Creating a persona

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I come from a similar family but I was never able to pretend enough to pass for normal, so they all disowned me. I think that having no family is so hard (I don't have a partner or friends either) that if you're able to feign enough to avoid being disowned, I'd do it. Even if you can never feel really close to them in your heart, other people noticing that you're alone without family puts you in a vulnerable/risky/dangerous position. This has been my experience as a woman alone of my age. Now if you have your own family, say spouse and kids, it'd be a much lower priority for me.

Which "User Manual"? I want to read it too!

Thank you, Greb!

I'm fortunate in that a lot of people in my family are different. My grandfather was a classic "manic depressive" eccentric genius inventor. My grandmother was eccentric. I'm positive my mom was an aspie. My dad was kind of eccentric. My oldest brother was eccentric and probably as aspie too. My next older brother had learning disabilities. The only 100% "normal" one is my only sister. But her son has always had a score of both behavioral and psychical problems. A few of my cousins have or had issues of one kind or another. I'm the "worst of the bunch" but fortunately the bar isn't set too high

Has[/quote]
Hello Has. Just a question. Does your family engage in a lot of protocol with your relatives? Protocol that might be hard for someone with ASD to go along with? I would assume that is the reason why one of your relatives would be dismissed or disowned as a "nutter" as you described.

Regarding the notion of "creating a persona", are you suggesting a full fledged NT personality, or an occasional social interaction technique to get by for a few minutes? "Creating a persona" itself is not necessarily difficult, but sustaining it is. In a nutshell, it is about endurance. Do you have the stamina to keep up an NT personality for how ever long you need to? With self training, with practice, you can even become good at keeping up an NT persona, to the point that you can benefit from it. However, remember that your original ASD personality is still there as well and has never really gone away.

The basic advantage of creating a bright or smiley NT persona is you give yourself another personality option to choose from, instead of just being stuck with the one ASD side that you had in the beginning. Having a choice, rather than no choice at all, to me is an advantage. But it takes practice, trial and error, tenacity, and yet more practice, to build up and consolidate that choice.[/quote]

Hello Mannyboo,

It is not always overly formal, but there are certainly hierarchies that need to be observed, as well as a very close knit, group mentality. For example not wanting to go to a big family event is taken as a social statement, that requires a reaction. There is no room for individual preferences or differences if one wants to stay in the good graces of the majority of the group. I don't know all the details of my uncles case, but I suppose not wanting to maintain these formalities with family members was enough, to a large extent, for some to brand him as crazy. I know in my own experience, me expressing that I find certain events awkward or that I didn't know sections of the crowd (relationships are often based on association, whereby a good friend or old relation of my father's, for example, must hold a certain status where I am concerned, even if I had never met the person) make my immediate family immediately turn on me. In my eyes I'm expressing my preference, which I feel I have a right to do, and in their eyes I'm insulting some order of theirs that they hold very dear, which of course I can not get my head around.

While I feel a lot of the reactions to me simply being true to myself were overblown, I also acknowledge that for a period of about a year at age 15, I was extremely defiant, refused to go to school for several months and developed a me against the world attitude. I think I had reached my limit of "playing the game" and felt life under a social tyranny was not worth it. I've known since then that my cycle of accepting as much as I can followed by a period of breaking down and going crazy, on account of the cumulative sacrifices and resentments, was not sustainable. I also feel that while I strive to find a balance between what I can handle and what others demand, causing unnecessary offense or giving people the false impression that my actions are designed to hurt them are things that I want to avoid whenever possible. Acting almost became a way of showing contrition for some of my past behaviour and trying to compromise with people who I know do not mean to hurt me in spite of doing so unwittingly on so many occasions.

I feel I have built up a strong endurance for staying in character and have done so for months at a time on many occasions, usually followed by a bout of depression. As Goldfish21 mentions, it did reach the point where I questioned whether I was ASD or ever had been. I suppose I've come to the realisation that the more that is suppressed the greater the eventual breakdown will be. You say the original ASD personality never leaves, but I think with the power of denial or fear of getting back in to sanctimonious conflict with others, we can certainly obscure who we are, even internally. The acceptance of others is also an important factor, in that some of my relationships with friends and even my cousins take place completely in character. It's not a deep character, as I simply don't have the understanding or the inclination, and it is not considered completely normal by anybody (I've only had a handful of short, ill-fated relationships with women, have always struggled with employment, in crowds, in whole rafts of different social situations, with talking about personal matters that others share frequently, in showing an interest for doing new things or meeting new people, and even in understanding the level which people wish to relate at) but it is still a character. Quiet, self-effacing, willing to like what others like, talk about what they want to talk about and even go along with the crowd sometimes if it isn't too stressful. I guess it can become a meaningless life. I agree that making myself appear like a social being, with a few problems, rather than a completely non-social being has had it's advantages in being able to get along with people better, and I've learned not to be rude or to stand out, but ultimately the burden of having to reject oneself to feel safe in my surroundings is as hard if not harder than being rejected by others. I want to be able to be social enough to survive surface encounters that one has to go through, but rather than building or trying to maintain a character, give my ASD side enough expression and time that I don't lose myself in depression and self-loathing.

This is probably my longest out of character communication with the outside world since I was a child. It feels pretty good!

I have always felt like I was putting on an act. To some degree, I even put on the act in front of friends and family. It wasn't until my mother told me she thought I had Aspergers that I realized I was never fooling my own family. Luckily my family was always supportive of my "quirks", and treated me the same as everyone else. I don't bother with the act in front of family anymore, but still tailor my persona depending on other social situations I find myself in.

I know of people who invent a persona that is very often busy doing something that the family respects, and that way get lots and lots of slack cut. Of course being busy making money and/or fame is a great cop-out from family events.

But yes, I know about the family hierarchies that have to be respected, some idiot uncle that is the king and everyone has to live according to his and his wife's values and so on.

I do in certain situations to fit in but my own personality slips out at times