps...but I haven't really been able to "cure" the internal dialogue with any real success...only to quiet the dialogue so that it's not quite as bad.

this is likely down to low serotonin, as is tinnitus which i have. i'd suggest doing all those things that boost serotonin, ie: eat bananas and kiwi fruit, take L-5-HTP (tryptophan), possibly even resort to SSRIs (??? - i hate meds!!!). vitamin B12 might also be a factor, as it does with sleep, but i'm much less sure of that. a good quality multi-vit is often a fairly safe bet too.

I will admit....the SSRI I'm on right now (Prozac) has been of great help in this area. I'm only taking 20mg a day, and it's meant for my anxiety but it's really had a positive impact with relatively few negatives (or at least, negatives I don't care about).

I dunno if this is related to low serotonin or not, though. I'm just adding that being on an SSRI has also helped my obsessive thinking. There are some days, though, where the obsessive thinking gets really extreme yet though. I may need to talk to my doctor about that...maybe increase the dose a bit more.

the obsessive nature is caused by the brain's inability to reconfigure - it needs serotonin for that. SSRIs aren't ideal because they don't increase sertonin levels but instead prevent the serotonin being utilised (the re-uptake part of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor). when i've been severely depressed and my serotonin levels have been really low, my tinnitus goes crazy and i get things like thoughts or sounds stuck in an infinite loop. when the depression lifts, so do these symptoms.

Yeah. I may have had a chronic issue with depression for a very long time because this constant looping of obsessive thought is something I've had for years...little worse over the past year, though.

I dunno what'll happen after I stop taking prozac. I've only been on it for about a month now, and I think I'm going to try staying on it for at least a year before dropping off it. I read anything less than 9 months has a very high rate of dipping back into depression again. Hopefully a year on this will help my mind reconfigure however it needs to so that this isn't as much of a problem when I stop taking it. *shrug*

Thanks for the replies everyone.

aspieme wrote:I have this too. Sometimes I hear completely random conversations that make no sense, and that I've never heard before. I know they are in my head though, so they are not "hallucinations". One particularly strange one I remember from a few years ago was a male voice saying "You are now the king of the kangaroo

Well mine isn't like this. I make up conversations that I might have with a real person, and while I have a hard time stopping it, I'm in control of what is said, it's never just random. That's funny about the kangaroos though

AspieMe wrote:I have the internal echolalia quite a bit now, though. Often the last word(s) I heard will repeat over and over until I hear something else. I converse quite often in my head too, and rehearse what I will/should say. Keeping conversations up in my head seems to keep the other echos out some.

This is what I do. All the time. It's usually what I say rather than what I hear others say, but it can be either.

AspieMe wrote:I am looking up in my University's online database to see if I can find anything useful for you. I'll post what I can find.

Yes thank you, please do! There is very little out there in google-land, and what is there is only about kids, and it's wrong. There were a few sites that say things to the effect of: "Perhaps the reason autistic kids do this is to buy time to answer, for instance, repeating the question someone asked in order to process the question so they can think of an answer". I say Bull-caca to that. Yeah someone could form this habit for this purpose, but that would not be counted as echolalia. The echo-thing has nothing to do with buying time. If anything it distracts from being able to answer!

TDT wrote:I have something like this as well, although the form mine takes is mostly in the area of daydreaming. I'll "make up" conversations, in general, in my own head with someone..or replay a conversation I had (either being segments of a conversation or full conversations) a large number of times.

Yup I do this all the time. Sometimes it's actually productive and it can help me solve a problem or see something clearer, but more often than not it's just a waste of brain-time.

Maybe I should start trying the Buspar again, see what happens.

shock_the_monkey wrote:this is likely down to low serotonin, as is tinnitus which i have. i'd suggest doing all those things that boost serotonin, ie: eat bananas and kiwi fruit, take L-5-HTP (tryptophan), possibly even resort to SSRIs (??? - i hate meds!!!). vitamin B12 might also be a factor, as it does with sleep, but i'm much less sure of that. a good quality multi-vit is often a fairly safe bet too.

Makes sense. Come to think of it, I've completely forgotten about multi-vit's, I should definitely start taking that in any case! For stress my neurologist gave me Buspar but I haven't been taking it, but I'm thinking of starting it back up. Also the valerian that TDT has mentioned a few times might help.

shock_the_monkey wrote:the obsessive nature is caused by the brain's inability to reconfigure

So I'm thinking that it's my ADHD mixed with the AS that makes this all worse. The AS starts the echoing, and the ADHD keeps me from being able to "switch gears" to stop it. Arrgghhhhh

Well, I couldn't find anything on echolalia. :/ Lots of things on general deficits in individuals with developmental disorders, but nothing specific enough that was of any use.

Thanks for checking Aspieme, I appreciate it!
So now, is it just me or is this a very UNexplored area?