Does being a great actor cause you difficulties?

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Many people have said to me, WOW........"I don't think you have AS, you are too normal, I know a friend of a friend of mine who has AS and you are not like him at all, etc, etc, etc......

My dx is very new to me, and I have enjoyed telling people, because for me it has been a life-saver, not knowing was leading me to self harm as a means of putting on the outside all that I felt on the inside but was unable to (at least on the worlds terms, via facial expression and beyond the intellect) and suicide was forever on my thoughts the months just before I received my dx, thus knowing is giving me great hope and joy.

However, I am starting to see the wisdom in holding back telling people my good news, as it seems to provoke an almost impulsive reaction and attempt of the other to deny me my joyful new status.

My outsides do not convey the anxiety within.

These are interesting times for me.

These well meaning people with good intentions, invite me, indirectly, to explore my past and how psychologically and neurologically I have remained a mystery to myself and others, and how adaptive skills, learned in adversity and refined in the playground of life have resulted in me, looking so normal on the outside whilst on the inside, overwhelmed.

Whilst there are many psychological factors at play in my defenses , many of those I have explored in psychotherapy in the context of PTSD and trauma, however, my inability to show 'appropriate' facial expression in times of extreme distress and anxiety, always results in me never being taken seriously in the medical or non-medical worlds alike.

So, I was wondering if any of this resonates with you all, particularly the stuff around facial expression (lack of) colluding and conspiring with the persona of normality, resulting in your life becoming so normal that others have grandiose expectations of you.

Now since my dx, I feel like an actor in retirement, and only starting to feel OK with the joy of being my true self

i'm in the same situation. i just got the diagnosis last week. i've been sharing with everyone i speak to regularly, but they're the ones who see who i really am.
it's the everyday folk who see me as functional but maybe eccentric that i'm concerned about. mainly, will they see me as trying to be special, or think that i must not be impaired because i get good grades? i've heard them talk about a lot of things - from sexual orientation to psychology to overall Differentness - they are quite bad at dealing with things they don't understand. if they don't understand it, it can't be 'correct' and that is when the negative judgments come out.

so, for the most part, i've just been telling friends/family/the one co-worker i deal with on overnight shifts.
everything else i blame on my hearing impairment (whether or not it's my hearing that is causing the issue), because it's easier for people to 'get' that.

Definitely. My housemate used to work with people with AS and says she has seen signs of it in me for a long time. Although I have been selective who I tell a lot of the people I have told have said they don't think I have it 'badly' because I seem 'normal' most of the time. I haven't explained to them how much of that time is spent acting and being completely strung out under the surface.

I hate crowds, too much socialising, meeting new people, and almost everything else where 'people skills' are required, but in a lot of cases e.g. work, going out of the house etc, its unavoidable, so I have learned to cope. I have also pressured myself into doing more of these things than I'd have liked because, having only recently been diagnosed, I always felt there was something wrong with me for not wanting to. As a result, I can handle myself moderately well in these situations, but its an uphill struggle.

Now I know I'm never going to be comfortable in these situations, I've learned to stop giving myself such a hard time and realised that I don't need to act so much any more. I've not given myself open season to treat people like crap, but I know that my limits are, and I'm also allowing myself to enjoy the gifts that AS has given me, such as excellent academic achievements and being able to see the world in a completely different way to most people. Basically, I've started to play to my strengths and to a certain extent by my rules, and other people's expectations just aren't as relevant as they used to be.

Hope this helps.

Tank you Tybald

It seems that most of us, that were diagnosed later in life, have learned this "acting" as a survival tool. I do this as well. I'm pretty sure that my "acting", was the main reason that my SSD case was denied. When questioned, my psychiatrist didn't see my case to be as severe as it really was. Other than that, acting has been a useful tool, in surviving today's society. It's just nice to see that there are others like me out there.

Dang I posted a long reply and then some kind of error erased it all

Anyway I'm not writing it all out again. But yeah I identify with the acting thing and I find it frustrating that so many people have bought into it and think I'm NT.

AS is obnoxiously under a wide umbrella and most people think you have to be extreme to be an aspie. From my research it appears that AS can be mild as well. Combine that with some acting and you'll appear normal most of the time even if you don't feel it. And people won't believe you are AS at all.

Thank you Centinela, how frustrating when the pc does that.


Jawbrodt I love your Quote from Lao Tzu, it is profound

I just stumbled onto this topic, and it struck me as more than a bit ironic.

My biggest obsession, for 22 years, has been theatre. I'm an actor and set/light/sound designer for a couple local community and academic theatres. I've done enough directing to know I shouldn't direct. Tech is what I know, but acting is what I love. I just finished playing Banquo in a 3-week run of "The Scottish Play" (those of you with any background in theatre superstitions will know which play that is!) I relish the time onstage, where I can be someone else for a couple hours, focused on a single objective at a given time, knowing just what to say and do, standing before people yet oblivious to their presence. I've joked before to my fellow artists that I love theatre because "it's cheaper than therapy," and also that "it's nice to be someone else for a while". Those are somewhat stock answers to the great "why" question, but my answers are laced with ironic truth. It's a great place for me to blend in, eccentricities and all, as such behavior is often commonplace there.

Now, if I could just find my copy of the script for Real Day-To-Day Life, I think I need to brush up on my lines a bit...

I totally understand where you are coming from.

I put on such a good act that when I brought the subject up, my counsellor felt fairly sure I didn't have it, as did my G.P that I'd been to for 10 years, because I hold down a job and make eye contact. I can't really begrudge them though, as they did encourage me to find out one way or the other; and I had lived with it for 35 years before knowing it even had a name.

I too have trouble, becauseI have tended to struggle through and put on a brave face, so people think I have no problem, when in reality I could be drowning. I am at the point where I may have to let my supervisor in on the secret. I'm not real comfortable with that, but it may mke my life easier.

Being a good actor has caused my 9 year old Aspie son great difficulties.

At school he comes across as being confident and calm. He holds his extreme anxiety in and explodes at home.

So the *insert swear word here* new Special Ed teacher withdrew support for him (she ignored everything I told her).

Now he's really struggling.

Fortunately we have a new Special Ed teacher who listens to what I have to say and is putting his support back in place.

Helen

im undiagnosed.......still not really sure if I have it but i think theres a great chance I do. The whole uncannyness of the symptoms described on here really resonate with me.......Such as the "fabric problem/itchy skin" "mirrors always looking at my reflections because Im not sure what I look like exactly even though I have a basic idea"

I too have learned to act normal in a way. Iv never felt normal, but iv watched alot of people that others considered to be "normal" and Iv kind of adapted to that. This normalizing is nowhere near perfect and at times im pretty sure iv seemed like a different person to different people depending on how comfortable I was interacting with them. Just trying to navigate around social situations where my awkwardness is apparent. But for the most part at most im sure people would consider me "weird" or even "normal" or "quiet" or "annoying" or maybe a little "creepy/awkward" combo.

You are very right there is a VERY popular misconception that AS is something that is very DEFINED. Where is CLEARLY obvious that you have it, if you do. If you are male and you have AS and you arent very eccentric and/or dont act extremely nerdy and obsessive, then people dont think you have it. Thats a shame we need to raise awareness....

On the other hand this "normal-ness" is now a part of me. Even though I am still far from normal. I can never go back

This is why my mother doesn't believe I have AS. She knows I have a lot of Aspie traits, but she told me that for it to actually be considered AS it has to cause you problems. Apparently she doesn't see the problems it causes me

I had this problem myself for awhile, actually... I thought I couldn't have AS, because the only Aspie I knew at the time was a lot more extreme, and was also male (there are often marked differences between male and female Aspies).

I am undiagnosed as AS - actually was diagnosed as a slew of other things . I spent quite a bit of time in my childhood/teen years in and out of a slew of psych offices and was even at one point committed to an inpatient facility for mentally/emotionally disturbed teens. None of them had any idea what was wrong with me. None of the medications worked. None of the labels fit.

That was before AS was officially recognized, but only by a few years. By the time the DX would have been available to me, I was already WAY over my limit of giving a s**t what anybody in the medical profession thought. I stopped going. I wonder now if I had been born a few years later, would I have been given the correct diagnosis?

I was also very keenly aware of people's reactions to me, and I became so disgusted with myself over their social rejections that I forced myself to be a completely different person. It was painful at first to withold laughter at something I thought was hilarious, to not mention certain things that would earn me weird looks, and in general stop being such a spaz. It became habit, and I admit I lost a lot of myself in the process.

Sixteen years later, I have it mostly perfected and could play normal if I wanted. Before I discovered AS, I did so. AS was a blessing, because I was finally able to understand why I had been such a spastic and why I had the compulsions, tendencies, avoidance issues and lack of empathy. I have since begun letting a little of myself seep through again, mostly quirks. I am slowly trying to let that person back out into public view, but it is a double edged sword because I have played the part so perfectly that I'm afraid I'll have to convince people I know that I have AS. Most of them, I've found, want to talk you out of it because they feel they're doing you a favor. They seem to think that waving me off and telling me I'm fine will make me feel better, but that's not the case. It just makes me feel worse. So I have been going about it slowly, dropping hints. I work in a medical/health field around professionals who should know what AS is, so perhaps they'll come to their own conclusions without my help. One thing I've learned from humans is that you can tell them the sky is blue until your tongue falls out and they'll deny, deny, deny, but if you let them figure it out themselves they're all the more receptive. Perhaps a failing of the SuperEgo?

So, I suppose I have quite the dilemma. And I refuse to do it by way of a proper diagnosis (so done with those f*ckwits), so perhaps I am fighting an uphill battle. My ultimate goal is to be able to be comfortably myself and have it understood that I'm not a mental escapee, I'm just aspergic.

This link, http://www.aane.org/about_asperger_synd ... dults.html that someone posted on another thread, is the best piece I have ever read on adults with AS. It discusses "acting" and helped me put some things in perspective.

Z

Being good at pretending to be "normal" made most of my school years an absolute living hell, but when I left the normal high school I was in at 17 and went to an alternative school (Colorado's Finest Alternative High School, best school I could ever have hoped for) I stopped trying so hard to be "normal" and started to be myself. It was such a relief to be truly encouraged to be me that I am not exaggerating when I say that it saved my life. It's not an easy transition to stop pretending, and it certainly doesn't make social interactions any easier, but it works wonders for one's peace of mind.