Faking NT

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So I'm still trying to get a grasp on how many aspies "fake" being normal. For most of you, is it an all out pretending to be NT thing like your literally acting all the time. You come off as any normal socializing NT with hiding all your quirks and creating some artificial NT persona. I'm sure some of you are very good actors.

Or is it more of a subtle thing. You fake enough NT to get by. For example, one might stay mostly quiet but say the minimum greetings, pleasantries and minor bits of small talk enough to fool the people around you. Perhaps you keep a huge emotional distance.

For me it is not usually a case of faking it so much as working from a set of rules. To fit in at all everyone needs to follow a set of social rules. For NTs a lot of those rules are instinctive while for us they are learned. In time many of the learned responses become so ingrained as to be nearly automatic. Of course some of the rules are harder to follow than others. Eye contact is still a biggie for me. However many NTs have poor eye contact so you can actually get away with quite a bit.

It also depends a lot on how you want to appear. If you want to appear as 'normal' as possible then you have to work at it. I just do enough to not seem too strange and leave it at that. So what if people think I am a little odd. It doesn't really matter.

I have "faked it" my whole life and it is exhausting. After I would get home from work, I would collapse from having to be so dang social (I worked in retail). I am now a hermit who only leaves the house when I absolutely have to and I'm pretty ok with that

No I don't believe in faking it,. unless it's just to get through a temporary problem with a crowd I don't care about. If it's friends, or people I might want as friends, I'm better off just being honest. If I fake it to them, they'll catch me out sooner or later and then I'd be in a worse fix. I don't think there's any need to fake. If people know who I am and don't like me, they can go away and leave my time free to find more suitable people. Leading them on with false pretences won't help me.

Social rules are not instinctual, NTs must learn all them as well - they are purely societal inventions, artificial.

They're just much much better at learning them at a much younger age.

Ive only found out about autism recently, I grew up being expected to loosely fit the NT mold, so I can get by as NT (an unusual one though). So yeah, I was literally acting all the time. Then I realised that in the process I was full on resisting myself and fighting who I am to be who I was expected to be, which wasnt working for me. Most people believe me to be a shy, introverted, highly focused and unempathetic NT. Yes the personal is artificial. I can hide things, when I am highly stressed my unconscous reaction is to look relaxed. However there are some people who I cannot hide things around. However I wasnt aware that I wasnt doing somethings (like missing nonverbal communication and not making eye contact), often the NTs wernt aware I was missing non verbal communication which I think contributed to lots of misunderstandings and I have been told by some NT in my life that lack of eye contact gets attributed to nervousness etc.


Now I am aware of things I wasnt before (like inadequate eye contact), and am relaxing more into letting myself be me I am tending to have a more of a 'fake enough to get by' approach, however Im still trying to figure out what 'enough to get by' is. My intent is not to fool the people around me, but to give them a chance to get to know who I am and know the real me without being put off or jumping to the wrong conclusions based on how I appear. I do keep a huge emotional distance between myself and others, however now I am starting to understand myself better I have been thinking about this.

I could not pretend to function normally if my life depended on it...so no, not much faking for me. Though I do sometimes fake that I am doing Ok when I'm not........Like if I am around family members who would have nothing helpful to say about whats bothering me, if I feel like I've annoyed/bothered people too much by discussing problems I have. I really shouldn't do that because it just seems to build that wall between me and everyone else.

If I act the way I normally do, people just think I'm a little off. I can otherwise pass for normal.

So no, no faking for me.

No. I'm not good at 'faking it'. It's too stressful to and it always leads to exhaustion. Not worth the trouble.

Pseudo Neuro-Typical Assimilation(PNTA) : I think it concerns your ability to adapt to the social expectations of your NT environment, often-times; using a bare minimal of learned NT habits, traits, and situational cues . In addition, PNTA requires THAT the Autist suppress socially unacceptable behaviors (by NT standards) that may identify them in a negative way and make NTs uncomfortable.

I think the above has more to do with the high unemployment among many Autists instead of an inability to do the work and become a competent employee.

I see PNTA as a problem for a large number of Autists especially those whose skills, as well as happiness, require them to simply be themselves.

I suspect that's just about everyone regardless of neurology.


TheSunAlsoRises

After 50 years of life, I've become fairly good at "acting Normal". You have to to keep a job, if you do weird things they tend to get scared!

Sincerely,
Matthew

My choice of career is going to require me to explore all possibilities, so for all those involved:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XZWgHNcUeA[/youtube]


TheSunAlsoRises

Yes, this is definitely learned with age and essential to get on in the workplace and socially.

I'm a bit bemused by the people who say this stressed them out. Even NTs have to act beyond their natural personality in the work place (professional is the horrendus word used for it) and NTs find this stressful also.

Jason

Im not sure if you are including me in this, to clarify, I do see the need and am fully ok to act, and present a good imprssion when needed, however this act is not me, and I cannot act the whole time. What has been stressful for me is the expectation that I actually be someone I am not.

Well, the unemployment rate is extremely high in the autistic community and a large number of individuals on the spectrum have a multitude of co-morbids in addition to Autism. When i hear the complaints, i keep in mind the condition is a broad spectrum which effects the individual in profoundly different ways.

I would venture to say THAT a large number of Autists act against their very own neurology rather than simply beyond their own personality. As a consequence, i can understand how the act of having to manually keep your behavior in check with constant mental regulation would be exhausting vs a NT who could develop certain traits THAT become automatic after a period of time due to their neurology being predisposed to a social mind.

TheSunAlsoRises

I think NTs fake it too. NTs fake empathy, fake to be interested in how you are feeling, they fake conversations like "How are you?" pretend to be happy, hide their true feelings from their customers, pretending to agree with something, etc. They do all do it to get by in life and to keep their jobs and keep friends, have less conflicts, and make things easier for them in life.