When you act NT...

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What do you feel, think, experience when you act like an NT?

My landlady just came to check the apartment and renew the annual contract. Unlike a few years ago when I first started renting from her, I've learned what ""appropriate"" behavior is, and in order not to get into trouble with her again, I follow the NT rules to a T with her.

So I am polite, smile, make eye contact, clean the apt. before she arrives, do not aspire to be treated as an equal by her but expect the relationship to be a bit like a boss and an employee, and assert my rights in a passive aggressive way so as to avoid any possibility of confrontation (eg: Since she's such a b***h, when she asked me for info on something important to her about the neighbours I said I had no idea, when actually I know the answer). I didn't utter one word spontaneously or try to make the atmosphere warmer, to avoid saying anything that might be taken against me at a later stage.

I'm proud of myself because it took me over 40 years to discover there is an NT way of behaving and that it's the only one I can survive by, and how to play it. But omg are NT relationships ugly!! !

Sometimes I put on nice clothes and stand up really straight and walk around like my point of walking isn't to get someplace, but rather just to show myself off in the process. I only do this for interviews and whatnot. When I get back, I have to change my clothes fast and make myself back into myself, so to speak, before I freak out and hyperventilate. It's like being in a costume that some people want you to stay in 24 hours per day.

I feel fake, when I do it.

Lol

I look more NT than aspie and I sometimes act more like it too. I used to it but still I'm aspie.

I feel uncomfortable...it makes me tired...the effort of trying makes me act more wonky.

There's a wonderful scene in Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" where Ripley has to ingratiate himself over dinner with a wealthy man and his wife, and does so splendidly, actively enjoying the challenge of trying to fit in with people he would normally despise. Then after a couple of hours, his high suddenly collapses, and he feels he's going to suffocate if he has to stay another minute. I really identify with this scene, because it describes my own experience, enjoying putting on an act the way a swordsman enjoys a good fight, and the sudden collapse of my staying power which leaves me shaky and confused, and in need of solitude.

I'm just me. I watch their reactions, and see how to act from that. It works, mostly...

I don't really pass, but I've passed more in the past.

What I did at the time, I wasn't really intending to pass for NT, because I didn't know what autistic and NT meant. I thought though that there were certain things I had to do.

And for instance, one thing I would do, was if someone said something, it went like this:

1. Pick out something about the phrases or tone that you remember from some other time.

2. Pick either 3a, 3b, or 3c.

3a. That will trigger sets of words you've seen that either contain that phrase, or are in response to things with that phrase in them.

3b. That will trigger sets of sounds and tones you've heard in responses to some of the sounds and tones you've just heard.

3c. That will trigger things you've read that contain similar words or phrases.

4. Use, singly or in combination, 3a, 3b, or 3c to put together a response that sounds vaguely like something a person might say at that time.

None of this required either understanding the words or communicating anything that was in my head, and I got extremely good at it, to the point where I could go on entire monologues write entire essays without understanding the topic or sometimes even the most important words in the whole thing.

I try not to do that anymore.

However, I still feel like to use language at all is to put on a bit of an act, of being one of those people (whether autistic or not) whose mind processes language well. I have become very good at it, in part due to an obsessive desire for accuracy, but I am still most comfortable in a non-word-based situation, even (perhaps especially) in situations when I seem the most proficient at using words.

I also force myself to do some minor gestures and words and stuff in response to other people, when possible. It feels like speaking another language, but they don't understand mine, so when I can, I do that. I can't always do that, and when I can't get they all get very confused out there.

But at the height of my passing, I felt exhausted. My brain hurt. My comprehension of the world, and myself, was completely shot, and it was very hard to understand anything going on either inside or around me. My entire being was focused on solving what seemed to me to be meaningless puzzles that were inexplicably required of me, making me fearful of stopping, and I was using primarily patterns to find my way through something that most people find their way through primarily by comprehension and interaction (there was some comprehension in there but it was far less than what it looked like). And I could tell there was a gap between what I was doing and what others were doing. But I didn't know where that gap was. I could see it, but I could not understand what was in it, what the difference was.

I also had all these things that my body insisted on doing -- stimming and ticcing, basically -- that I was ashamed of, thought were some kind of addiction or something, and tried to hide where possible, or else pass off as a joke. I even got other people to yell nonsense words along with me, let them believe it was all for fun, just so nobody would see how "stupid" and "weak" and "crazy" I really was.

At the same time, I had a very 'me' style of communicating that really did reflect my thoughts and experiences, and that was to assemble objects, whether tangible physical objects, songs, books, movements, etc., all of which had some kind of meaning to my actual everyday experience, and to use them in various ways to attempt to let other people know what I was experiencing. Only one or two people figured out what I was up to, and that meant the world to me.

I had been pressured into accepting form over function, and I eventually began to more strongly assert function over form, and so did my body itself, and so the private things came out of hiding and language was forced to do my will rather than my will being forced to be spent up all on repeating patterns of language. And so the only things I do now that are sort of "passing," is using English at all (because it is the language of people around me), and using a few body postures or mannerisms that allow people to understand a few things (because that is what they understand). I can't always do it, but that's the extent of it now, rather than the more extensive stuff I used to do.

its tressfull..but i can handle it

It's like wearing a disguise and spying on the enemy when they are unaware. Actually, looking at it that way, I think it's kind of fun, as long as I don't have to do it 24-7.

-J.

The second I get home from work I put my soft pyjamas on, and on the rare occasion I have to work from home I just stay in my pyjamas. Bliss!

There are sometyms i can act NT but 2 b honest it doesn't fit into my personality so i stick 2 my routes n dat is being an aspie.

I put on a good NT front, too-- its like a second self and I live a dualistic life all at the same time. Don't really do the change clothes thing after work. I've finally decided that I won't buy/wear anything that makes me feel uncomfortable regardless if it is the "NT uniform" (for me, this would be colorful/varied clothing). I wear black and black alone, and so I buy business clothing that is black, fits the dress code, and everyone has learned to accept me as I am. I joke about it, and it seems to put people at ease (for some reason, if you acknowledge you are "weird", then NT's don't feel they have the ammunition to talk about you behind your back saying you are weird).

I'm still learning to read other people by their individual personalities, though. Just yesterday I was working on a project at my desk which required my full attention, though I was casually listening to the other conversations around me, mindlessly contributing yes's and oh, really's to be "part of the team". I made the mistake of asking someone to further explain a project they were working on. So, I hear her get up from her desk, beginning to talk about it in FULL DEPTH, though I just really just expected a quick sum-up in a few words from her desk. So she comes to my desk, stands right next to me (which always makes me uncomfortable due to proximity), and goes on and on for several minutes all about what she is doing, and it took everything within my being to sound interested and not say: "Ok-- I didn't realize it was all that. Kinda need to focus here. Tell me later. I don't really care, I was just being nice. Go away, now, please-- thank you!" I should have realized she was very enthusiastic about her project and asked her about it at a time that wouldn't irriate me. I've learned to do that, for the most part.

Constant vigilance!
It feels like everything that I say has to be weighed and judged beforehand (have I heard someone say this before in such a situation? is it guaranteed safe and inoffensive? is it even worth saying - will I have to explain or repeat myself or do people want to hear it at all?). It is exhausting and feels pretty shallow and superficial because the things I want to say, I'm not sure are okay, so I never say anything I really want to.
And it's exhausting. At the end of it, you wonder why people would go through that every day, a thousand times a day. Why?

Sometimes it's ugly. Subtext - why, WHY, do people add meanings to things I say? I didn't say I meant that... I didn't "hint" at it, my "tone" didn't mean it... so WHY do people want so hard to believe I meant something inappropriate or bad? Can't they just take what is said at face value?