Inadvertantly mimicking/picking up "vibes" from ot

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Yes I have the chameleon tool button poopy lung stuffing!! Some friends find it really embarassing, like when I was talking to a pub landlady and I adopted her Scouse accent, I invented a whole new me! I also understand what Belfast means about not feeling a boundary with others and picking up vibes.

I am not the most articulate person in the world and I may be only expressing one aspect of the chamelion thingy here...for one thing...maybe Zelig was a bad example..it is not as intense as all that though I have had someone observe that when talking to someone else I subconsciously adopted their speech patterns and body language...

and also...of course I don't adopt their views...but I do slightly shadow their thought patterns as indicated by their speech..(if that makes sense)

...and another point of this is that i don't do it intentionally...it just seems to happen.


Anywhoo

In my current situation of having to deal with an overwhealmingly hyperactive NT teenager all the time, I am beginning to think that the chamelion thing, to some extent is a defense mechanism....If I do not reflect/deflect her personality (as uncomfortable as it may feel to do so), than I am overwhealmed by it and it causes me to want to have a meltdown....

(though in other situations, it is usually not as extreme as all that..it is really very subtle)

Sometimes I am unable to do it. Last night I was in captive audience with her at a resturaunt and she was being especially manic, and I had to subtelly keep my fingers in my ears and stare down at some reading material at the resturaunt for fear of going mad...and then i wound up eventually having mini-meltdown and having to take xanax and a hot bath anyway...(i am not blaming her for this..just me...)
When i DO do reflect her personality, then Flakey is amazed at how much talking I do...i feel the need to apologise because I feel so out of character....


This is not always the case...sometimes there is a certain absence of "vibes"...or a sense I often interpret as a person disliking me....and then I can't talk to the person at all...I open my mouth and everything comes out jumbled. Flakey's sister is an example. There is a null or negative exchange of energy, and as a result, I have never been able to have a conversation with her at all.
In other circumstances, I get "bad" vibes from people and I cannot talk to them because I want to block their energy because i do not like it.

I hope I don't sound schitzotypal or something talking this way...It is something that has affected my ability to socially interract with people for as long as I can remember. In certain scenarios I am often almost incapapble of interracting...but when I am dealing with someone on a similar wavelenght as myself (like Flakey, my boyfriend)..then i am completely in control of my ability ot communicate comfortably and feel almost "normal"...or my version of normal anyway...

10/10

I've had similar problems. I find mimicry of movements etc fairly easy to avoid, but if I listen to any set accents, style of talking, volume, or almost any way of speaking I'll pick it up unless I force myself not to.

For example at the moment I'm watching the first 2 seasons of American Dad, and find my speech alternating between the effeminate aliens style and Stan Smith's.

On the plus side, if I watch more than an episode or two of Fruits Basket in one sitting I end up speaking just like Yuki, and I love his voice

The end result is having been told that I'm Japanese, French, American, German, Irish, Welsh and a reincarnate of someone from nazi Germany. No one ever guesses that I'm English, and if I tell them I live in England, they always follow up with "So where did you come from?". Then they look at me funny when I say I was born in the city I'm in now, and have never left it for more than a fortnight. Then they look for an excuse to get away from the crazy german reincarnate.

The only exception is Americans - Every single American person I've met has identified me as English. I assume it's based on subtle differences that are based on context rather than the main matters of stylisation employed in communication.

I tend to copy speech pattterns alot ...i also tend to copy the "thought process" of characters i read in novels...not exactly but pretty close....a favorite of mine is Sam Vimes from the Discworld series....of course no one a round me reads those so no one picks up on it...

I just remembered in my first year of uni, a girl from the US in my chemistry course asked where in the US I was from. I've never been outside of Australia.

my speech is markedly different than those around me. the first impressions i give are mostly that of 'arrogance', but i quickly adapt in social situations with what EvilKimEvil has brought up:

only difference is, since i am unable to tell if a person dislikes me (easier to tell if someone likes you, than if someone dislikes you and is just hanging around being polite), i often put myself in an awkward situation where i'm behaving almost exactly like the person i dislike. upon realization (of the behaviour, not the dislike, i can almost immediately tell if i like or dislike a person, even though i like to give people more credit than just their 'first impressions'), i would disengage myself from the conversation ASAP.

i picked this up as a child, after reading Allan and Barbara Pease's "Body Language". my mother had thought it would be extremely useful for me, perhaps she'd realized i wasn't interacting as i should have for my age. i would go as far as to say most of what i've learnt about social interaction was through observation and the above-mentioned book. i have learnt that through mirroring, i put the other party at ease, mainly because they would often always feel uneasy around me to begin with.

oftentimes, i've felt as if i were living a lie, and i must have been a pretty good actress to get by relatively unscathed. perhaps this is due to the culture in Singapore, or simply because i was oblivious to how lacking in social skills i was/am.

personally, this has improved now that i'm older (31 this year) and have less energy and patience in pretending to be someone i'm not, just to 'keep up appearances' and for the comfort of other people. this way, i feel more 'true' to myself, scowls and all. ;P

My mom used to get all OVER me for "mimicking" accents! We went to Kentucky for 3 days and the way I spoke, you'd think I'd lived there my whole life! She always complains that I don't have my "own" voice; that I always have to sound like everyone else. I don't do it on purpose...it just...happens!

Oh man.. Sometimes I wish I could mimic everyone like this, then I would be like everyone else and not have to go through all that s**t again. Or maybe I have a misunderstanding.

As a kid (I'm not exactly sure how young, even maybe for a lot of my teens) my sisters and possibly people at school (I can't remember now) used to say I didn't have my own voice. I'd put on cartoon voices constantly.