Internalized echolalia is one of those things people rarely talk about because they rarely know it exists. For me, it’s not some quirky feature of being autistic. It’s my brain’s operating system. It’s the language I speak in silence. While the world pushes me to say things out loud and to follow the scripts they wrote for me, I’ve always had my own looping phrases, echoing thoughts, and repeated sentences playing in my mind. They aren’t distractions. They’re how I make sense of everything.

But school doesn’t make space for that.

I grew up in classrooms ruled by PBIS, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. That acronym sounds like it’s designed to help. It’s packaged like a solution, something “positive” and “supportive.” But if you’re like me, autistic, internally regulated, and wired to process language differently, it doesn’t feel supportive at all.

It feels like surveillance. It feels like punishment for being invisible.

Here’s what most people don’t realize: PBIS depends on behavior being seen. It’s a system obsessed with external compliance. It rewards eye contact, speaking when spoken to, sitting still, following directions, and smiling on cue. If you do the “right” thing in the “right” way, you get a point, a sticker, and a shoutout. If you don’t? Well, then you’re off-task. Noncompliant. Difficult. In need of intervention.

But I don’t live out loud all the time.

Sometimes, I live in loops.

In the middle of a group activity, I might be repeating something in my head, something someone said last week, a line from a song, a piece of dialogue that comforts me, organizes my thinking, or helps me make sense of chaos. It’s not because I’m distracted. It’s because my brain is finding order in the noise. It’s scripting to self-regulate. And because PBIS can’t see that, it assumes I’m not doing anything at all.

I’ve been marked as “off-task” more times than I can count—because someone didn’t understand that repeating a phrase internally helped me stay on task. I’ve been accused of being “disengaged” when I was actually fighting to stay regulated enough to participate. I’ve been told I’m not listening, when I was memorizing every word in real-time using echolalia as a storage mechanism.

PBIS never saw me. It only saw what it could measure.

And because internalized echolalia isn’t visible, it didn’t count.

So I started hiding the parts of me that didn’t earn rewards. I masked harder. I stopped stimming in public. I tried to stop scripting in my head because every time I got caught in that loop, I missed something, or someone noticed my gaze drifted away, and I’d be scolded for it.

That’s what PBIS did to me. It taught me that survival wasn’t safe unless I did it their way.

But their way wasn’t mine.

Their way demanded that I flatten my internal world so they could see me better. It demanded that I trade authenticity for acceptance. That I look like I was learning, instead of actually learning. That I perform for them to earn dignity, and that’s not support. That’s coercion dressed up in a pretty behavioral bow.

Internalized echolalia is one of the most misunderstood parts of being autistic. People think echolalia is just parroting words out loud. But for me—and so many others—it happens quietly. I can hold whole conversations in my head, looping certain words or phrases, because it helps me understand my environment. Sometimes, I repeat instructions silently, not because I didn’t understand, but because I did—and I want to remember them. Sometimes, I loop emotionally significant phrases, especially when I’m overwhelmed or overstimulated. They anchor me. They’re a form of self-regulation.

Imagine using that to keep your nervous system together and being punished for it.

Imagine a teacher snapping her fingers at you to “come back,” when you never left, you were just internally repeating what she said, so you wouldn’t forget it. Imagine getting a frowny face on your behavior chart because you didn’t “look” like you were paying attention, even though you could quote back the entire lesson. Imagine being told, “Great job! You were so quiet today!” on the days you were actually shut down.

That’s what PBIS misses. It doesn’t ask why a student is doing something. It doesn’t care how they’re thinking. It doesn’t value invisible processes. It values presentation. And if your presentation doesn’t match the script, you get penalized even when you’re working twice as hard just to stay regulated.

For years, I internalized that shame. I believed I wasn’t trying hard enough. I believed I was broken. I started chasing approval instead of chasing understanding.

I tried to become the kind of student PBIS would praise …quiet, compliant, non-disruptive. But all that did was separate me further from myself. I wasn’t learning how to function in the world. I was learning how to perform. And I was punished the moment I stopped.

I am not here to be a “good” autistic for someone else’s system.

I am here to live fully in the way I was designed to live.

And that means looping phrases in my head. That means stimming when I need to. That means honoring the internal echolalia that helps me process life on a neurological level. That means refusing to pretend that visible compliance is more important than authentic learning.

PBIS taught me that my regulation wasn’t valid unless someone could observe it. I reject that.

I don’t need a sticker. I don’t need a shoutout. I don’t need a “great job following directions” to erase myself.

What I need is a classroom that sees internal processing as legitimate. A teacher who trusts that I might be working harder than my peers, even when I don’t raise my hand. A system that respects invisible labor. A model that prioritizes regulation over performance.

PBIS will never be that model.

And I’ll never stop speaking out internally or externally until we replace it with something human.

People often ask me, “Why do you repeat things in your head?” The real question is: Why wouldn’t I? My brain, like many autistic brains, is wired for pattern recognition, language-based memory, and sensory modulation through repetition. Internalized echolalia is not a glitch. It’s a feature.

Let’s talk about the science.

Autistic people often have heightened connectivity between certain brain regions, particularly those involved in sensory processing, memory, and language. The temporal lobe (home to the auditory cortex and language centers) often lights up differently in autistic individuals, especially during tasks that involve processing spoken language. Research using fMRI scans has shown that for many of us, echolalia is not meaningless repetition; it activates meaningful neural pathways associated with learning, memory, and social cognition (Schoen et al., 2008; Eigsti et al., 2011).

When I repeat phrases in my head, I’m doing a few things neurologically:

Encoding and Storage: I’m moving auditory information into working memory, especially when my executive functioning is overloaded. Internalized echolalia helps reinforce that storage, much like repeating a phone number to yourself.

Emotional Regulation: Repetition can soothe the nervous system. For autistic people, echolalia often activates parasympathetic nervous system responses. That’s the part of our brain that calms us down. This is especially important in overstimulating environments like classrooms.

Language Processing: Sometimes I script or repeat to access language or organize thoughts. Research has shown that echolalia can serve as a bridge to more spontaneous speech and language development, not as a barrier (Prizant & Rydell, 1984).

But none of that is captured by PBIS.

PBIS isn’t designed to understand internal neurological work. It’s a behaviorist system rooted in 1950s psychology based on the outdated idea that all human behavior can be shaped through reinforcement. It was built on the assumptions of B.F. Skinner and behavior modification are not based on the current understanding of neurodevelopment, executive functioning, or sensory regulation.

In fact, behaviorist models like PBIS completely ignore how the autistic brain actually works. They assume that everything a student does is a “choice” made to access or avoid something. But internalized echolalia isn’t a choice, it’s a neurological necessity. When I’m looping a phrase in my head, I’m not avoiding work, and I’m preparing my brain to do the work.

And when people punish or ignore that because they can’t see it, they’re not supporting me. They’re interrupting my regulation and undermining my ability to learn.

Executive Functioning Matters, Too.

Many autistic people, including me, also have executive functioning differences. That means the mental skills we use for planning, focusing, remembering instructions, and switching tasks can work differently or be harder to manage. Internalized echolalia supports those systems. It’s like scaffolding for memory and attention; repeating phrases helps me stay anchored when everything else feels chaotic. It’s my scaffolding, not a distraction.

But PBIS has no room for that nuance. It reduces every behavior to surface-level compliance. It asks, “Are you following directions?” not “Are you self-regulating?” It sees “attention” as a student making eye contact or sitting still, not as a student looping instructions internally to hold on to them during an executive functioning overload.

If a student like me starts to script internally, PBIS might mark that as disengagement. But neurologically, I’m deeply engaged. It’s just not visible.

The Danger of Ignoring Brain Science

When schools ignore neuroscience, they don’t just misunderstand students like me; they harm us.

By ignoring the regulation and the processing work we do internally, they interrupt it. They redirect us, pull us out of our rhythm, and then punish us when we melt down from the interruption. They use stickers and tokens to reward the masking of needs, reinforcing shutdown and burnout. They fail to recognize that “behavior” is often the end result of unmet regulation needs, not a decision we made for attention.

PBIS treats the brain like a vending machine: input a command, and expect an output. But the autistic brain doesn’t work that way. It’s more like a weather system, dynamic, sensitive, and constantly adjusting to internal and external variables.

And internalized echolalia? That’s the radar.

It tracks everything.

It monitors my internal environment. It tells me when I’m safe, when I’m stressed, when I need to hold on tighter to a phrase because it’s the only thing grounding me in that moment. That’s not behavior to eliminate. That’s brain-based resilience.

A Final Word on Evidence

The irony is that while PBIS is often described as “evidence-based,” its roots are in observable compliance, not brain science. Meanwhile, modern neuroscience and developmental psychology have spent years proving that regulation, not compliance, is the foundation of learning. Polyvagal theory (Porges, 2011), interoception research (Mahler, 2017), and neurodiversity-affirming frameworks all point to one truth: learning happens best when the nervous system is supported, not controlled.

PBIS doesn’t support mine. It suppresses it.

So if you’re going to talk about “positive” behavior support, it better start with understanding the brain—my brain.

Because I’m not looping for fun, I’m looping to live.