Hello. This may need to be moved to the adult autism section but looking at those posts over there it didn't seem to fit.
This is primarily targeted at women with ASD or women with ASD traits who coped though mimicry and copying others. It is like I often can't do things unless I pretend to be someone else and then I can do them. These things are now mostly executive function things. It became so ingrained in me to take on the persona of someone else or to copy the people I was with that I had lost my own personality. I am reclaiming it now.
Anyway, one thing I still have huge difficulty with is sex. I don't have difficulty to the point of avoiding it anymore. But it's like I have to take on the persona of someone I copied in the past in order to concentrate, tolerate, and keep participating in sex. Otherwise I tune out, think about other things, or get overstimulated and can't handle the touching, or am awkward. This pretending thing is not absolutely deliberate and it isn't a form of dissociation either. I have read about depersonalization and derealization and this isn't the same. I have also experienced derealization and this doesn't feel like that at all.
I want to stop it because I have had the experience of it not happening and not being this way and have been fully myself during sex but that is few and far between. And there is a difference, a psychological one where those few and far between experiences were better.
Does anyone else have this? Does everyone do this they just don't talk about it? I found similar stuff on a forum about dissociation but this isn't quite like that. I am not away from the situation or separate from it, I am just feeling like someone else so that I can "do it".