By Heather L.E McKay
When I grew up GLP (Gestalt Language Processing) or Echolalia wasn’t talked about, in fact no one had even heard of it or discovered it yet.
No-one knew why some children spoke with broken language, or why some repeated phrases from TV, songs, rhymes, spoken idioms or radio (we didn’t have computers yet either). No-one understood that there were different ways for brains to be. No-one knew what a divergent brain really was or what that meant. And no one knew that we learnt in different ways that could affect the methodology of teaching to the degree that curriculum was actually detrimental to many learners.
But with time, research, and a little acceptance of differences – understanding can come in bucketloads – and eventually it becomes ‘common knowledge’, and not just theories or ideas. This has a knock-on affect to the next generation of children learning about how their brain/bodies work and how to teach themselves certain things and skills, and how to develop naturally in order to suit that specific brain type, to the benefit of each person.
Information about people who are Gestalt learners is only in its infancy. So, I feel privileged to be part of the learning and growing stage of this interesting topic.
I’m a Gestalt processor. Many people seem to think that gestalt is only a ‘phase’ that is part of a child’s growth – and that the child eventually ‘outgrows’ gestalt methods. I can assure you – we don’t. Some of us can even become what some people might refer to as ‘worse’ as we age. I think perhaps that I might be one of those people.
It was proposed at one stage that all children learn through gestalt learning methods at one stage in their toddlerhood/infancy – but they move on to analytical methods eventually. I’d agree, all children do use a little of gestalt methodology to learn certain things, we all do. And all of us also use some analytical processing methods to learn some things too – and that’s ok. But what I’m talking about here is the predominance of a way of processing that is inherent or natural to each individual. Just like using your left or right hand is inherent and natural to each person. You can’t (and definitely shouldn’t) try to change that preference/ inherent ability. Because as soon as you do – you harm the individual.
This is what curriculums or speech therapy that only teach to analytical processors do to the GLP’s of the world. They harm them. What is needed is for teachers and therapists to understand that there’s always another way to learn and to teach -and the current one isn’t working.
My kids are also Gestalt processors, and they will never ‘outgrow’ it – because we are all autistic – it’s the way our brains are wired. And we don’t need to outgrow it either – because it can be a wonderful way to learn. Let me explain.
As a gestalt child you can be overlooked and ignored. Since research and rumour has assumed that approximately 80% of autistics are gestalt processors – without actually fully understanding what gestalt processing completely entails – or without testing all of us – I’m going to go out on a very fragile limb and posit that all autistics are possibly gestalt processors. But not all of us are gestalt spoken.
What’s the difference you ask?
If a person uses echolalia for speech – it can look like repetitive speech in small chunks. Eg: a child may repeat the same phrase or song excerpt to mean multiple things when said to their safe people (their parents or teachers). They might not be able to use the gestalt sentence in another compilation as yet – but in their head it means multiple things – or symbolises/represents multiple things. It’s up to the adult most of the time (during this learning phase) to decipher what the child is meaning to communicate each time the gestalt is uttered in different contexts.
This is spoken gestalts – where the processing of the gestalt is uttered out-loud (in spoken language).
Written gestalts?
Written gestalts are phrases that are repeated in written words. AAC can be set up to deliver a written gestalt into a spoken one – eg: text to speech. Or vice versa. If you have a non-speaking GLP – make sure you join the “AAC & Gestalt Language Processing” group on Facebook for extra support and ideas to help.
But what is inner gestalt processing?
My brain repeats everything, multiple times – like re-listening to the same song over and over again. It feels good most of the time, it helps me process the information being repeated, and it helps me to regulate my emotions. Until it doesn’t! And then it becomes a negative thought loop that can kill my executive functioning, hurt my mental health and keep me awake for hours every single night.
Are you autistic? Does your brain do this? Whether you think in images, or an inner monologue, or in sensory experiences, impressions or memories… If you are a gestalt processor – those thoughts, memories, learning and or ideas will repeat in your brain/body experience all day every day. Some think this is monotropism – but I think it’s actually the gestalt processing causing monotropism. In other words – I believe we are gestalt processors first and foremost and once we repeat language, thoughts, learning and ideas often enough – then it becomes monotropism.
This is why I believe so many autistic people will have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep. We will play ‘re-runs’ of our day, or yesterday or even something that happened 30 years ago in our mind/ body. It will repeat until we either process it and move on, or until we deal with the issue.
Some will say that this is a trauma response. But I do this with things that aren’t traumatic. Like watching a movie or listening to music. I will repeat the song or parts of the movie in my mind over and over – I turn a part of the song or movie into a gestalt – and then play it in my mind whenever I want to feel happy or regulate myself. I’m no having a trauma response.
Why do people think that thought loops are only a trauma response?
Trauma repeats because it’s stored in a certain part of the brain that likes to repeat things. Sensory experiences are also stored in this area of the brain. Because autistic people often have SPD and a lot of trauma – and it’s stored in the repeat part of the brain – people conflate them. They then think the ONLY reason we repeat our memories is because we connect sensory experience to trauma and it becomes a permanent looped thought or memory. And yes – this can also be true. But it’s not the cause of looped thoughts or monotropism.
GLP’s already have the repetitive thinking, feeling, experiencing, learning gene. When you add Gestalt processing to the trauma/PTSD/cPTSD hypervigilant instinct to repeat things – you find someone that will repeat everything internally until it’s unhealthy and causes sleep issues and many other problems like poor mental health, suicide ideology etc. That’s the true ‘unhealthy’ type of mental loop. A mental loop on its own, eg: simply being a GLP – is NOT unhealthy, it’s just the way our brain/bodies work. GLP causes monotropism; which can be a great thing.
GLP can be a good thing too. Children who are gestalt processors are sometimes hyperlexic, and they can have fantastic vocabularies and an affinity for remembering things, or for imagination, or for creating/ inventing and using past memories to create something new. Because our brains work backwards, eg: we learn things as a whole (bottom-up learning), and then break them apart to make new things – we can often know topics to their fullest, and therefore able to build new things in a more comprehensive way because we already knew it as a ‘whole’ before we broke it apart.
Analytical people I believe have it slightly harder when it comes to this idea. They learn parts and then build a whole – I believe this is why they don’t have great pattern recognition – because they see the trees, but not the forest – whereas the gestalt learner sees the forest first, then breaks it down to individual trees, we know everything we can know about the forest and the trees because we work from the whole picture. Some analytical processors might not be able to recognise the pattern because they only see originally in parts. It’s a theory of mine, not sure it’s true.
Now, don’t attack me here. I’m not saying one style of processing is better than the other. I’m saying that one is better at a certain very specific thing than the other, and vice versa. – each is good at certain things, and are needed in human variance.
For example: When I was a child, I couldn’t learn mouth words (other than spoken echolalia) until I had worked my gestalt processing brain back to the point where my peers had started. It took me a lot longer to progress to being a ‘spoken’ human who uses mouth words. My gestalt processing was the reason for my speech delay.
Now – NT people might say that this means that analytical processing is better than GLP – because it creates faster speech and better communication at an earlier age. But once my processing caught up – I had surpassed those analytical processors in vocabulary, understanding, language and written work. I also had learnt more about more topics than my peers, because I had great receptive language but poor expressive language. My peers tended to the opposite.
I do wonder if that’s simply down to analytical vs gestalt. Or there’s more at play? I’m hoping some researchers will do some studies on this; because I really do think that kids who are speech delayed – but do not have apraxia or dyspraxia of speech or another disability – are often speech delayed because of gestalt processing – and once their processing style has matured and learnt all it needs to – then we burst with language, often more complex than our peers. Well, that’s what happened for me and my kids anyway, and what I’ve noticed in hundreds of other kids too.
GLP can be hard, if you don’t understand how to differentiate your:
· Trauma/GLP /monotropism/PTSD/ triggered reactions (your fight/flight/freeze/flop/fawn/flex responses to trauma) that cause big reactions or (not so simply) cause you to enter a gestalt trauma loop thought process (and possibly a delayed meltdown – see my upcoming post about delayed meltdowns) ……
FROM the
· Thought loops that are created from a regular gestalt loop that regulates you and is just how your brain works.
Things to help:
· Attune yourself to recognising negative thoughts that you can do nothing about (Eg: that conversation that you had with a stranger today that you’ll never see again, the conversation went badly and you are rewriting it constantly in your head to find a better way it could’ve gone)
· Find tools and strategies to alleviate repeated thoughts: find a hobby that requires thinking about something else in depth, watch or listen to something that is highly engaging. Screens and podcasts are great for this, or highly entertaining engaging books work too – if you love reading and don’t find yourself re-reading the same page 50 times.
· Talk to a friend or family member you trust and who understands you – so you can get your thoughts out of your head. Writing it down or creating a video or blog about it can also help.