The Echoes Inside my Mind (Daily Word Prompt is Echo)

An echo can make lovely sounds like a church bell in a tall cathedral tower ringing loudly and the sound of the bell still rings in your ears after the bell has actually stopped the swinging motion of its large golden bell. That is a positive and beautiful echo to hear.

However, there are negative echoes we do not want to hear. For example, listening to the repeated yelling, screaming, belittling and shaming abusive words I heard from my parents that echoed throughout my childhood were definitely negative echoes.

Even though I did not understand what it was or why it happened at the time, one of the very first obvious signs that I had Bipolar Disorder or some kind of a severe mental illness involved echoing of many unwanted and abnormal words inside my mind.

To this day my Psychiatrist and I do not understand what it really was or why it happened, but it did happen and it was real and it was very difficult to live with. The only thing I did know was that it was not normal and that I could not and would not tell anyone.

When I was thirteen years old, I did something that my mother got very upset about so she treated me with her very common shaming behavior and words. For some reason after that particular emotional abuse, my brain reacted to it abnormally.

Every word that anyone said around me was repeated and echoed inside my mind. Also, every word that I said was also repeated and echoed in my mind, even while I was talking. This caused my brain to become overcrowded and very loud inside my mind.

My life and everything I did and needed to do became extremely difficult. It became very hard to live with these noises inside my mind and to pretend that I was normal.

I could not stop or make the echoes inside my mind go away. I had no idea how long these noises were going to be there, but they lasted continuously twenty four hours a day for at least two months or more.

Just like the word noises and echoes within my mind started with no warning, they also stopped with no warning or reason. One day the noises just stopped. My mind became much quieter and clearer again.

Now that I am older and have been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder 1 and have researched as much as I could about my illness, I have learned that this period may have been the onset of my Bipolar Disorder with psychotic features.

As an adult I have experienced a few psychotic episodes but luckily not very often. I have never experienced such severe echoing like I did when I was thirteen years old.

Even though I have experienced negative echoes, I still choose to look at life positively and I choose to hear as many positive echos as I can.

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Echolalia is a meaningless repetition of another person’s spoken words as a symptom of a psychiatric disorder. It is an uncontrollable and immediate repetition of words spoken by another person.

What I have understood about echolalia is that these words of other people are repeated out loud by the person exhibiting the echolalia speech. I have never heard of the echolalia remaining inside ones own mind like it did with me. I may have to research this some more.

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https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/echo/

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