Who can pass as NT really well; who is affable?

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I can and do pass as an NT daily. When I work my shifts, for the first hour I am my usual overstimulated self. After the first hour I become so mentally fatigued that my brain and my sensitivities partly shut down. I'm then not as nervous but I am also not my normal self. I can better converse with others but I don't like it because my brain works more slowly and it's like I'm not even really there. I feel depersonalized and like I have brain fog.

When I worked, I had this problem. This problem really weighs down on you after years of dealing with.

Oh wow, guys, this thread cheers me so much.

I've not been through the diagnostic process (and am eternally doubtful of whether or not I'm far enough onto the spectrum to actually be on the diagnosable end of it), but the things you said -- especially beneficii, JenniferJones2015, and cberg -- all that really makes sense to me, and sounds a lot like what I'm like.

I'm able to enjoy social interaction, especially when it goes well. Sometimes I think I'm still not used to successfully interacting with people my age -- maybe that's why it feels like a job well done every time I do interact with others successfully, even if it's not nearly as much as an effort as it was when I was in my teens or younger.

It does take its toll, though. I eventually shut down (unless I get enough time to regroup in peace, ideally in a cool, dark-ish, quiet place) or get snappish and irritated, which then confuses people (because I manage to seem affable until it all gets too much).

Then possible Autism might be impairing you enough for you to be diagnosed. Enjoying or not enjoying socialization is not an autistic trait. Ability to socialize is. If you are confusing people often enough then your socializing is atypical. Sensory sensitivities (need dark, quite places could be noise or light sensitivities) are considered traits.

May I ask why you find that difficult? I feel the same way, and it is one of the questions I've had as I've started seeing a therapist about a potential diagnosis. I feel that by having to please parental figures as a kid, and not really enjoying talking most of the time, I really don't always know how to say no. My feelings and thoughts were definitely not valued. Feel free to PM me if you're more comfortable answering my question that way. And thank you, even if you don't respond.

I strongly relate to everything in this thread. Especially the person who mentioned that when even an enjoyable period of socializing gets to be too much, the resulting irritation and need to get away to recover confuses people. This has been me all my life.

In my younger adult years I made a conscious effort to force myself to be more like "other people" (which only now I know was "NT people" and that I was not one of them). I consciously copied all the normal mannerisms and it became so ingrained in me that it's now a habit I can't break even though I would like to. Because, even though I am affable most of the time and it's genuine, because I can actually genuinely enjoy social interaction, it does take an enormous toll on me. If I have too much chatting and socializing pushed onto me, I feel overloaded, overwhelmed, burned out, I can have both meltdowns and shutdowns, and of course confuse people who thought I seemed so happy to be talking to them.

I have to recover, and sometimes it takes days of avoiding people, laying low, just to recharge my batteries.

In fact I confused someone with my burned out irritation (not quite a meltdown just a really irritated moment he's never seen from me before) just this week. I still feel bad and want to apologize to an acquaintance I got really grumpy with -- it would have seemed out of the blue sky to him, but to me I know that it came out of a growing set of frustrations and overloads that came bursting out because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I feel terrible and will have a lot of 'splainin' to do.........

Lately I constantly tell myself I'm actually doing myself NO favors by keeping up such an affable, NT "front" because, yes, it does throw people for a loop when my real struggles with burning out from this stuff comes out, and they are unforgiving.

I feel if I could be truer to my former self before I "learned" so well to cover up my real difficulties, I would be less stressed and people may be less suprised when they do see my stress show.

I've just felt like I've had to be a different person in order to survive in life, and I've been doing it for so long that it's hard to stop. But there are many ways in which I personally pay too high a price for that and I wish I could stop.

I can pass as that pretty well, I don't identify with aspergers, but I could've been labeled with a number of mental disorders, and was very awkward and shy before. I went out and approached hundreds of girls by myself to overcome the fear, and did other stuff like that too. Now I can talk to anybody anywhere, and sometimes it seems like I have the charisma of Hitler, lol. It also helps that Im 6'2 and workout and train martial arts, but yeah, I wouldn't even recognize myself from before.

I think I'm rather affable, and people seem to like me well enough, at least after they know me for a while. (It seems I make a bad first impression somehow.)

BUT I doubt I pass as NT. I don't even try to, unless you count tollerating slightly more small talk than I'd normally prefer. People probably wouldn't wouldn't think I'm autistic because they don't know much about autism, but they often think I'm weird.

I live in an area where broad autism phenotype traits like introversion and a disinclination for eye contact are fairly normal. Most people wouldn't be considered to have BAP, but they probably have at least one of the traits at least a little bit. I hear of autistic people in other places often being spurned for BAP traits, but I have the good fortune of not having to worry about that.