Pretending to be what you're not.

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I used to pretend that I was this hip swinger in a square world. I was obsessed with Routemasters for a lot longer than the past twelve months. Nobody knew at Wrong Planet or in real life. I was putting on a false Austin Powers persona, trying to act all cool. I wore bright colours, instead of red/white and blue, or the colours of the Routemaster. I wore stripes and polka dots. I used to say, Groovy and Baby a lot. I used to point my finger and dance around, wearing Velvet. I was keeping a secret from the world, for eight and a half years.

I've decided to grow up, last December. I've realised that I couldn't hide behind a mask, anymore. I've quit with the loud clothes, stopped pointing my finger and dancing around in Velvet, saying "Groovy, Baby"! I've started buying Routemaster replicas, once again.

Why did I waste eight years, being what I'm not?

Since nobody wants to see the real me, I will very likely have to pretend to be somebody else to attract them.

Tim

I've pretty much given into the futility of hiding who I am; a really dorky and passionate A/V-Theater-Philosophy-Literature nerd. Some people respect me for it but few like me. It goes to show that being yourself is not necessarily going to make everyone love you.

Case in point: in theater, my favorite acting roles are the sick/evil ones. I cold-read a scene from Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive between a child-molesting uncle (me) and his niece (another student) he molested while supposedly teaching her how to drive. After that a few people came up to me and told me I was really creepy. I just think that it is the twisted characters that are the most psychologically interesting.

I can also motor-mouth on and on about a/v, tech, and computers. For the sake of others I usually avoid talking their ear off about creepy characters or boring schematics but I don't hide it. If you took away my quirks there wouldn't be much of a person left underneath.

Meh, I've seen too many Aspies (like my father and my friend) trying to pretend to be something that they're not. It's especially offensive to me when they say, "you know what your problem is? It's because you don't do this and that, blah blah," and trying to tell me how bad and awful and worthless it is to be myself with AS. And they tell me this when I'm not complaining at all about what I am. They just think that because they have such horrible success with life with AS, that I will automatically have horrible success with it also, and I need to totally fake it to survive. It's funky, because at the end of the day, it's my father and my friend who still come home all tired from faking it, and they're still unhappy with their lives. Fat lot of good it did them!

It's because I don't use my AS as an excuse for anything. I don't get discouraged and upset and offended if I make mistakes, or if people have constructive criticism of me (whereas these are still problems for my father and my friend). I learn, improve myself, and move on. Perhaps most importantly, some of my strongest attributes come from my being myself with AS, so why on earth would I give those up, to be something that I'm not?? My guess is that they never learned how to make their AS work to their own advantage; they have gifts and do not know how to use them.

Great topic. This has been something I've been contemplating recently. Because I didn't find out I was Aspie until recently, in my mid-30's, I always felt like I had to try and be as normal as I could be.

I've always been a stutterer. In some very deep ways, stuttering is about holding back (although I don't want to spread false ideas about stuttering... like Asperger's it's primarily a neurological difference caused by genetics that affects 4 times as many males as females, so don't go around telling stutterers they just need to stop holding back). I've gone through a lot of the best stuttering therapies, and nothing really took. Some of the people I've known who have made the most progress with their stuttering would tell me that they could feel me holding back, not quite letting people really see me.

And it is only in the past few weeks that I've finally had some insight into how true that may be. As I am learning that I am Aspie, I realize that I basically have tried to do the "social robot" thing all my life, figuring out what people expect and then giving them what they expect (often not very successfully, but at least trying). Because that was the only way I knew how to navigate socially.

But recently a lot of things are coming together for me to get into a space of being okay with who I am. For one thing I am not working so I don't have to do the work personna. I am doing men's groups where I'm encouraged to feel my feelings and get to the depths of who I really am and what my purpose is in life. And I discovered that I have Asperger's so I understand why I do/did the social robot thing and no longer have as much feeling of guilt around it.

I think a part of why I was holding back who I really was was that I wasn't okay with who I was... I measured myself by NT standards and always came up short so I had to figure out how to not feel bad about myself. Holding myself back from feeling into who I really was helped me avoid that sting.

So yeah, I feel myself climbing out a bit and shedding my robotic personna. It's a slow process and I sometimes feel too exposed so I hold back by avoiding the outside world. And often I just feel like I don't know who the real me is behind my social robot personna. But I am happy to have a clarity of purpose, knowing that learning to feel into what I really want to be is the right direction for me.

And wow I just had another insight as I was writing this: That before I knew I had AS I would always look on my my awkwardness as somehow a core part of who I am, and felt shame around it. But now that I know I have AS, it feels like I can let go of that identity of the awkwardness being me. I know now know that the awkwardness is really just how I'm wired. I don't have to beat myself up for it anymore than I would beat myself up for my big forehead. It's just the meatbag, not my soul.

I usually be myself around people at school.

But not as well as I would at home, where I can blob out and be myself 100%.

At school I'm being 70-90% myself.

When I was younger in Primary School, I used to pretend to be someone who I wasn't just to fit in. Either way...it didn't work.

When people used to look at me, in the Antique shops, they'd wonder why a hipster would be very interested in Routemasters, instead of racy, erotic postcards from the 40s and 50s. The thing is that I wasn't really a "Hipster". I was more of Mod. Instead of sporting the red/white and blue, I've hid myself in stripes and polka dots. Whenever I'd purchase a Bus, I'd tell the cashiere that it, "Was for my British Mother"! The thing is that my mum's a third generation Canadian, and her background is French American. The Buses were really for me. Everyone in the store knew exactley what was going on, as well. They would laugh and say, "She's really buying that, for herself".

I can't easily pretend to be someone else. I don't have the skills to be that person - so, in any case, it's pointless. All I can do is present a more palatable version of myself. I see no point in pretending because people would probably be able to see right through me in any case. I'm quite happy with who I am - misanthropic and libertarian but loyal and true to the last. Who would want to take that identity away from me?

I've never had to put on a fake identity, and that comes from not having the need to. That's what you get for being half NT, I suppose (I got Half Aspie, half NT on an Online test, so I've coined that title for now). People were weirded out by the way I acted and the way I was/am, but I never worried about it and I thought "Hey, they don't like my quirks, but my friends do". The closest it's come to is that I adjust the way I present myself, so that I throw in my quirks as positive and silly aspects about me rather than facts about me (and by silly I mean light-hearted).

I used to do it when I was a kid.

Pretending to be what you are not corrupts what you really are.

I've realised that I was also trying to be all things to all people, in the Getting to Know Eachother forum. I was about to say, "Howdy" to a new member who happens to be from Texas. It dawned on me, that I can't keep doing that, so I've welcomed him aboard my imaginary Routemaster. People like people who be themselves. We'll see if I get any flack for what I did. They call that forum, Getting to Know Eachother, for a reason. They do it, so new members can see what the regulars are really like.

CockneyRebel, I think it's awesome that you let go of the theatrical persona you describe yourself as having tried to fit into. And I DON'T think those 8 years were wasted; they helped you appreciate even MORE who you are today!

Being yourself and liking who that person is, no matter what, has to be part of the formula for a better life. I'm convinced of it.