Autistic people are often attracted to one particular line in a song and will sing that one line aloud or in their brain for days, possibly in the singer’s accent. This may be considered a form of stimming, as well as a form of echolalia.
@housepanther@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic
Right now it’s Just The Two Of Us by Bill Withers, only it’s about autistic masking “we can fake it you & I”. Not one of my best, but it’s what my brain is doing today.
I used to tell my dog how great he was, all the time. Now he's a very old Little Man, and he's almost completely deaf, and he can't hear me say it. That makes me sad. 😥
I know he feels it when I scratch the itches he can't reach, and when I snuggle him.
He comes up to me and paws at the part of his body he can't reach, so I know where to scratch.
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic I think I also do that with particular parts of songs that I can't stand too. I never knew why. I can't explain it as anything other than stimming, but I didn't know that until just recently.
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic oh god I suffer so much with this. I don’t know if I’m neurodivergent, but deffinateltnI can relate with anyone that find some songs impossible to remove from they head for days and nights. Yes… I even dream with my tormentones as soundtrack
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic For me, the lyrics I return to repeatedly tend to be those for which I have a sense that the line expresses something important, such as an emotion, and by singing or listening to the line I am trying to capture and perpetuate that. (In contrast to an earworm, which is prototypically involuntary and annoying and void of depth.)
When I need to calm down, or when I'm cleaning the kitchen, I put this on and sing it. A couple of octaves below this, but it matches my voice perfectly.
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic As someone who loves music and repetition...this is very true for me. I've been singing "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies" to myself for over a month now, and while I like Fleetwood Mac, I barely know the song aside from that one line. Can't even remember when I first heard it.
I often have a feeling that I’m an outlier even among outliers but then I happily realize we’re all unique and that sort of thing is celebrated here, unlike in NT spaces where conformity takes the cake.
@CynAq@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic I have a rather surprisingly large collection of songs that I know end-to-end and singing them through has been one of my most consistent ways of stimming as far back as I can remember. Not that I knew I was stimming for most of that, of course.
@Jobob@CynAq@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic Jingle Bell Rock kept me calm and focused when a blizzard swept in as I was driving home with my infant daughter. I sang it for the entire drive.
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