Anyone NOT feel like a chameleon?

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I hear a lot of Aspie women saying they feel like a chameleon. I just don't feel like that. I do somewhat mirror people's body language and act differently depending on how someone is treating me, but it doesn't feel disorienting or make me feel like a chameleon.

The only time it does feel disorienting is when I'm around guys that like me and I start acting like I like them back when I don't. I start questioning if I'm secretly into them and I get all OCDish about who I'm attracted to and how I behave around guys.

One thing I do that some people might consider being chameleon-like is changing my appearance. When I was in middle school I tried to look like a mainstream and popular girl. I realized that looking like a popular girl didn't make me popular, so I tried to look goth. I realized that I like color, so now I try to dress like a hipster/manic pixie dream girl.

I suspect the pressure to be a chameleon may possibly be one that is more often experienced by older women on the spectrum, rather than young people of today who have grown up with their diagnosis and with more awareness of themselves regarding spectrum differences to NT people.

Older generations of females are the ones that didn't get diagnosed early in life, and who were forced to grow up knowing they were "different" but not knowing why, and not knowing why often makes one develop a sense of shame and therefore a decision that one must mask and hide those differences, hence the chameleon thing. People who didn't know, and whose families didn't know, they were/are on the spectrum were expected to just stop being themselves (which was "different") and just conform to standard behavior and expectations. In other words, mask and fake NT to fit in in the world.

Younger generations were born into a time when they got diagnosed relatively early, in a time of more understanding surrounding them, and thus they probably don't feel the need to be anything other than what they are.

Do you think it's also because I have less traits to begin with? When I act like myself without trying to look normal I just come across as quirky.

That could be it, too, yes. If you only come across as quirky, with not too many "problematic" issues, many people kind of accept and almost ignore that as merely charming or something they don't make a fuss about.

With more pronounced traits, like someone starting to melt down in a noisy restaurant, for example, there would be more "'splainin'" to do and that person might feel more driven to mask their discomfort and play the chameleon, gritting their teeth and being pleasant to comply with social expectations, while screaming inside. Kind of thinking of one of my own examples there actually, haha.

It's not healthy and not recommended, of course.

I don't feel like a chameleon, and other people don't view me like that either, my specific personality comes through easily so people call things I do (insert my name here) things, or they say something like that's so (insert my name here).

I didn't always.

When I was younger, I didn't care if I fit in/was accepted or not. I figured that them that liked me could like me and them that didn't could not, and it was a big world and I'd get by.

Then I got older, and found out that my personality was a disease, and realized that if I wanted to make it I was going to have to kiss a lot of ass.

So-- chameleon it became.

Now I'm pushing 40 and trying to remember who the hell I am.

Because chameleon didn't work either.

I've never felt the need to be a chameleon. I'm one of the types who has a strong personality and I'm not afraid to let it show.

I don't really feel like that at all either....like I don't really change how I act all that much, I might tone some things down a little bit(really only since a couple people here and there have mentioned I seem intimidating) at least and I am always rather withdrawn around new people but once I am more comfortable around someone I am certainly not a shy person.

I do dress in different styles, I consider myself a metalhead but I don't only wear stereotypical metalhead attire. I can dress like a hipster if I want, or a goth minus the make up, or a punk just get a patch vest with punk patches instead of metal and punk t-shirts instead of metal but aside from that its essentially the same style. Or I can even dress more like a 60's hippie more or less. But yeah that is by choice, I dress how I want...if I am able to enter the work force ever obviously I'll be fine with wearing work clothes on the job.

I think you have a point here. I remember always feeling like a chameleon before, always. However, after I stopped working (I had a corporate 9-5 type job, conservative office, etc), I have been a bit more me and don't feel like a chameleon anymore. Yes, sometimes when I go out to see old friends from school, some of whom are very well off, etc. I still feel like I go into chameleon mode, but I don't see them often, so most of the time I am now myself.

PS NOT being a chameleon has NOT helped my relationships...in fact, it has hurt some drastically as it's obvious people liked the NT person I pretended to be and not who I really was...I don't give a r#$% a#$%$#% anymore

Someone mentioned not being a chameleon because they have a "strong personality."

People who may have felt a need to play chameleon don't necessarily have a weak personality or the lack of a "strong personality."

I happen to have a very strong personality!

Being a chameleon isn't about one's core personality not being certain or defined or strong. It's about that person realizing that they feel ashamed, or concerned, or unacceptable in who they are for the most part, and they realize that around certain situations, certain people they are forced to deal with, they must alter their presentation or suffer negative consequences.

This can apply to situations that need survival, such as work or in-laws etc.

It's not healthy, it's not wonderful, it sucks. But it's NOT about not having a "strong personality."

It's actually about someone WITH a strong personality realizing they might need to alter and bend sometimes, especially in an NT world.

I agree. I've never felt like a chameleon, but that's maybe more because even when I'm trying to go along with my interpretation of expectations, which is most of the time, i feel a bit dissociated as I wonder why something is desired or desirable by others, try to observe how well what I do might be working, see it working up to a point, and see that no matter how hard I am trying to relax and be myself, or go along and seem "normal" I never quite seem to succeed at it for long, probably because I'm missing a few pieces of what the expectation really is.

I think too that it takes incredible strength and persistence to keep trying. I don see trying to conform as a weakness either, there is a lot to be lost by failing to do so. One needs to try, if one is to function at all independently, and I do value that.

In a social context I find it very hard to see someone else's different point of view that's different from my own without dropping my own. That's more about seeing the world in concrete terms and as true, accurate, valid, or inaccurate or faulty and I think most of us probably are a bit black and white. It isn't a weakness to try to see others' viewpoints, or conform in social ways. It is however pretty exhausting and quite demoralizing to the extent other people are dissatisfied.

I think the people talking about feeling like chameleons are often tired out by the effort to understand others who appear to place little value on actually understanding them and do relate to that. It's quite isolating to be watching and guessing and trying to do the right thing, and while I've never thought of this as like a chameleon, I've felt isolated by this effort since I first realized other people seemed to live in a slightly different world, one close to where I live, but one that isn't quite identical. Things happen that fool me into thinking I'm normal, I fit in, and then that passes and it's back to not. That might also be what people are getting at with saying they feel like chameleons, that even after finding seeming acceptance amongst some group, it turns out to be transitory and related to superficial appearances rather than truly deep commonalities that withstand time and differences. I've often been left with a deep and unsatisfying sense that I'm some other animal in a forest full of who I thought were just like me.

Maybe the difference is I don't so much feel I'm a chameleon despite all the effort I put in with variable and limited success at being acceptable and accepted. I feel I'm me and I'm surrounded by other "me" type people and then suddenly it turns out they've not been forthcoming, their conversations may have been a bit deceptive, they to me are the chameleons who have shifted. I'm just me and have been trying to follow the rules and expectations as I understand them. And now I'm in the woods, alone, surrounded by chameleons and trying to survive as some turn out to by large hungry carnivores. That's just how it is for me.

I don't mirror people if that's what you mean. Instead I take an opposite stance to where they are. If they're quiet, I'm the confident one. If they're confident, I'm shy. Geeky if I'm with someone emotional and emotional when I'm with a geek... and so on. Tired when coming back home after social events and strugling with anxiety when meeting the same person more than once, as they may realize I was pretending.

I hope realizing that I may be Aspie will eventually help me to be just myself.

I've never fit in anywhere, and have always been the weird shy one with zero fashion sense. I'm the anti-chameleon

I'll post some of the way I think I play chameleon, by my definition of what I think is meant by that.

For example:

Say it's a workday. I get up and I'm not feeling particularly happy or sociable that day. In my ideal world I would be able to just stay at home and stay away from contact with people. I feel grumpy and sullen and I would really like to just potter around my home doing things I enjoy and maybe lightening my mood in my own methods.

Instead, I have to go to work. The reason I have to go to work is because I live on my own, nobody helps support me financially, and if I don't earn my own money, I literally can't pay my rent and I will wind up homeless. I don't want that to happen.

So I go to work. I clean houses and I have to deal with my client and sometimes the client's family being there at home while I try to work.

If I greet the client with the way I'm TRULY feeling, which is grumpy, unsociable, wishing I could just be alone, saying "Don't talk to me" and barging in and starting cleaning, this will come across as so rude and strange that she will probably tell me she's found alternative services by the end of the session. I will lose clients if I'm "Myself" in how I genuinely feel on a bad day.

So instead, I have "put on a front" that isn't how I feel. I have to deliberately employ a more pleasant manner than I actually feel. A smile helps, and some degree of forced cheerfulness when I'm not feeling cheerful. I have to play the game of being a pleasant person to have around. Because even if I'm left to get on with the work I'm there to do, inevitably someone chats to me. I can't tell them to leave me alone. I have to make some token polite response, even if I'm not in the mood to do so.

This is one example of how sometimes a person has to "be a chameleon" just to get by in things that have to happen in life, and situations or people we have to deal with. You have to put on the expected "colors" everyone else is putting on.

Another example is to maintain privacy. I live in a building where there happens to be a group of spiteful gossips. It's my first experience of people like this and I'm in culture shock. I value my privacy and I have already heard about other tenants' experiences with these people. They can and do take anything they glean about you and turn it into technically slanderous gossip.

When I pass in and out of my building and run into one of these people -- and that happens a lot -- I "put on a face." If I'm unhappy, angry, downhearted, something awful has happened -- I DO NOT SHOW THAT. I don't give these people any ammunition with which to run back and spread lies about me (trust me, this actually happens in my building, I don't happen to be a paranoid and I have that on authority, lol).

I "chameleon" into a perfectly neutral person with no worries or problems when I have to encounter one of these people who are actively looking for and prodding for issues to make mountains out of.

They also do not know I have AS and GOD HELP ME if they ever did find out. They are ignorant people who could make something negative out of my winning the Nobel Peace Prize. So I have to play down any overt spectumish tendencies too, around them.

When I get inside my own door, I collapse into "Myself" and can let all these "fronts" down.

If a person is unable to work, and can stay home or only engage in situations they actually want to engage in, I think it's far easier for that person to not have to ever be something they're not, or try to mask a mood for the smooth running benefit of others.

But if you have to work or deal with with people, to some extent you have to mold yourself to whatever expectations will make you fit in and not rock the boat, lose you your job, etc.

It sucks but it's my reality. My life would be even more of a trainwreck if I actually just enacted exactly how I feel. I mostly feel depressed, anxious, wanting to be alone, filled with sensory issues, and I can't just let all that "hang out" or my life would be even more difficult than it is now.

Ah, I understand what that means now... It's the curse of being at a level of functionality where you can pass for normal if you try your absolute hardest, but it's exhausting. I've never been at that level of functioning... Even when I was trying to manage school and work, no one was fooled by my attempts to act normal!

One thing I've learned on this forum is that there are unique challenges that come with every level of functioning. I've come to accept my own situation, but when I was younger I wished I could fit in better, and manage a normal level of functioning - but like you say, that has its downsides as well. Take care of yourself!!

I think most people do the thing where if they feel crappy, they try not to show it at their job or when they have to be around acquiantances, they may show their real feelings more freely with close people.
Most people do this.
I don't think that is being a chameleon.
Being a chameleon is more like thing I read about on some forums, where people say they have a somewhat different persona for different people they interact with.