Being imitated as a form of mockery

Post Reply New Topic

As an adult Aspie, I wish I could say that forms of mockery have disappeared, but only the more "blunt" forms such as a peer saying in front of an audience "this is my impression of Jayo" - then putting on an exaggerated AS show...that was well before my diagnosis at 27 though. Now, in my 30s, it tends to be the odd person, maybe 5% of people, who have reacted to with more subtle mimicry of my symptoms.

For instance, a manager at my old workplace would feign misunderstanding of what I told her, yet I would repeat the same scenarios to somebody else and they understood perfectly. This woman would constantly interrupt me with "when you say X, do you actually mean Y?" sort of like I do sometimes, only I do it legitimately. So, I would reply with "Yes, that means Y." Then she would say "OK, well you didn't EXPLICITLY tell me that. So when you communicate that to somebody else, they will misunderstand you." She did this regularly, but she would only do it in one-on-one conversations, not when others were present - so I figured her tactics out. I understand enough about facial expression through regular counseling (following my diagnosis), that her expressions of confusion sometimes appeared forced or fake.

She would also ask me to write down on a piece of paper or board concepts that seemed very simple - exaggerated, passive-aggressive style - sometimes I do ask people to sketch things out due to short-term memory and processing issues with synthesizing info, but not as frequently as she did. She also asked me to book 1 hour long meetings with her in a meeting room over subjects that could relatively easily be resolved. Again, I only noticed this pattern with her. And I know she wasn't AS, because she was highly extroverted, she was high on office politics, and as I said, she wasn't like this when multiple people were in a meeting with us.

In my view, her behaviour was more insidious than the goofball who uses blunt force imitation & mockery to get a reaction out of me or an audience. Many times I thought about calling her game out with evidence that she was imitating me with exaggerated (yet subtle) mockery, but who am I kidding, she would flatly deny it and I'd look even more mentally unstable.

I certainly hope very few of you had to deal with this insidious treatment, but feel free to spill your thoughts out either way!!

Imagine a family member doing that. Then you have me.

Jayo - have you shared your dx with human resources? If you haven't, I would. This owman could easily just blow a gasket and make things even uglier. Protect your job, first and foremost, and report her if she will not back down on passive-aggressive management style.

LOL when people do this I over react and start a fight. this happened to me and i broke a kids nose with a textbook.

Like I said in my original post, it was my old workplace. I did explain it to HR at the time, with documented examples, but they did not act on it, I suppose because the imitation was more difficult to prove. I've since moved on to better things. But, contrast that with a manager who imitates an Indian employee by wrapping a towel around his head saying that he's hungry for curry, or a manager who imitates a gay employee by walking and speaking with certain mannerisms in front of him...his sorry butt would be thrown out of the office faster than you could say "prohibited harassment"

that's about how bad mocking gets on my nerves, too. although I'm not quite so violent, I wish I could do that sometimes. luckily no one but family members and close friends have ever mocked me, and not in a malicious manner.

I gotta say, it must have been very satisfying to do that.

There's a coworker here that seems a little like that. Very subtle passive/aggressive. I can't decide if it's because of my Asperger's or if he is like that to everyone.

Do you suspect that this co-worker might be imitating you...sometimes Aspies behaviour is mistaken for passive/aggressive behaviour, e.g. saying that they don't get something & could you please rephrase, you never explicitly told me such-and-such (which would be "common sense" to an NT), and so forth...that's what the subject of this thread was

Of course, as you suggest, it may not be to imitate you but just this person's way of lashing out against someone with a profile that doesn't meet his rather shallow expectations. I'm sure that people who are African-American or gay might wonder, if they were subject to a person like that, is it because they are African-American or gay that they are getting that treatment...hard to prove.