Does being a great actor cause you difficulties?

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Thank you everyone.

Thank you Zonda your link was excellent, really really just what I needed, deep connection and understanding.

Thank you.

c

You're welcome, Criss.

I'm going to try to pass the link around as much as possible because it describes more than anything I've read why some adults with AS don't appear to have AS (and I'd put myself in that category).

By the way, I'll be in London at the beginning of July. Is there any chance for me to meet any fellow Asbergians?

Z

Ditto, and ditto thanks too. That really is very helpful.

How's it going ouinon?

Member Belfast mentioned the article on another thread. Reading it made me very emotional. I wish that kind of clear and elegant explanation of what I experience was easier to find.

Z

Zonda...........I have started a fortnightly aspie pub get together in west London, do get in touch via PM and I will tell you all the details. All is welcome here at WP.

Peace to you and thanks again for the mother of all links.

C

same situation here but i made the mistake of taking it too far. i actually found that i was too good at theater acting. i became my character to such a degree that i never came out of character. for me it was a satisfying experience. i always knew what to say and how to react because i did the same thing over and over, finely tuning my performance each time - just like i do in my head every day. it won me two awards and tons of attention but after a year i realized that the so-called 'integration' into society that it afforded me wasn't really mine. it belong to the character i was impersonating. it made me feel even MORE alone so i walked away from it.

that was 12 years ago and to this day i have trouble watching live theater because it makes me long for that feeling.

Thankx GlassWall.

Could you tell me the inspiration behind your username?

I wrote a song last year, soon after my Dx, I called it 'Playgrounds as battlefields' (my world under glass)

Have you heard of an autistic man called Caiseal Mor? (please see link below)

http://www.mahjee.com/

his life story is deeply interesting for me, and there are many overlaps with his story and mine, particularly how he took refuge behind his characters.

Go well out there

c

Yes, although it took lots of coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and sugar to maintain, I was so successful as "that" person, so glibly/smoothly obliviously "okay", so "functioning", so reinforced/affirmed in it by the responses of those around me, most of the time, that often, and until very recently, i have missed that person. Have regretted losing them.

Maybe the feeling of loss is how many people feel about abandoning an avatar in a MMORPG that they have been playing heavily/intensely for a long time.

It used to get me through interviews and into jobs and to parties, into groups, into bed.. ... and then I wouldn't manage the job, or the relationship, or the sex, after the first few weeks/days/hours/times . It wasn't much good for anything but first impressions, so i learned to live on them.

First impressions became the most important thing. ( a bit like that mars alien in Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks", so supposedly gorgeous, chewing gum to keep breathing, sashaying across the floor when watched, but not at all the real thing, incapable of it. I like his "Batman Returns" too because of the way people are always faking/putting on masks.)

Depth disappeared because it wasn't accessible to me in this persona, but a couple of books, increasingly obvious manic-depression, and gfcf exclusion diet were like depth-charges which "debunked"/exploded it over about 4 years.

It is an intoxicating thing to be able to act NT, and through building up a "character" and repetitively reacting "appropriately" to other people, you can even, for a time, almost forget AS related difficulties. I did this, particularly in graduate school, because the subject of school was the area of my greatest ability and interest, and some other students had more interpersonal and processing difficulties than I had. I felt like a (slightly nerdy) rock star. I wasn't aware of AS back then although I knew I was acting. During a formal reception and after a couple of drinks I revealed to a female student that what she saw was a façade I had constructed.

But the act is impossible to sustain, ouinon's first impression gets a second and third glance, and under enough stress and scrutiny the persona will dissolve, leaving the actor immobilized with a scriptless stagefright.

Z

Yes , Thanks Zonder

Being able to act and fake it has recently caused me problems. I'm undiagnosed, but I thought I'd found out enough to tell my friends my suspicions, and I got some very difficult reactions - from denial that psychological diagnoses make sense ("people with mental illness just need to grow up and get over themselves"), to friends pretending to have typical AS symptons to mock me for making things up.

Interestingly, what finally convinced one of them were the loosely associated physical symptoms: lousy immune system, easily upset tummy and very high testosterone levels for a female.

I melt down under any amount of pressure, particularly social pressure, but this is supposedly me being lazy and selfish.

I have spent years at uni studying linguistics, philosophy and psychology to get a better idea of how words and people work, to the point that sometimes I can tell NTs that they've interpreted someone wrongly. I worried that this rules out the possibility of AS, but I've convinced myself otherwise: I can list the details which caused me to think this, whereas others have described how they know such facts as 'just a feeling', and I'm constantly hyped up on sugar and caffeine so I can keep up with everything - when I'm tired or sick I turn into a social moron.

I have neon-coloured hair, and several opening-speeches prepared for when I meet new people. They are almost guaranteed to ask about the hair, and then I can tell them in detail about hairdye rather than struggling with "So, what do you do in life?, How do you know so-and-so?" questions.

I'm terrible in situations with multiple people who aren't usually together - I'm a great mimic, but I can't do two roles at once, and I become oddly unable to say anything, or at least pause for 15-20 seconds while trying to figure out what comes next and who I should be.

Also, luckily, I spend most of my time around philosophers - many of them are people who value rationality and logic, so if I'm picky about bad inferences, or ask for others to lay out their reasoning more clearly, people will indulge me rather than looking at me for a few seconds then keeping talking like I'm not there, as they used to.

Sorry for the rant - this is a sore topic with me at the moment and it's nice to be able to vent without being sure that my troubles will dismissed as imaginary - hopefully someone here has been through something similar.

Coffee, sugar, cheese, wheat, and alcohol fuelled my "NT performance" for many years.
I totally get what you mean by " multiple people who aren't usually together."

A familiar group was alright, in fact often great, with our own routine going, everybody in role, ( looking back at one particular group it's obvious now that most of us were AS to some degree), but if was two or more who I had almost never seen together before, it was as if I had two , or more, personalities fighting with each other.

What I would usually say to one person wouldn't "work" with the other person present, or wouldn't sound like the "me" i usually "do" for them, etc.

It was uniquely horrible experience whenever it happened because it often came close to wrecking or forever spoiling to some extent the friendship that had existed till then because i was always aware of the "falseness" of the "ease" which I felt with them after that. Of the "act", which I saw as dishonesty/hypocrisy/creepiness in me because I didn't know about AS.

Since manic-depression/breakdown and removal of "stimulants" i have, as zonder says, been experiencing a permanent stage-fright, literally as if I have forgotten my lines, and keep struggling to remember them. Sometimes, for some reason, it will start "coming back to me", but the trouble is that I know it's all made-up now, and I it feels so nauseous, like some sort of treacle/syrup pouring out.