Are you always awear of when you are "acting"?

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Female.
I´ve sort of dropped my persona.

Remembering to do it can become automatic, but you cannot allow WHAT YOU DO to operate on autopilot.

No matter how good you get at acting, YOU ARE STILL AN ASPIE. You MUST pay attention to the act, or you WILL trip up, slip up, fail to pick it up, and make a mistake that you do not have the skills to recover.

Keeping up the illusion MUST remain a major focus, or the illusion will fail.

I would say that the only time I am consciously aware of acting is when I have to be sympathetic to someone. It does not sound sympathetic when my voice tone remains flat.. so I have to raise it (etc) so that I actually sound like I care.. Sometimes I am unsure whether or not I have seemed convincing but I just have to try as best as I can. Other than that, I think I pretty much have my scripts down.

I'm female, and I do think that there is a tacit agreement societally, to expect females to be better at reaching out and handling social interaction. I think there's another thread where interesting things about that were mentioned, too -- I know that a lot of my acted persona is me caving into that societal expectation, and I struggle with my dislike of that.

I've been told I'm taciturn, aloof, and have no personality. I can't act.
Actually, my lack of personality is my personality.

It's always kind of been a joke to me, quietly, that I feel like a chameleon. I've been doubting myself for years because of it, not sure whether there even is a 'real' me. I'm good at observing and, as long as I'm not tired, I can adapt. It's easier when I'm prepared though. I kind of go through possible scenario's in my head. When possible, I even make sure I'm wearing the right clothes, to fit my 'persona'.

It's a way to survive, I've come to believe.

There's no such thing.

I am a female who was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome at age four. Since kindergarten, I have constantly been taught social skills by various school speech teachers, counselors, and psychologists. Due to this, my social skills have improved greatly over time. You think I would be happy now, right?

Wrong. As a child, I hated having to be pulled out of class to learn social skills. I remember when I was younger, a relative asked me what my least favorite class was, and I replied "Social skills." My relative laughed, and said "I think you mean social studies (history), hon."

Sometime during middle school, though, I began feeling the complete opposite. I became desperate to fit in and make friends, and began pouring vast amounts of energy into learning how to be normal. The result is that I stopped getting bullied and gained two close friends.

However, in some ways I am more miserable now. While I am able to act normal for the most part, it is just ACTING. I would love to just be myself, but I feel like my default way of acting is wrong, or broken. I get depressed often due to this.

I am probably already typing too much, but I just want to add one last thing. I am currently obsessed with superheroes, and something in an X-Men movie seems to sum up how I feel. In one of the movies, someone, I think Beast, says to Mystique something along the lines of: "I can never be normal. But you, you could just shape-shift into a normal person, live a normal life. Why don't you?" And Mystique replies: "I shouldn't have to. People should respect me for who I am."

Anyways, while I am not thrilled to be quoting a supervillan, I do wish I could just be myself instead of being exhausted from "shape-shifting" into a normal person.

I feel like when I meet people for the first time, its heavily acting, both in the 'Social obligation' sense, and the 'I have AS, so control my quirks' sense.

As I get to know people better, the 'social obligation' acting goes down, but the 'quirk control awareness' stays active (and will probably always be so).

Some of my quirks, I can cover so well, I am on autopilot, so I don't think much of them or am only *scarcely* aware I am covering them.

Other quirks, (eye contact and body ticks comes to mind) I am *constantly* aware of and trying to control. No autopilot there. Probably won't get autopilot there either.