The social mirror effect

Post Reply New Topic

I used to to be familar with my image, in mirrors and pictures. I would get a little wierded out by it. Recently, I have become comfortable with who I see in the mirror and admire him.

I do tend to stare at picture of myself with intrigue. Maybe because pictures are mirror image of what I familar with seeing. I also haven't seen myself much in videos, so it's like seeing someone I don't recognize.

---------------------------------

Social mirror in general is a way to appear more familar to another person. This allows them to be more comfortable and open.

In eighth grade I started mirroring a friends stuttering. I hope I didn't come off as making fun of his condition.

i always call this my cameleon-aspect :
on the one hand i 'feel' like i'm someone (someone i know for real, from a book, a movie,...) . this is some kind of sensation and merely copied from that person. this has to fit in in the cameleon-part : which means that i'll be what i think the person in front of me expects me to be, like : a neighbour, a friend, a wife, a daughter-in-law, a teacher, a visitor, etc.
sometimes i also dress that way (if it's important)

When I was younger, sometimes when I was talking I'd use quotes I'd heard earlier in a movie or on TV. Most often, my friends had never heard the qoutes before, so they'd be like "Eh?". Better results come from when I use well known ones. For example, my Mum returned late from work two weeks ago and I qouted from Lord of the Rings "You're late." And my Mum said "A wizard is never late. Nor is he early, he arrives preciscely when he means to!" and we had a good laugh.

One interesting thing I have is that I look at myself in the mirror and see my face. Yes, of course, that's to be expected (I'm not a vampire, y'know). But whenever I'm away from the mirror I imagine a totally different face that I'm using (for one thing, it doesn't have a light moustace like my real face). A similar thing happens with my voice: Whenever I'm speaking I hear a voice that I identify as mine, but whenever I play around with Sound Recorder on my computer and play the audio back it sounds like the most ret*d voice in the world! I first noticed this the time I was on the radio a few months back...

i have a similer thing, when i look in a mirror i need to remind myself that is me. never relly though t of it as an AS thing though!!

^licks^

jammie & lion

I'm not sure if it's an AS thing, because I mentioned the voice thing to a friend while we were waiting at the bustop and he says that he's got a similar thing going too. I'd feel a bit more special if it were and AS specific thing, though!

Yeah, everyone feels that way about their voice. Your voice really dose sound different to you than it dose to other people, it’s something to do with the acoustics of you skull or something.

I find myself picking up accents/facial expressions/etc. from other people (usually people on TV), although that's probably an NT thing too. Apparently, subconsciously mirroring someone's behavior is supposed to be an indicator of liking or attraction to them.

It sounds weird , but I don't feel as if I ought to be a flesh-and-blood person. I look in a mirror, and think, that's not really *me*. I feel like I ought to be just a collection of thoughts, maybe a ball of light floating around.

I can relate to that. Recently I got Red Dwarf Series I-IV on DVD (Red Dwarf is a hilarious British space comedy). After watching it, I just could get the words 'smegging hell' out of my head. A few days later, it wore off. Thank smeg for that !

Something similar happened when I got the demo of a game called Age of Empires II when I was about nine. The tutorial guy had a Scottish accent, and I was so 'cooled out' by it that I decided to speak with a Scottish accent for a day. Pissed everyone off, and I got bored of it by the end of the day, so the last thing I said in a Scottish accent was 'Goodnight Mum'.

I thought,think? that the mirroring of someone is a way to try and process the emotion you see by making the muscles of your face do what they are doing and see what kind of "feeling" you get when your face muscles are in that shape.For me,it is unconcious but I know that my learning style tends to be "doing" and then I have a "muscle memory" that helps me reinact the task in the future....does this make any sense?

As far as looking in the mirror....that is not me.I hate the way I look and always have.I avoid mirrors but when I do have to look(to make sure I dont have a bugger or something)I dont feel like the image is ME....just a skin husk I am temporarily using to transport my real self...I think the "experts would say this is "depersonalizing" or "dissocation"...whatever...I think it's a little more Zen then either.

Yes, I do the same too. But I have noticed, when my sister returns to our homeafter talking with her friends, she changes her voice tone, expressions, gestures, and she developes like a " temporal accent". She isn't aspie, so I think this can be something typical for all humans, aspies or NTs.

When I speak to somebody I don't know how I look. I can't seperate myself from others. I don't know where others ends and I begin. You know what I meen? So it is easy to fool me for example. Im easy victim for those who suffer from narsistic personality disoster. There is no me. Im different with everybody. Im different at home and in school. Is this as trait?

Then also it seems that I take to many thing what happening in the world into myself. Also if Im sitting in the classroom I have that feeling that everybody is thinking of me

Don't know if those are also as traits.

yeah thats what its called. i used to have that, looking in the mirror and not recognising myself in it. i even saw myself on video, that was weird. i saw three guys and only knew who i was cause the other three i allready knew who they were. otherwise i swear, i wouldnt have known it was me.
it freaked me out

most likely i do have a depersonalisation disorder.

iv never mimmicd other people though, and never had issues with facial expression.