How do you "fake it?"

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Don't. It's counterproductive. If you fake it, people sense you are different, and think only about barriers to interaction with you. If you act yourself, they are more likely to get to know you. I just switched to a more authentic view of asperger's, and feel my quality of life is better.

I imitate the expressions and gestures of my friends but apparently I don't do it well.............my last friend accused me of "always copying her" and "not saying anything original" and "wanting to be her" (which was not true)................my current friend made a joke about me stealing her expressions ...........she wasn't trying to be mean (apparently) but it was still embarrassing.

I fake it by being eccentric. I figure people are going to find something different about me one way or the other, so I may as well show them a somewhat socially-acceptable quirk.

The jury is still out on whether or not this is effective.

I don't fake anything, because I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Blame it on 'being drunk'. Well unless it's work related. Blame it on "being a foreigner". Blame it on my mother. Blaming your parents works pretty good if you're under 30. Even NT's do it.

I do fake it. I don't do it well but just well enough. I tend to be very quiet at the beginning and just watch the others trying to learn how they speak and act. Then it's all about the practice. Faking gets better with time but it's always very exhausting.

I fake eye contact all the time. I also pretend to be interested in the stuff people talk about routinely, which I'm not at all interested in. I've found that not doing that got me rejected pretty fast socially in the past. It gets very exhausting, and how "good" I am at it varies, I think, with how tired I am, how much I"ve had to fake recently, and how much sensory overload there is.

~Kate

If I'm not stressed, I do pretty well. Eye contact can get rough; my method used to be to glaze over and maintain constant eye contact without focusing my eyes, but apparently that is worse than zero eye contact. Figures. I almost always have something in my hands so I can look down and play with it to break eye contact. Like notes for school or a pen I take apart or something like that. So it goes *eye contact/talk* *break eye contact and interact with object* *eye contact quick!* *object for prolonged period* *eye contact quick!* x1000. Because I track the conversation, it comes off as thinking really hard, or so I've been told.

If I can tell that someone is weirded out by it, I freak out a little because I'm breaking a rule and if I can tell they think I'm being weird, I'm probably weird really weird so...then it all goes downhill and I'll usually end up not talking if I can't pull my knees to my chest (ideal) or pull my feet into the chair to sit cross legged. If we're standing and I know I failed at faking, I'll start bouncing and try to change the subject or leave or fix it. Sitting is better because in casual situations, sitting cross-legged in a chair is acceptable and it makes me feel way less...like I'm about to vibrate out of my skin. So, I find ways like that to cheat. Like, I'm best at holding real conversations when I'm playing a game, especially strategy games where you get to look at the board almost the whole time and no one really cares. Then I can put a response together and sound it out and compare it to the lists of things that I know are okay to say and aren't okay to say and if there's a delay, it goes unnoticed easier. If you hold a conversation in a place where even NTs have loose rules for how they think a conversation should go, they don't immediately dismiss you and when you do things later like talk without running through twelve filters because you're tired and it's hard, they don't care as much? I just find ways to cheat, and if I can't, I have rules. Lots and lots of rules. And I can't keep following them for that long before I lose it, but it's long enough to get through an interview. Oh, and you practice following rules and double check with NTs you trust that your rules are accurate. Don't use TV shows or movies to come up with rules.


If someone touches me without warning, that's a response I can't fake. If I'm stressed, my sentence structure disintegrates. If I know I'm going to talk to someone and I know what conversation is going to come up, I make up responses to likely questions before I see them. Someone I know just had a lot of bad things happen and I've texted my siblings to see if "I am sorry your life fell apart" is acceptable as a condolence (nope).

Yep, I fake it. Always have. I've also found that my blunders and mess ups can be more quickly overlooked if I approach them as 'blond moments' or in a joking manner. I'm starting to wonder if women really do have an easier time because the female stereotype allows for these things as 'typically female'. (... as offensive as I may find that...)

And faking it is exhausting.

Copying the other person's mannerisms, and replying to what appear to be key bits of what they say with synonyms of the words they used or with vague statements that could be interpreted in a number of ways. It works in a pinch but a word of caution that it's caused me problems later on when I was unable to recall any of the history of conversation I'd had with someone because I'd been on automatic pilot and only pretending to get it.....

If you fake it for a long period you'll burn out and shutdown

You know the eye contact thing is kind of funny to me. When I was younger I had problems making eye contact, and forced myself to do it and like it. I don't get out of it what an NT would get, reading a person. But I like looking at people's eyes. Eyes are beautiful. I am told that I now make too much eye contact and am too intense about it. Other men find it challenging and go defensive or become more aggressive. Women find it uncomfortable, and either get creeped out or turned on.