Possible to condition yourself to suppress aspie traits?

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I relate so strongly to the op!

I am not diagnosed and haven't talked to anyone about it yet except briefly to my husband because we both have noticed traits in our daughter.

I have also spent my whole life masking many things and find it difficult both trying to stop and keeping up the mask

Oh I relate a lot to your post (I've actually posted something related just a few days ago here). I don't know whether I am aspie or not either. But in any case, I'm definitely totally not like everyone else (well who is like everyone else you're gonna say). And like you, I've tried very hard to pass as normal even around my own family. In fact, my family constantly looked down on me when I was asking a "stupid" question, saying something "stupid". It may not have been consciously done and they probably thought they were saying to refrain from saying stupid things for my own good. But it left marks!
So as a result, I've always been pretty quiet. But gradually now I'm feeling I just can't keep up, I can't resist being myself. I'm lucky to be around people who are a bit more tolerant now so when I say "stupid" things, they just laugh nicely (because I've also had people laughing at me and they were not very nice there). I think some people love this quirky me!

An advice I could give is to laugh with yourself! You should try to have "self-depreciating" humour (hope I'm using the right term here). You should also embrace the positive sides of being yourself! It's funny but I even tried to hide the positive sides of myself like for years I've been telling myself "oh I'm very flexible, I'm a global picture thinker" and all that kind of stuff while in fact I was very detail-oriented (in my special interests for example).

Regarding stimming (if you stim a lot), well just know everyone stims! (even NTs) So they can f... off. If you feel a bit self-conscious about it though, you can adopt some discrete stimming behaviours like stimming in your pockets.

I haven't read all your posts but the ones I have read feel a bit weird because I'm not used to relating to what other people say, though I am getting a bit more used to it.

Three years ago I had tummy problems, a wrist problem, I was approaching an age milestone, I felt like I just could not cope and so I gave my notice in at work. I told everyone it was to write my novel (I believed this myself and I did write my novel) Over the following three years I did some casual work, sorted out my health problems (mostly) and got my diagnoses for autism and went through my savings (about £12k). From this side it's obvious what I really did is avoid a break down. I now have a regular job again but it's 16 hours a week and for that time, yes, there's an element of faking it. The rest of the time my veneer is gradually crumbling, or rather I am dismantling it piece by piece. What has been essential in this has been two things that when they happened I felt were among the worst things that could happen. On day one of my new life as a writer at home, my sister cut me out of her life. She was the most important person in my life but she was also my guide as to how I ought to behave. Three months latter a friend (we'd been friends for 29 years) showed me that our relationship was not what I had thought it and that too ended. These two incidences led me to getting assessed. After all those years of doing my best with people I was left with no friends and only my parents as family. It took me about a year to begin to appreciate that a)Trying to not disappoint people doesn't lead to them not being disappointed and then cutting me loose and b)Nobody's left to judge me. Any new friends and acquaintances I make from now on will be getting the real me, or as much of that as I can manage. My parents have so many faults of their own, they've never really been in any position to judge.

This description pretty much matches my own feelings. One of the first things I learned to suppress in public was hand flapping. Nowadays, when I (try to) socialize, I usually spend most of my energy on analyzing how others act and on thinking about how to "appropriately" respond to that and even then I struggle and probably still seem a bit odd, apart from not being myself. I think that, especially if you are autistic, being able to be yourself and feeling comfortable around someone indicates that you can connect and relate to that person. The latter does not happen a lot to me, but I like to think of it this way: There are more than 7 billion people on this planet and during your whole lifetime, you will only ever meet a very small fraction of them. So it is definitely possible to be yourself (or to discover your own identity) if you find the right people, because they do exist even though you might not have met them (yet). It might be a consoling or even motivating notion to think of it that way.

Yes, the "unconscious conditioning" is definitely possible - I would say even "likely" for many people, especially those diagnosed later in life. I can remember when I had my autism assessment, and I was introduced to the idea of "stimming". The psychologist wanted me to show her examples of the kind of stims that I found satisfying, and I just froze; "what? You mean, with someone watching?!". She had identified what my urges to pace, flap and make strange noises really are, and was totally non-judgemental about them, but there was no way I could do it "properly" in front of her. I realised that I had even got used to suppressing them when I was alone, except for times of really high stress when they might "leak out" sometimes (I know now that I did them a lot as a young child, before I started attracting the attention of the bullies in the school playground).

I totally understand what you say about losing the ability to make decisions etc.; everything becomes about trying to anticipate the reactions of other people. I'm trying to learn what it even means to listen to my own desires; I'm not sure I even have any much of the time because I'm so used to thinking of everything in terms of what will be "acceptable" to everyone else. I became a "yes man" to the point of being a doormat whenever I'm in a social situation, and always getting overwhelmed in jobs because I automatically agree to every little extra task. It always lead to a burn-out in the end, though for most of my life, I never understood why it was happening.

I am, very slowly, learning to suppress things less when I'm around people that I trust. Not forcing myself to do eye-contact has definitely led to some improvements in my ability to have a conversation, for example - but only with people who I have been able to explain why it is a problem for me. I think it's best to concentrate first on behaviours which you might be suppressing when you are alone. I used to really put myself down when I used to catch myself stimming or talking to myself, and I make a conscious effort not to do that now that I can see them for the instinctive coping strategies that they really are.

I believe it is possible to "condition yourself" to suppress anything.

I would say it's more difficult to "suppress Aspie traits" when you are around certain people a long time.

One gets tired of having to restrain one's self all the time.

One wants to talk about his/her "special interest." One wants to rock back and forth; it makes him/her feel comfortable. One doesn't want to always worry about feeling and being awkward.

I relate for sure... I had a tough time getting a diagnosis as a result of it... My first assessment basically says "they were telling us the truth, and the things they told us sound like ASD, but they didn't really act autistic so they're not"................

yep... it was that easy to dismiss... all because I made eye contact... Yet no one asked me what the process of making eye contact is like for me. An allistic person probably cant explain how often they make eye contact and what the process is for emulating the eye contact of others... I can, because I've studied it and perfected it over 3 and a half decades.

Two things...
All that work you did to learn to cope... that is you being a hard worker who puts a ton of effort into life and things. Don't ever beat yourself up for that! however, now that you know... you can do SO MUCH MORE!.... I've only started on my journey of tearing down my coping mechanisms and I've found that I can even pick ones that still people don't even notice. Sure I come across as more eccentric but for the most part I still get away with it. I was already the mad scientist person of my social circles anyway.

The other thing: if you do decide to seek out a diagnosis do not bother with anything short of an expert in the field of ASD for adults. If they're just some psych who happens to do assessments that's not enough. I had to find a guy who wrote a book on the topic and then flew across the country. The credibility also helps when you explain to people "I'm autistic" and they say "but you don't look autistic".... being able to say "we'll the experts say I am"... it helps.

Anyway good luck!

all replies so far on this have been very insightful. Makes me feel a little less alone in this, and a little more confident in believing i am an aspie.

Thank you, i think this is one of the nicest and encouraging this anyone has ever said to me

I had lots of therapy and I think it did help me and I can fake being normal pretty darn well but it is exhausting.
Sometimes I think it stinks that instead of society just accepting me the way I am, I was bullied into acting normal.

I can strongly relate to both of you as I had the same brutal treatment from both my mother and father growing up whenever I would stim or act in a very Autistic way. My father would hit me with a 2 foot long and very wide wooden paddle anytime I acted out and my younger brother got the same treatment as we were both Autistic. We would often be seen hobbling to school the next morning because we could barely walk and the kids would always stare at us in the changing rooms for gym because they saw our backsides were black and blue. It was the absolute apex of embarrassment for us.

My mother was the evil queen of verbal abuse and would treat us horribly every time we wood fidget or stim and it created a tremendous amount of stress for both of us. As a result my younger brother and I both had heart attacks in early 30s because the stress of our childhood eventually caught up with us.

You cant surpress it, its easy to pass trough as being a little different, the quiet shy one but the older you get you might find yourself in the challange to cope with it on a daily matter. The good is you are young, you do have the help thats needed to soothen the symthoms. Lets say you wont know whats different with you, you wont have a ground to work with and gett diagnosed very late at a point you have become dysfunctional its very very hard to rebuild life trust me. You are good you cope and youll find a way to rise for yourself.

I do quite a bit of acting in my daily life, mostly at work. Acting, suppressing, adapting, etc. is a coping strategy to me and it has won me, for example, job security. It depends on what you want from life. If you want to participate actively and successfully in society then this behaviour helps some. It also is crucial to be able to unwind in private so you remind yourself who you actually are. As long as you acknowledge that your coping strategies are merely just that, acquired strategies, and not part of who'd you'd like to openly be, chosen in order to gain something at a later stage, I think it's not bad. Just know who you really are first.

My two cents.

I like the shieldbug on dandelion by the way, unless I was looking at the wrong art, in which case case ignore my comment.

haha thanks thats def mine

I can't get past the glowing jellyfish. So cool.

And yeah, I can suppress my aspie traits a bit - enough to hold down work. Just about.
It helps to have understanding colleagues, so one can loosen up a bit, because pretending to be NT for hours daily is a strain.

I'm like fluffysaurus, currently deconstructing decades of masking and 'finding myself', but I still have to be careful with things like pacing and talking to myself at work, because it does bother people.
The idea is to allow yourself to be as comfortable as you can while not adversely affecting others. Which takes time and experience and the confidence to be able to warn people of your behaviour in advance, if necessary.

Still trying to find that elusive balance point, where I'm neither burning out from constant masking nor upsetting people enough to get fired.

I can relate enormously to your post, OP.

As time has gone on, I've learnt and observed a lot more about NT social interactions, and I put this into practice through mimicking what I've seen and working through a set of 'rules' I've pieced together on how social situations are generally governed. I've reached a stage over the past couple of years where the 'mask' I present is no longer 'obviously aspie' (except perhaps to very keen-eyed observers who have a good background understanding of ASDs and the more subtle ways in which they can manifest). In most settings, I probably come across as quirky and a little formal, but not to the point where most people would necessarily assume I was on the spectrum.

However, putting on this facade is seriously exhausting and has lead to burnout when I've allowed it to carry on unchecked for too long! Like you mentioned, it also leads to that state of confusion and disassociation, arising from when you realise how little your external behaviour actually matches up with the person you are inside.

Sadly, I feel that using 'the mask' is a necessary evil, in that I can see how much my social interactions and relationships with other people have improved over time as a result of me using it. Keeping some balance is absolutely essential in ensuring it doesn't drive me crazy, though; I retreat to selected people (mostly on the spectrum themselves) whom I can trust to accept me as I am, as well as spaces like WP.

It's always such a relief to be my blunt, awkward, childish, eccentric self, with no performances, no filter and no restrictions. It's like taking a shower after a long day hiking.