Concealing Social Difficulties

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I listened to a whole interview from Tony Attwood and it seems like a lot of female aspies pull the whole chameleon effect where they chamoflague social difficulties. My question is how do you do that. For me its more the opposite, I come across as less socially proficient then I am in my head? My understanding exceeds my performance a lot. Trying to get my performance up to the level of my understanding has been a work in progress which Ive done in some instances. It seems that a lot of females just imitate people but they dont know why they do it. For me I cant do that. I wouldn't start saying the phrase "how are you" until I understood the social context behind it. Im still not comfortable with saying someones name in a greeting unless I know the person well and I do know the social context behind it yet I still cant greet acquaintances by there name . For me, my entire life, executing social interactions has been the biggest problem. If I had the chameleon skills, I doubt I would have received a diagnosis.

when people say how are you and mean hi - ugh - that confused the snot out of me...

everyone where i live often says 'alright..?' as a greeting. i get so confused! is it a question or just an alternative to hello...am i sposed to jusst say 'alright' back or go into a conversation about whether or not i am indeed alright. argh.

A lot of compare and contrasting, and analysis.

Honestly, it all comes down to learning from experience. Being bullied? Some girls take notice of what behaviors get them in trouble, and don't repeat them. I've learned that people like it when I'm happy, and they like the bubbly aspect of my personality, so I show that more around them. Whereas with another friend, I'm more nurturing and she takes the bubbly role, and with an employer or anyone in authority, I'm generally quiet and attentive.

I imagine it as a series of light switches in my brain, and depending on whom I'm around, I switch various aspects of my personality on or off. A lot of it is even subconscious now. Not everyone enjoys fart humor, after all.

I think that I have hidden my difficulties, but I don't know how. I do tend to ask people how they are but I forget that when they ask me that they don't really want to know. I often feel like I am talking another language.

I'm not sure how to answer this. I try to be myself, but I tend to do what I know pleases people like offering to help and hold doors. People like that stuff. I don't socialize much because I am not interested in what most people talk about. They tend to complain about things I don't understand. My answer to the how are you is "tired". I often forget to ask that question in return though.

I don't think I have concealed my social difficulties well at all. I am quite far behind on the basics. The only way that I have made socialization easier for myself is by actively avoiding other women. Sometimes, I avoid both men and women in my age range. In general, I find it easiest to converse with people a lot older or younger than me and hardest to converse with women in their 20s and 30s.

Like do you guys have ways of faking it. Cause for the most part the amount of socializing that I show is my actual skill level.

Just say "alright?" back and carry on walking. Of course, it depends on the social customs of your country too you know.

My main problem comes when people I know vaguely want to stop and chat… that freaks me out a bit.

that seems so bizare to me- two people just asking each other the same question without answering then walking off
and what if it's not a walking away type situation, like somebody entering the room.

I personally answer "pretty good, yourself?". Depending on the persons answer it gives me a guage of how much I should care of them being around me.

It's meant to be an informal greeting, accompanied by a smile.

In a situation like you mentioned, where the people are actually coming to chat to you or it's someone coming into a room or something like that, it depends.

What it means is - "I recognise that we're crossing paths and we're saying hello."

If you've got a bit more time to talk the conversation might go:

Them: "Alright?"
You: "Yeah. You?"
Them: "Fine thanks."

oh, thanks:)

And what if you see this person many times in one day? You don't seem to ask again. I end up awkwardly looking away as I'm not sure what the response is there.

I haven't been able to see anyone else in the same situation, so can't copy what they do.

I don't think I have any sort of chameleon ability. What I do have is experiences. Similar ones to the ones already mentioned here. It took me ages to figure out that in the USA, when someone asks how you're doing, you're not supposed to answer honestly. I think I've built up some sort of database of scripts in my head. I can't tell you how many nights I've lain awake in bed rehearsing normal standard conversations so that I can appear as normal as possible and be prepared for as many different situations as I can.

However, this only helps for things I've encountered before. I have almost no experience with other women, so my conversations with them tend to be very awkward (and I don't really like most of them anyway). I visited England for the first time last week and the cashier at the supermarket greeted me with "You alright?" I was frozen for a second because I'd never heard that as a greeting before and I knew there was probably a simple response I was expected to give, but I had no idea what. I just mumbled something like "yeah, fine." They gave me a funny look so I guess it was the wrong response. If I had spent more time in that country I'm sure I would have deduced the right response, but without that experience there's nothing to be done. I also have no scripts whatsoever for flirting, so when I'm interested in someone I'm pretty hopeless. I'm trying to learn how to do this now, but man is it tough. When you ask an NT what the right thing to say in a given situation is, they just look at you funny most of the time. They learned it all instinctively, so they've never had to think about it, so they really don't know. It's like when a non-native English speaker asks you why you use a certain grammatical structure at certain times; unless you're an expert on English grammar (which most people are not), you really won't know, you just learned to speak naturally and don't know the rules.

Sometimes you'll be awkward and sometimes you'll know the right thing to say. I think the only thing you can do to help is pay as much attention as possible to conversations between other people (TV helps a lot for this since you can observe without looking creepy). You have to accept that you'll really need to analyze conversations rather than absorbing it passively like most people do. You can try what I do and spend a lot of time rehearsing - almost nobody even knows there's anything different about me nowadays. But it's a lot of work for me.