Do you have a weird kind of empathy... impressionability?

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Here's my experience I can't explain. I clean offices and the night before I was scheduled to clean the office of a crane

service I dreamed I went there and two guys in the office told me there had been an accident. They both had no hands

and had wires coming out of their wrists where their hands should have been.

When I went there the next day I casually mentioned the weird dream and a guy in the office looked shocked and said

there had been an accident. One of their crane operators had fallen from a great height while on the job and it looked

like he might be permanently paralyzed. He was btw. He also said the man had had surgery years earlier for another

injury and had wires in his arm. I don't get the local paper or watch local news so I don't think I heard about it and

forgot.

Also this guy worked for their branch office in a town about an hour and a half away.

Taking on traits and mannerisms of people has always been my mechanism to try to fit in. I mostly observe for a long long time before I try to engage in new groups or work environments. I copy people's jokes and ways they speak and I have become quite good at it. When I was young it once drove my parents insane. I managed to start speaking Belgian dialect in about a week (dutch native speaker) since there were mainly Belgians that year. But it made me feel accepted and I had a hard time reverting to my own language.

Also on holidays I would behave differently than normally. I would present myself as the total opposite of who I am. (Being me in daily life always got me teased and bullied). I would lie a lot about how "cool" I was. People had no way to check it anyway. In the end I always felt miserable and exhausted. Also on holidays my parents would send me out to get some bread and I had to order it in French. "Un baguette s'il vous plait". My dad later told me I would keep repeating that sentence for days and days. Still I failed at it and came back without anything. Later I spent hours on end watching people ordering things at the shop. That did work. Copy-Paste. Success.

In highschool in the first years I was desperate to get a girlfriend. I learned that girls like boys who listen. Over the years I became the boy all girls told their life and problems too. However, it never got me any lasting relationships. Later on in life when I had some sort of relationship I always failed to break up with women even when I knew they took advantage of me. I have a hard time saying no to anything. I think saying no will get me not liked or will make me look selfish. Even this is strange because I never ask for any favors or things myself. The stupid desire to be normal and fit in always brought me more trouble than good things. Therapy has taught me that a bit now.

Copying people's traits is becoming less now but I have become isolated and I have lost my job yet again. I still can't figure out how to behave socially adequate. Nowadays I feel more comfortable being "different". Trying to fit in takes up too much energy.

Aimless, that's pretty obviously a case of clairvoyance. That detail about "wires" in the arms couldn't have come by any other means.

WrongTime, copying other people so as to fit in is a common trait, something that everybody does. Likewise, suffering internally for not being oneself is also a common problem. Everybody has to learn to strike a balance, and it's every individual's choice where that balance should be. This is *not* a psychic phenomenon but a psychological one.

--Leslie <;)))><

Oh yeah, THIS is something I´ve done all my life. I´ve figured out what to say, how to say it, what´s funny, etc., by observing people that seem to be good at it. I think I´ve figured out a way to do it and still be "me". I think this copying has helped me a lot in how to deal with people. This, however, is different from "taking on" and feeling the emotions of another. According to what I´ve read, this observing/copying is also a common coping mechanism of people with AS.

I don't know why but I've never been inclined to mimic behavior that brings people towards me but rather behavior that keeps me out of trouble and gets people to leave me alone. I keep my mouth shut in real life more than I should actually.