"a psychomotor disturbance that may involve muscle rigidity, stupor or mutism, purposeless movements, negativism, echolalia, and inappropriate or unusual posturing"
In my experience, when I'm experiencing catatonic episodes, I lose not the ability to think so much as the ability to 'keep up' with the external world. Everything feels hard to parse, and like I need to internally yell at myself and wait for anything to happen. I move slowly and speak both slowly and quietly.
Two days ago, I went to the hospital for one of these episodes. It didn't feel like an emergency per se, but rather an attempt to see if what I was experiencing was indeed catatonia or something else, since my outpatient doctor had never seen me in one of these states. Being at the hospital when you are struggling to move is really quite the experience.
In my impaired state, I couldn't find the correct entrance to the hospital, so I somehow walked immediately into the ED triage area. I found an empty chair and sat, staring into space for what must've at least been 30 minutes before someone noticed I wasn't supposed to be there.
Then, they asked me to do all sorts of things like get up, move my arms for a blood pressure reading, etc. This was all very difficult for me, as I had sunken into a kind of frozen state in that chair. Luckily the nurses were very helpful and did a lot of things for me. They noticed I had a high heart rate and moved me to the general ER floor. There, a nurse had to help me change into hospital gowns, because it was hard for me to move. Then I lay there for what must have been hours. They needed a urine sample but I needed to muster the energy to get up and go to the bathroom, I was loathe to let them help me with that. So I let the hours pass. My sister came and visited, and that was restorative for me. I managed to sit up and give the urine sample, and from there my symptoms got a bit better.
They transferred me to the psychological evaluation area of the hospital where the resident and attending were very kind and friendly. Now that I was sitting again I felt myself slipping back into that frozen state, but I was able to answer their questions - just very slowly and quietly. They administered an ativan injection (this is known as an 'ativan challenge'). While the ativan was kicking in it felt like the idea of movement was being projected on the walls of the room I was in, in some weird way. Then, I could move and speak with ease again. Good drug experience.