The Decision to Stop Hiding

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I am tired of sucking myself in and trying to act "normal."
It's killing my soul.

I feel that people don't really know me and can't appreciate me or hate me for who I really am. I hide my interests and my thoughts, opinions, feelings, all for the sake of coming across as normal, and not awkward. Every once in a while it comes out, and people get so surprised. I usually just shut up and observe, when I would rather be interacting.

What if I just quit holding it all back?

What about you guys? Have you ever just hid most of yourself, especially your Aspergers/Autistic traits? Have you decided to stop? What happened when you did?

I try to hide my more obvious physical traits like stimming, making odd noises and talking to myself. I'm also very careful not to ramble on about my interests. Apart from that I don't really try too hard.

Having said that I am on the milder end of the spectrum and have learned enough to be able to read people well enough to interact fairly normally without strain.

I grew up with NT behaviour expectations, which I did my best to meet, though I completely missed the point of a lot of it. I think I succeeded in pulling off the appearance of an odd/different NT. However the effort it took and takes from me to maintain this is too much, totally unsustainable, and contributed to me giving up on people before I found out about AS and realised in what specific ways I was different to others and started developing ways to deal with my problems.
So now I am at a similar stage of trying to figure out how much to hold back, what I can let people see, etc.
I think the decision I have reached so far, is
1) to find people who I can be more like myself around and this will be ok with them (not show enough traits for them to see autism in me though)
2) to be more open around some people and not open around others, therefor while I will have to maintain the act in some environments, there are also other environments where I do not have to.

In my situation it would not be a good idea to stop compensating for what I can as it would negatively impact my oportunities, my job etc. I think it is more about balance.

So in answer to your poll, I think my response is: Some traits, in some situations, with some people - the balance I have not found yet.

No, I do not hide my Aspie traits, and I'm glad that I don't. I am the way I am, and if people don't like it, then that's their problem.

I act like who I am, people who dislike this are not worth my limited time on this worthless world.

Yes, and no one knows until I tell them.

This isn't really a choice. I never knew what Aspergers was until I was in my 50s (I'm self-diagnosed). So I spent more than 50 years trying to get "normal" right. Hiding is just what I know now, it's how I cope in public. At home I think I am much more myself. But even with those close to me that I don't live with, I'm not. It's exhausting to hide all the time. Thankfully I enjoy my own company best anyway.

I can hide for short periods of time. If I really need to, I can look normal; it's a skill I use only very occasionally because of how difficult it is and how hard I have to think, and how much I have to inhibit what comes naturally for me. I can keep it up for fifteen minutes at a time; after that the cracks start to show.

The way I see it, normalcy isn't really a good goal for me to shoot for. While NTs do understand you better if you act as NT as possible yourself, it limits your ability to interact effectively with them because of how much you're focusing on things that don't relate directly to communication.

What you want to do is optimize the amount of information that's coming through between you and them--use just enough NT-style stuff to help them understand you better, but not so much that it distracts you and stops you from getting things across in your own style. For me, that's looking in their direction (but not at their eyes), stimming only surreptitiously (so it doesn't distract them), using tone of voice and inflection but still allowing myself to use the "big words" that let me make my speech more precise. It seems to work. I'm probably among the better communicators on the spectrum. There's still impairment, but much of it seems to be taken care of by the various work-arounds I use--things that make me seem eccentric.

When I do things in the ways that are more natural to me, I'm generally more effective and independent. Balance that with learning the NT way so that they can understand me, and I can generally figure out the best combination.

My sensory issues and social anxiety make it impossible to act normal.

I tried to go a whole day and act, and dress normal a few years ago but it didn't go well and I started to have panic attacks.

Years of denial and conforming has taken its toll on my mental health. Eventually, I was forced to accept who I was. This realization has made interacting with others a whole lot easier. People seem more willing to converse with me, probably due to my lower anxiety levels.

People who are familiar with Asperger's see it immediately. For the others who are not, I am just shy and introverted.

If I must hide who I am from another person, they are not worth knowing!

If I decided to stop hiding my quirks people would probably be weirded out by me when I start stimming. They'd probably also be really bored being around me. Things would be worse then now socially for me.

I hide with pride. Sometimes people call me on being weird, and if they persist enough I have to explain to them my condition, but most of the time I do a very good job at acting 'normal'. I enjoy acting. The best way to divert attention away from yourself is to be entertaining, but aloof. If you make someone laugh it gives the illusion of intimacy, without having to actually back it up with real intimacy. Though I have found that eventually people will find out that they really do not know you, and will start to ask questions; at about that time is when you bail.

I didn't really self diagnose until I was an adult so growing up I most likely appeared to be an odd/quiet/NT. Sometimes in the past people have pointed out a few things that have lead me to believe that they thought me a bit odd. An example, includes seeing things in a black and white fashion with little to no shades of grey. It is not easy to hide how I am due to some social anxiety, but I do like to converse at an event on a one to one basis.

Not sure what the real me actually is anymore. These Aspie traits I seem to have, I grew up thinking those were just my uniquely farked up personality, but now they're either traits of a class of people or symptoms of a disorder.