Putting on a persona?
I'm definitely questioning if I'm Aspie or maybe just ADHD. Autism is definitely in my family though, so I really don't know what to believe. I don't know what "normal" is I think since my parents are both very obviously Aspie/Autistic and so is one of my siblings. Me and the other two are a bit more reserved though and do have home personas and social personas, but I do find it hard to keep up with this persona in social situations, especially if people are boring me with their chit chat and mundane chatter. I prefer to talk philosophy and politics. I don't know if this is because I grew up in a household full of Autism or if it's because I have ASD??? I do find that if I'm sick of pretending to be like everyone else and listening to them, I usually kind of shutdown and stop responding because it's kind of exhausting to pretend I care and to pretend I'm like them.
I told my mum she doesn't pay attention once and she said "that's because people are boring"

I can't wait for my appointment - all this questioning is really making my brain want to explode!
Well you may or may not have Aspergers/Autism but you sound very similar to me...
I shut down when I have nothing to say or am not interested in the person or social topic anymore. A lot of my time spent in social situations is pretending... It's quite exhausting. I am big on mimicry and learned how to behave around people from watching and mimicing others and combining different traits from different people to create my social persona. But I also act different depending on the type of person that is put in front of me. I put on my "suit" everyday for work to pay the bills but really if I didn't have to interact with people to live I'd be quite anti-social with few friends... I'm just more interested in doing my own thing.
Thanks Dr_Cheeba for replying.

I think I only sometimes want friends because that's what "normal" people want. I mean sometimes my isolation or lack of being able to keep in contact with friends does make me lonely and I do sometimes long to go out and see people, and escape my incessantly chattering brain, but mostly, I find people dull and wish they would stop talking about unimportant crap.

Hahah you took the words right out of me. I think for me I'm very much about getting the information out that I need to tell you or hearing the information from you that I need to hear. Everything else falls by the wayside of a disinterested me... I hate small talk and have only learned to perform in that situation through a catalogue of learned phrases and sayings that I can through back at the person. This is what gets me by and able to perform in workplace and daily life. To be honest, not including workplace interactions, I go for weeks to months on end before I REALLY get the need for a social gathering or some social event to get my "fix" in. But who wants to be friends with someone so distant? I've learned nobody... But I've got me, myself and I

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ConfusedAlot
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

Joined: 27 May 2014
Age: 36
Gender: Female
Posts: 70
Location: Australia

Yep - so me! I sometimes say the wrong thing because people will say "how are you" and I've trained myself to say "good thank you, and you?" and then they say "good thanks" or something, but sometimes people catch me off guard like when they ask me if I'm good first and then I say "yes, and you?" and it becomes an embarrassing loop! Most people just think that I'm some silly young girl - it doesn't help that I'm a receptionist and naturally blonde, so I get the very demeaning term of "blondey" and people treat me like the "dumb receptionist," although I don't always notice until afterwards, which makes it worse. No one knows I'm 25 and university educated. I seem so innocent to them too from what I hear (guess I am to a degree).
I'm happy spending time with my husband, who understands that I need quiet time and "research time" and isn't needy of me (most of the time). I think that's because he may be Aspie too. But otherwise, yeah I guess I don't really want human interaction too much. I do sometimes if I need to figure something out, or if my family has been mean to me and I'm trying to figure out what to do (and my husband is sick of my sound-boarding), then I'll seek someone else out. So I guess maybe I'm more needy of companionship when I'm feeling quite down and low - since my parents don't really provide this, I go to other people. Hmm that's sounds more NT - I dunno

There is a lot in this topic that resonates with me, particularly the idea of filtering, and mimic other people's behaviour. Even though I have learned social behaviours from NTs, I don't always achieve a good match between the social situation I find myself in and the behaviour I exhibit, and the fact that I mean well does not make it any less embarrassing - not that I would notice until a few days later . . .
BelleAmi
Pileated woodpecker

Joined: 13 Jun 2013
Age: 53
Gender: Female
Posts: 178
Location: A cafe on the Left Bank, watching the rain.
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Really relate to this - when I was younger I had to keep different friends apart, or I would feel like I was coming apart at the seams - It caused actual pain, at times, usually migraine and a sense of nausea and being physically off-balence. I can usually only talk to one person at a time, or I begin to feel very confused as to who I am! The word diffusion fits very well, for me.
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BelleAmi
Pileated woodpecker

Joined: 13 Jun 2013
Age: 53
Gender: Female
Posts: 178
Location: A cafe on the Left Bank, watching the rain.
:I think I only sometimes want friends because that's what "normal" people want. I mean sometimes my isolation or lack of being able to keep in contact with friends does make me lonely and I do sometimes long to go out and see people, and escape my incessantly chattering brain, but mostly, I find people dull and wish they would stop talking about unimportant crap.

Chattering brain, oh yes, it never shuts up - have to feed it books and movies just to get a bit of peace. But other people are worse, and I have often felt near to violence when someone just keeps talking about what is to me nothing at all - as I get older my tolerance deminishes to vanishing point. keeping in contact when you really don't want contact is paradoxical, but we all fall foul of the N word.
I have used decades to make myself a persona, that made me look a lot more confident and capable, than I truly feel. The problem has been, that employers fell for it and wondered, why I wound up functioning so differently from what they expected. I was hoping, that my facade would carry me safely through the first jobphase and last until I had learned the job.
The two last job-trials showed, that it wasn´t a good idea. Right now I feel utterly incapable, which I know, that I am not.
I must learn to emphasize my true strengths and find a way to phrase my needs on job, - if I ever get one.
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Femaline
Special Interest: Beethoven
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Really relate to this - when I was younger I had to keep different friends apart, or I would feel like I was coming apart at the seams - It caused actual pain, at times, usually migraine and a sense of nausea and being physically off-balence. I can usually only talk to one person at a time, or I begin to feel very confused as to who I am! The word diffusion fits very well, for me.
Yes I very much identify there, I find it nigh on impossible to spend time with two people I only know separately. The persona thing isn't conscious though and I think I am still just myself each time. But mixing people, like a friend and a relative, is painfully difficult for me.
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Really relate to this - when I was younger I had to keep different friends apart, or I would feel like I was coming apart at the seams - It caused actual pain, at times, usually migraine and a sense of nausea and being physically off-balence. I can usually only talk to one person at a time, or I begin to feel very confused as to who I am! The word diffusion fits very well, for me.
I don't think I every felt it as physically as that, but it would make me feel very on edge. I remember when I started secondary school some of my friends went to a different school, eventually made some new friends at the new school and ended up cutting off the old ones, I know it is normal for friends to drift apart but this was different I just couldn't handle the worlds colliding feeling of these two friend groups so just stopped contacting them, I felt very guilty about it but it was the only way I could handle the situation, it seemed so unnecessary in hindsight. It still causes me problems now, a big obstacle of having a relationships is the fear of having to reconcile how I would be with a partner, my family, and friends, and the fear of being found out as weak and fake.