Alternate Personas

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Wow...this hits home. I call Alternate Personas "playing a character;" I'm totally different people with coworkers, with family, and with various friends (depending on how much they know about me). Before I learned about Aspergers, my personas were so severe there was actually a point where I feared I might have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)...but now I call the concept "mirroring" people, taking cues from their lead and "being the person they expect me to be" (in order to get through the situation).

Here's what I wrote about "characters" a few years ago, back I when I used to "classify" people, and treat them accordingly:

"Everyone I’ve met, I’ve met for a reason.
It’s almost like my life has had a prerecorded path, and like characters in a story, each person I’ve met has played a very specific role.
The “primary” characters have been with me the longest, like parents & relatives, siblings, & lifelong friends; these are the people who were always there for me, solid, dependable, and very much loved. The “secondary” characters would be those I only knew briefly…aquaintances, neighbors, coworkers, & short-term friends who were around for just a few months or years. I’ve also crossed many “stock” & “throwaway” characters, tricks I only vaguely remember, men whose names were irrelivant as long as they took me home.
But it took eleven years for me to realize throwaways were as important as primaries. Their roles may have been brief, but they were characters living their own, individual stories.
I was wrong to use them as I did.
I’d do anything to travel back in time and make ammends for my behavior.
Especially to those people I’d mistaken for throwaways…"

I actually brought this concept up to my last shrink (who never considered Aspergers, because I appeared to be so functional); I'm glad I'm not the only one who does this...

This alternate persona thing is fascinating. I wish I could do it. I wanted to do it when I went to college. I thought, hey, I'd be around people who'd never met me before. I could create myself anew. But no, I couldn't. I was the same as I always was. No matter how hard I try to be normal, people still think I'm weird. I can't pull it off at all.

I never pulled off normal, just different kinds of weird.

Ditto, nothing normal about my roles. I fit in in the music world because musicians in general are out there. Normal isn't a descriptive I'd use for most of them. Also because you are mostly graded on what you can do, social skills are optional.

And the other persona is even less normal. To survive dangerous situations you need to be a dangerous person.

Nope. I only know how to be me. That's not really a bad thing. I like me.

Fair enough.
But still, I don't know how to put on a different persona to do things I couldn't normally do. I've heard of it before, outside this thread, and I think it's fascinating that some people can do it. The closest I can do is what Yensid said about hiding certain things. But that's just not talking about things (which isn't a stretch when you don't talk much to begin with) or being hyper-aware of posture, fidgeting, etc.

I am a totally different person depending upon whether I know the person I'm talking to or not. I've never quite understood how people can just be themselves comfortably in front of others. But what I've found to be odd is that even though I'm not myself when I'm around people I don't know, I'm always not myself in exactly the same way. Although I never show my true face in public, I always put on the same mask. And I will agree that it is extremely exhausting, but so is being around anyone for that matter, whether they're a close friend or not.

ABsolutely! And what's more, there are several different personas I put on, depending on the people I'm around. There's the me around family, the professional me, the me with my on-line friends, the me with my husband ...

All of them are, in some sense me. And in other ways NOT. It is pretty tiring, but I actually like it.

I don't know if I ever thought of it as a persona, exactly, but there was/is definitely an "on" presentation of myself. I've heard people say that's normal, but I don't think that level of exhaustion is, or the feeling at times that someone else was doing my talking for me.

It built up over the years when I was forcing myself to interact with people more, and when I realized I needed to do more than silently stare at people after saying, "hi." So, I worked out scripts and ways to come up with things to say. And intonations to use and not use, and movements to do and not do, and on and on. (It felt like having every muscle in my body on 'manual' control.)

It's interesting what people have said about theater, comedy, and historic-recreation events. Wish I'd done some of that when I was younger. Comedy would be interesting but I don't think I'd have the energy for it these days.

Oh and I posted this link a few days ago (it's not written by me). The author talks about the "price of passing."

http://cometscorner-clay.blogspot.com/2 ... redux.html

I have different versions of me for different people and places and if people from different bits of my life get mixed up then I don't know how or who to be and will most likely ignore one or both of them.