Do you try to pass as an NT??

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Well... isn't that the goal? That's why we're here sharing advices right? Or am I missing something? What are the drawbacks of pretending to be NT? I am aware of the slight headaches it causes, but is there any really serious disadvantage? I used to be very happy every moment of my life when I was just being me, I took the decision to try to be alone all the time and it lead to the happiest eight years of my life, but now that I know I have Aspergers and I notice all the small and big mistakes I make, I can't help wanting to be normal.. even if I have to stop being happy, I get a different kind of happiness from social interaction, it feels great when NTs do nice things for you. It's like I don't laugh as much as I used to, but I'm more satisfied and optimistic with my life.

Well said, fernando. Before I found about AS, I spent years figuring out why my chilhood and teenage years were so miserable. All of a sudden, there was a one-word explanation for that: "Asperger's." Once I found out that my "problem" had a name, I had a light-bulb moment. I realized what was the cause behind all the mistakes I've been making, which made it dramatically easier to eliminate them.

The stress of dishonesty, of play acting? I am aware of the give-and-take and compromise behaviour that enables civilisation to continue (thought I wish a few more people were aware of it too) but there's a limit, and conforming for no good reason except social approval causes me more than slight headaches.

I've tried being normal, or at least appearing such, and while it may be necessary for such things as holding down a job, the rest of the time I am less and less inclined to do it "their way" and more, instead, to do it "my way."

I can do it, but it's tiring. Socialising does not refresh but exhaust me. And no, I don't find "normal" as something to aim for, except perhaps in my blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

I was alluding to something like this above, when I mentioned that attempts to fit in and appear to be like everyone else and it isn't just obedience that some people demand, it is the eradication of individuality mediated without playing the dominant alpha-male games in order to earn it that people object to as well.

The other 'normal' things to aim for, from my point of view, is a career and life that is commensurate with verified ability levels too. This mean my not being underemployed or simply unemployed as I usually am.

It might work out for you. I played the game because I did not have a label that allowed any dignity in being different. The problem though was that by trying to conform to someone else's standards it was effecting me too much. I do not have a formal diagnosis of AS, but of OCD, sensory overloads, anxiety, depression. SO some have also said that it was unrealistic to try and be normal without some sort of chemical intervention (SSRI's anyone?) but that didn't quite work out as well as it looked in the brochure . So for me it is interesting to know the intricacies of how NT society operates, but still allowing myself the "option" of how much effort I want to put forth to fit in. It certainly is advantageous in certain situations, but not really important in others. But that is something that everyone has to define for themselves what is important.

I have not been able to pretend to be normal. I'll try and think i've come a long way and start to feel good about myself. And then someone will say i'm weird, bizarre or strange. They don't try to sugar-coat it either they mean in a bad way.

In answer = yes and no. I've spent most of my life being treated as 'normal' (Don't you hate that word, by the way??) since I was only diagnosed last October, so what my diagnosis brought to me was an answer and an explanation. So yeah, I still act very NT in public. Shy NT - I can't approach people and speak to them - and I've been yelled at enough times for perceiving people literally or for them reading things into what I've said that I haven't even imagined are there. But yes. I get away with it. Actually, where I work we see a lot of people with various learning and developmental difficulties and at least one person, maybe two of our regular people are Autistic/Aspie. The rest of the staff bracket them as "autistic" and one of them said to me once how awful it must be to be Autistic. I simply smiled and said that yes, it must be hard to make the world understand. But they don't see me as Aspie. So I guess I get away with it.

I wouldn't say I was mild, but growing up "NT" has given me a headstart on about a zillion coping mechanisms I've been developing since I was four or five. Unfortunately they're mostly skin deep coping mechanisms and - despite what people say about cures and stuff, I'm not convinced you can really teach an Aspie to be un-Aspie without either making them feel like someone they're not, or isolating them in a pretend-game. I can't be myself a lot of the time because being myself evokes criticism. Yet people keep telling me to be myself. I dont' quite understand why it is people say these things and do not even begin to mean them.

Absolutely. This constantly frustrates and upsets me and has done my whole life. Particularly before I was diagnosed because I felt I was useless and a really nasty person who was always wrong. Now I feel more vindicated - but honestly, still isolated:S

Apple

I just discovered, almost by chance, about my AS a little while back, having lived (with many difficulties), as an NT woman for more than 40 years.

When I got the dx, I gave myself some time off (about a month) to really be myself, as an experiment, to explore the depths and heights of my differences/oddities etc. It was great just being EXACTLY how I am for the first time ever. I like myself SO much better when I allow myself my Asperger space. I am far more easygoing, more creative, relaxed and, perversely, more communicative.

It's also meant that I can now choose to drop the very good (I believe) NT act that I've developed (which always made me feel, inexplicably until the dx, so bad about myself - it's essentially lying, right?). So, this means things like I don't have to remind myself to do the right 'greeting face' when I meet people, I can neglect to call friends for weeks (jeez, don't NTs need SO MUCH stroking?), I can choose not to do small talk.

However, I have observed (and this IS very much like a scientific experiment I've got going here) that people respond in a less friendly or less warm way when I am choosing AS mode.

It occurs to me that Aspies have many advantages. NTs are sadly so very easy to manipulate: they seem to have desperate needs for strokes, smiles and approval and will roll over the minute I switch to NT mode. I hate the dishonety in this though and it is horribly exhausting to keep up the pretence.

I fake being NT and I can be really good at for maybe a couple hours thanks to the help my sister gave me years ago. She moved away a few years ago and I notice that I can't pretend so easily.

It's so true what you said, Lupin. When I let myself go and just be me I feel great and truly happy. But, people are not nice to me when I show my real self. They can actually get pretty mean and pick on me, or they would say that I was rude or something.

Then, immediately, I switch on the NT body language, tone in my voice, facial crap and then I get many, "Oh...I'm sorry's," or smiles and they back off.

Down side is that to get them to back off I had to act like an NT, which does make me miserable. But, then I like the response and the respect.

I love to giggle and act silly and laugh at things that make no sense. Then I get called immature. So then I act sarcastic and wise-ass like, and everyone thinks I'm the coolest girl they met....but I'm not happy.

Emmetman wrote: I've tried being normal, or at least appearing such, and while it may be necessary for such things as holding down a job, the rest of the time I am less and less inclined to do it "their way" and more, instead, to do it "my way."

I can do it, but it's tiring. Socialising does not refresh but exhaust me. And no, I don't find "normal" as something to aim for, except perhaps in my blood pressure and cholesterol levels.




Exactly. This is classic and should be added to WrongPlanet's list of "Quoteable Quotes".
(which doesn't exist, but should)

Here's one example:

I was at the gym with my sister and we were in the pool going back and forth doing laps. I don't like to exercise unless I'm laughing and it's fun cause otherwise it just seems like work.

There wasn't anyone there except for the lifeguard. So my sis and I were making jokes while swimming slowly back and forth ( + side to acting AS ... happy and feeling free). A woman came in and she stared at us for about a minute. She went to the lifeguard and complained about us. The lifeguard stopped us from swimming and said, "You girls can't play in the pool. You have to get out for this woman here." ( - side to acting AS ... I don't get Respect ).

I got out of the pool and told the lifeguard very loudly, "I am a member of this gym and I am entitled to 15 minutes doing my laps in the pool. I have asthma so I have to go slow. (*This is true). If you are telling me that people who have asthma cannot exercise at their own pace in this gym, I will check that policy with the manager and let him know what you told me."

Lifeguard, "Oh, I'm sorry...No, no..you can go right back in the pool. Really, so sorry." The woman got embarrassed that she made a big deal and felt stupid for complaining once she heard I have asthma that she snuck out of the pool room discreetly.

I won....I got my Respect ( + side to acting NT ).....but I wasn't happy-go-lucky, belly laughing me anymore ( - side to acting NT ).

For me I would have to say that since I didn't know that I was an Aspie in HighSchool and the rest of my life I knew that some how I was different. I didn't take part of any activitys, I didn't talk to anyone in the hallways in between classes, I sat alone at lunch and mostly in classes I was next to the teacher since I felt comfortable there. In Elementary it was the same but since every three years I had to move to another state. Middle school was a lot like High School. So I don't know if I was faking being an NT but I was just being me the loner and now I realize that maybe I was trying to fake NT to fit in.

Practically everything in this thread could have been written by me. That's kind of eerie to me.

I've lost every job I've ever had, thanks to whatever is different about me. It never seemed to matter whether I did a good job or not, most of my co-workers and all my bosses simply loathed me in spite of every effort I ever made to fit in. And the more effort I dedicated to fitting in, the more disastrously things would fall apart eventually. It just takes up too much of me to keep it up forever, and it's never really 100% convincing to anyone, anyway.

What Lupin said about NT's being so high-maintenance is spot-on! Some of them, about half of everything they say is actually a request for confirmation that I'm still listening, and little of the rest seems to have been intended for any real communication, but rather a test to see if they can be heard: "Nice weather, isn't it?" It's all an endless stream of "can you really hear me? Do you understand me? Are you listening? Do I really exist? Can you hear me NOW?" (And not just to me, but to each other all the time.) And manipulating them with their incessant need for approval... what an idea! Master that art, and you have it in your hands to literally conquer the world! (A few NT's have mastered it, and watching them in action can be a thing of beauty now that I think of it, but I don't think they have a choice of consciously applying it, of turning it off and on, the way Aspies do. That actually makes me look forward to social situations all of a sudden, just to see what can be done with that revelation!)

It never really occurred to me that I had a choice not to act NT. I think that I'd pretty much concluded that being myself was definitely out of the question, and that there was some magic formula to being "normal" that everyone else around me saw and mastered early on, and somehow that I've been too stupid to grasp, so it's something I needed to put more effort into, something I needed to be smarter to figure out.

Reading over the "symptoms" of Aspergers a couple of months ago, and reading this forum, I've come to conclude the problem isn't with me, it's with the "normal" people, that they're too stupid to grasp how to act like me, too blind to see why I can't act like they do. It's something missing in them.

The "NT lack of individuality" I've always thought of as being like that sense of exhaustion that finally sets in from trying to fit in just a bit too long, the sense that vital walls and boundries have worn thin and are in danger of breaking open, blurring important boundries between myself and the madness that is everyone else. Again, I always compare it to the nightmare of being the only one who can see packed into a room full of the blind, and not realizing what's wrong with everyone else! I just reach my limit of them fumbling around and groping every inch of me to try to figure out where I am and what I feel like... I need to get away someplace alone and recover my personal space a bit.

y.

I agree with you. I don't think NT's have the ability to turn the manipulation off and on. Some twist things up so much that they start to believe their own lies and stories. And they don't even realize when they are doing these things to the people they claim to love and care for. That part of it makes me feel somewhat sorry for NT's.

That they can't shut off the manipulation and they are always on guard.

The goal of WP is not for aspies to become more NT. It's to share information and advice of all kinds, and what you do with it is up to you.

The real long-term problem I had from trying to act NT is that if you're successful then people's expectations for you only get higher and higher. As with any lie, the deeper into it you get the harder it is to maintain the facade. The stress keeps building until eventually you can't cope with it any more. From everyone else's perspective you seem to fall apart and the regression in social skills seems more shocking and does more damage than if you had been honest about your AS in the first place. I went through that several times, losing friends and jobs each time. Now there's a definite limit to how much effort I'll put into "being NT". I make an honest effort to be social and friendly (AS is no excuse for being an asp-hole) but I try to avoid getting dragged into things that I know can only end badly. For example, at work I've been offered management positions quite frequently and always turn them down. I've had enough leadership tasks in my life to know I can't sustain the required level of effort indefinitely.

I pretend to be NT most of the time, I do fairly well. Though a lack of confidence in some areas of my NT guise weakens the illusion.

So many double entendres and puns (other than the original) are coming to me, it's ridiculous.