Has anyone ever tried acting NT?

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I try it every so often. So far, very few results.

Masquerade

I have a little secret I wear upon my face
I keep it very near to me in a most convenient place.
I hope you do not guess it, you might take me to task
I take it out and put it on, it's my "normal" NT mask!

It keeps the world from pressing in; it makes me look like you!
I wear it so easily you won’t believe that it's not true
I laugh and nod and make my mouth do what passes for a smile
I walk and talk and do the stuff that makes me rank and file.

But underneath the artifice, I am bored with all your talk.
Your gossip and your ‘he said-she said’; at all of this I balk!
You're constantly rattling on about the very least of things!
your husband's warts, your baby's farts, your last romantic fling.

I’m sure it’s very interesting, and I tilt my head just so
I don’t want to be left out, so I put on the show.
After all should I decide to let my Aspie out? I could bore you too, to TEARS,
and be thought of as a lout.

So when you’re on and on about the rights of "people of the pod*"
and force your strict conformity on politics, style, and God.
Mind games you play with no regard for innocence or youth
you're quick to point with fingers gnarled at what you see as 'Truth.’

But I bear it all with stoicism, and onward do I march
to keep lock step with all of you when inwardly I lurch
you rub me wrong, you irritate, you scrape my nerve ends raw
you constantly regale me with what you did and saw

So if I inwardly rebel against the draw of luck
and stifle yelling to your face, “you idiot! you suck!”
and out from the mask cracks the rebellion wells and oozes
pardon me, in the genetic crap shoot; YOU are the bunch of losers. ·



Merle

(Pod people) obscure reference to a 1957 black and white horror movie called "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" where people were cloned in pods like peas. it's poetic license, so sue me!

I get up every morning and check whether I've been called into town to teach a class. I then check the to-do list to see if I have to go to town on errands. If so, I go "on-stage" and go take care of things which have to be done. When I get back, I colapse in exhaustion, but nobody has noticed I'm Aspie while I'm around people. This way, we can both concentrate on doing what needs to be done, and ignore the fact that I'm a little "off."

The cats like me better whin I'm not "on-stage."

Pops

I don't try to "act" NT. If I tell myself I am trying to put on a persona that I don't have, then I feel even more like I'm faking it.

Instead, I try to take the social skills that I have learned and try to put them to good use in order to get by socially and make decent connections with people. I try to learn new ones all the time. I'm nowhere near as good as I could be, but I'm working at it every day.

I think this is the same as "acting NT", right? Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I'm doing the same thing, just in different words...

If by "acting NT" you mean learning to speak their language so you can communicate with them, then yes. Nothing wrong with that. We can succeed to a degree the same way someone from a foreign culture with a different language can learn the native language and culture enough to communicate. However, you will probably always have at least a slight "accent" and likely never be able to pass yourself off as a "native".

So, learning to communicate with NT's: worthwhile if you can pull it off.
Trying to pass yourself off as NT: pointless waste of time.

Well, I remember therapy I had about saying hi to people and stuff. People in college gave me lots of tips on how to keep a conversation going. I'm pretty good with reading gestures and faces. Yeah, I can be quite NT in a good mood, but I loose it when stressed, I can tell when I start to interupt people and say way too much if is about my interest, etc...

Before i "knew" i was different from this so called NT i "was" one. Though even though i can maintain a somewhat nt-ish behavior it put such a horrible strain on me to "act" that role. It usually crash after 6 months and i have long given up those attempts. during those periods i took that assignment very serious. However the lengths i have to go to make everything working was extreme. I slept 12 hours per day and have 0 minutes of free relaxed time as every second is stamped into a detailed scheme of myriads of small tasks (perhaps the word musts fit better) that together adds up to "normal" It don't work for that long as the amount of self discipline needed is astronomical. And the gratification of this behavior is pretty large but at some point they are not worth the efforts any longer.

Of course those failures is very depressing as doing good job is important to me.

I'm having trouble with this.

I don't try and fit in for most of the time, but I have to try extra hard in the mornings.

When I meet one of my Acquaintances every morning, I have to try and talk to him, and I walk with him for nearly 15 minutes. It is stressful and hard for me to keep a conversation going.

Whenever I talk about something I find interesting, he tends to ignore me and not respond.

He tries to be nice, knowing that I have a problem, but if I don't talk to him or make an effort he becomes my enemy and he tries to humiliate me and make me feel bad.

I don't always want to talk because I'd rather listen to my music.

I mostly keep to myself. If I do have a conversation I can usually act NT, though people eventually cotton on and realise I'm not quite like everyone else. Depending on the person I'll either tell them I have AS or break off contact.
I find that it's the first impression which is important. If I give a bad first impression to someone, chances are they'll always think I'm ret*d. If I can act NT with personality at the start then they'll be more accepting. Of course, some of us find it a lot harder to conceal our awkwardness.

Do it all the time when in public, comes natural for me to switch off my Autistic traits, and emulate NT behavior while engaged in public. At most if anything, people suspect that I'm quite eccentric in nature and never figure out that I'm Autistic at all, that's about it.

Hmm... I've had social skills counseling that helped... I'm pretty good at it now, I've even been known to slip up and small talk... yikes! But if you get me on a subject I like, I may still ramble on, and I still interupt people.

Where can one get social skills counseling? That would be great!

Uhmm, one of the main problems I have is that I find it very difficult to differentiate between typical 'NT' behaviours and my own. It was only when my friends started pointing it out to me recently.
So my honest answer is that I don't have a clue!