Why can't I pretend to be normal like some aspies can?

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I keep reading about people who can behave more like a NT for a time period and then then need exhausted. I don't know how do they do it, but I can't - I never got tired (not even to a small degree) from social situations where I tried to behave "normally", no matter how long they were. My attempts at normal behaviour consist of applying what I learned to my aspie state, and not stretching my mind to get a temporarily increase in social skills. I don't think I was ever able to do the latter. A friend of mine (he's male) is highly NT - significantly more than an average woman! However, after social situations, he feels tired.

Is there any information available on what allows people to temporarily increase their EQ (or whatever), and which people can't increase it? Also, can I learn to increase it?

At first, I thought I can't do it because of my ADHD, but then I spoke to a girl with ADHD who does it on most social situations. It might have something to do with OCD, but I don't see a connection between these two.

I don't even need to be social to get exhausted. Just being outside and doing normal things like driving and going to the grocery store do it to me. I work but just 30 hours a week and my job requires little socialization. Fatigue has been a constant in my life as long as I can remember.

A non-rhetorical question: Why would you want to pretend to be "normal"? What does it even mean to be normal?

I've since a long time ago decided to be myself as I am under all circumstances. In my case I feel that has increased the amount of (positive) attention I receive in social contexts. Not to brag, but I really feel people like me the way I am and find it interesting

Now how would I go about finding that out if I tried to pretend to be "normal"?

Because my first priority in life is to be as effective as possible. I don't care about emotions or "being myself" or that stuff, I just want performance. If I have to pretend in order to get people to like me, I'll do it. I see all the things about "being yourself" as an illusion (for some people, they might be the truth - I won't try to make everyone think like me) and I just consider them to be invalid.

About people liking me the way I am, I'm only changing the parts that are socially bad, and I might still display them in certain circumstances, if I think they would lead to the better result.

Some people on the spectrum don't want to be rejected, especially if there are possible ways we could do so that we don't have to be rejected. I actually fear social failure. And, this is a weird thing to say, but putting on an NT front sometimes comes too naturally to me when I'm out and about, if that makes sense. I can't always stop myself from being like an NT when in social situations. Think of it like wearing clothes, the clothes being the NT act, and your skin being your normal Aspie self. I can't go out without wearing clothes, although it isn't physically impossible to go out without clothes on, but each morning I just automatically go to the wardrobe to put clothes on. So, personally speaking here, it's the same thing as me having to put on an NT front when out in social situations and covering up my Aspie self, which is not exactly actually opposite to my NT front, really, but I still need to make an effort in order to not be humiliated. Anyway, to be quite frank, I think everybody puts on a front when going out to a certain extent anyway. And to some Aspies it seems more important to do this aswell than to other Aspies.

I admire this. My problem with this is job-related communication and dinners with parents-in-law etc.

Also I get into trouble if I eg. dont show a person respect, who craves respect. Sometimes I fake some respect...

If I receive a job-related email with a lot of smileys and "how was your weekend" besides facts about the job, I have to respond somehow. I find it difficult.

Im just too blatant and if I dont want to get famous, I have to slow down.

Are contexts like these working for you without receiving too much attention?

Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

I don't worry too much about being ultra normal and put my energy into not being offensive. It's exhausting, not saying what you're thinking.

I realised a long time ago that 'pretending to be normal' (sorry Donna Williams!) was a completely pointless thing to do. For me, the more I act 'normal' the weirder I seem to come across. I am very open about my autism and as a result people are much kinder to me. When I go into a shop and I am struggling to speak, I get out my card with autism written on it and they speak a bit slower so I can understand. When I used to pretend, I got beaten up a lot. When I didn't pretend I got beaten up a lot. At least with the second option I don't end up with exhaustion as well as being beat up!

my socialising is also 'just applying what i learned to my aspie state', but this is a concious skill, taking up energy.

for me at least, i do not increase my EQ, well, having a beer or two might, but i compensate, train and act, all of which makes me exhausted after a while

If you have to change for the people you hang around then I don't think they know enough about people to be understanding of you. This is why I have stopped hanging around certain sides of my family because I feel they have no idea of who I am or why I do what I do and can only find conclusions based on what they think it is and not what it really is but still some people break the laws of understanding people and still degrade them to a lower point where they shouldn't be.

For me, I think "pretending to be normal" came as a survival mechanism more than anything else. Growing up and going through all the key phases in development in a pre-Aspergers world forced me to adjust. In my own mind, I was just trying to fit in ... there wasn't a conscious effort to put on an act or to fool people, at least when I was young. The older I got, the more complex it became. I failed at college in somewhat spectacular fashion and that's when I really started to see that something was "off" about me and became more aware of my inate differences. My failure in college, I think, actually made it possible to succeed in the real world as I consciously picked a profession that would leave me lots alone/unsupervised time where the basic job function was based in logic. It really suited my strengths. Even so, I remember telling my parents in my mid-20s that I felt like I was an actor when I was at work. It was like someone else was doing my job. I stepped into a role and knew what I had to do and became very adept at it. I learned to mimic the behavior of others and had just enough interaction with my co-workers so as not to draw too much attention to my lack of social skills. It was until about a year ago that I finally put it all together and figured out that I have Aspergers. I'm actually pondering getting an official diagnosis as a tool for advocating to my employer that an Aspie can not only do my job but do it well. I'm pretty much protected from any retribution after 20 years and am actually planning on retiring in June, 2012. I would love to drop an AS diagnosis in their laps on my way out the door and watch the reaction.

it's because your more out of tune with the rhytm's of the people around you then most of us are.

I hope that I've got "normal" down when I'm out and about in public. I'm adept at common courtesy, and when I'm with someone that I sense I should make conversation with, I can adequately think of things to say. But I do get tired, so much that I need a nap later.

"Being yourself" is praised among society like a novelty. But in general practice, it falls flat on its face. The real me is like a silent statue with its back turned, immersed in dreamland. People don't like that. They call it impolite, or at least most of the people I knew did. I didn't understand why they wouldn't just leave me be and stop caring about me so much. But alas.

I went to your profile on here and your Gender is listed as Male; if that's true (I know some people use the opposite gender on here for some reason), that might be a contributing factor. A lot of the people I see/hear saying they "Pretend to be normal" are females, and coming from the viewpoint of an adolescent female with an AS diagnosis, I can also relate. When I went to public school, I was almost always the only girl in the ASD program (only exceptions: one girl when I was in 6th grade and she was in 8th; one girl when I was in 8th and she was in 6th. Middle school is 6th-8th grade. Then in the one year I was in public high school, I was still in the "program" but had no interventions and I was the only girl out of four grades.) But yeah, I realized that a large majority of the boys didn't seem to mask a lot of their symptoms; I couldn't figure out if it was because they hadn't realized that they could, or they couldn't, or they saw no point, etc., or maybe it was a mixture of those options or other ones.
Not sure.
But I know it's said that a lot of girls with AS start mimicking the behaviors of "normal girls" in the elementary school years, and I can say that's true for me. And it is exhausting.

I'm going to tell you why. Because what you call normal does not exist.
You cannot be something that does not exist
Therefore, you can not be normal.

Look around you, those people that you call normal. Each of them have they own way of dealing with things, they own obsetion. Each of them is unique. It's not you and them, it's you, and de person you are talking to.

As long as you will try to be normal you will concidered as a freak because all your effort will be focused on behaving in a certain way which is not a way, it's just nothing, an empty concept. What you call normal it just following your heart and not giving a f**k about the rest.

It is very important that you understand this.

However, if you are insecure people will feel it and they will hate you for that. Actually they won't even hate you, they will ignore you, like you don't exist.

So stop being normal, show people the real you and stop struggeling patheticly for being normal.