Have you ever tried to stop acting like NTs?

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I haven't acted NT in years. I don't stim, but I also don't suppress my special interests.

Mimicking NT behavior wears me out. This is probably a great source of my anxiety as well; however, if I didn't put up some sort of "front" I wouldn't be able to function anywhere near as well as I do currently ( I mean function in a strict external sense of course, as internally I'm usually a complete train wreck). Really though, sometimes I can just stare off into space thinking about something for hours even. If I didn't actively work to suppress this sort of thing I could never hold a job, and furthermore I don't think anyone I work with or for would understand if I explained how much noise and light effect me (gahhhh111!! MELTDOWN).

To answer the question... yes I have, I struggle to even keep the act going enough to get me through the days.

I only act like an NT when trying to study them in their natural environment without disturbing the myriad behaviors my odd presence could disrupt.

After working very very hard at being NT all of my life, when I was laid off from my programming job and came home I just did nothing for weeks and decompressed. Then I started my own small (really small) business from home that allows me to (barely) just scrape by BUT allows me to NOT have to go out into the world and work for anyone else.

I went through a LOT of changes - more so than any other time in my life. I remember clearly telling my husband that I felt I was coming back to myself and really being myself for the first time in my whole life. He said that was good but I warned him that he may not have any idea what I'm talking about and he may very well not even like me one bit once I become the true me.

Well we've had LOTS of fights and arguments and near separations, but I'm more me now than I ever have been. My reactions are more my own now, so much less of the phoniness. And I've heard many times in the last few years "What's wrong with you? You never used to be like this"

I am much more comfortable now, much more relaxed, sleep great, and don't have the constant health problems I used to have, so this proves to me that it's very important to be true to yourself. That said though, if I had to go back out into the world and ask for a job and be back in that situation, I feel I would absolutely have to become the Fake NT me again and try to keep up the Force Field. Otherwise I couldn't interact or be accepted by others well enough to be employed.

I don't think I have ever been able to fake being NT..I was concerned to some degree with "assimilating" a bit when I was younger, and I think that was productive to a degree...because I was not dressing myself very well and I got teased alot. I made an effort in my teens to lose some weight as I was getting teased for it on many different levels..so I am glad I was conscientious enough to be able to work on that, but it would have been impossible if my mom hadn't been a vegetarian..otherwise I would never have known about it..Anywhoo...
I really don'tmake an effort to act like an NT and in some ways it is bad because I allow myself to be "not nice" to some people and not make some kind of effort to get along with people who rub me the wrong way....and this can cause me to treat some people badly...and that just makes things worse for me in the long run, since I dislike not being able to interact with people..like the people who work for me and whatnot. I don't want to "hang out" with them, I just want them to understand where I am coming from and not intimidate them so much....Also I can easily alienate the people who play at my venue because I am so bad with conventionaly social niceties...and inadvertantly make people uncomfortable.

So I guess my point is that I wish I could "pretend better"...but my nerves are too raw to insulate my reactions to people....if that makes sense...


Other than that big problem with social interactions, I would prefer to be myself than have to pretrnd to be someone else....but just being myself and attempting to be cordial and social with others has frequently backfired...On more than one occasion I have heard the feedback that was not intended for my ears from people who have met me,,,,and it was not pretty.

i never started

I tried a few times in the early days to wish and dream myself into an NT-like character, trying to be what I was pretending to be in order to communicate with the majority of people, but that task proved to be difficult and exhausting; and it still left me with the feeling of being cut off from the very people I was trying to be like. These days I'm basically just me.

"and so castles made of sand fall into the sea, eventually"

wise words by Jimi Hendrix

For me, the question would be when did I ever started? When I was younger before people knew I had AS, I was just being myself. During my school years, I don't remember ever trying to fit in because however I acted, people knew I was different from them. That's not to say I never acted to get further ahead, but I wouldn't consider that so much NT behavior, but more like what people want to hear. It's like when you gonna do a set of questions as part of a job interview, I'm pretty sure many, if not most NTs act and give answers that they really wouldn't give just to get ahead.

I don't think I ever started.

I'm trying to do so right now...but some masks seem to have become so much a part of me that they're hard to remove.

I play a balancing act between the two. People are fascinating and emulating behaviour you don't understand can end up leading to new interests and a change of opinion. You can be either aware or not about behaving more NT depending on the situation. I've certainly never completely faked being NT but I can get away with just being seen as slightly quirky.

The more NT I behaved the more I seem to be able to fit in and be accepted. It helps in places like work and some social occasions. It is tiring. Which leads to a problem. If I don't get some recuperation time I am more prone to melt downs. My father is a controlling Aspie and my mother has bipolar. They are both capable of pushing me over the edge when I need recovery time.

When I behave more natural I do not risk meltdowns and I have reserves to cope with unexpected stressful situations. Family life can be better but in every other respect my life seems to stall.

I have stopped acting like a NT, because it was tiresome doing it.
Now I'm a gaping, non-talking and distant kid who everybody feels sorry for.

I don't like acting like any NT it's to much work. I also don't like that at work I same old guy who says really rude things to me.

One of the things he said to me is it's funny to get drunk you should try it some time. I told him I don't want to to be drunk and that it is not fun. Only for him to say how do you know if you have never tried ever one has fun when they drink and get drunk.

Well maybe for him it's true. Needless to say he trys to make me like ever one else. Well I'm not ever one else and I don't want to be ever one else. I don't like to do 80% of the thing's NT's do.

When I was a kid I did my own thing, was in my own world, and was rarely lonely or feeling left out even though I spent most of my time alone. Somewhere along the way, probably around teenage years I started trying to act like "everybody else" and curtailed my weirdness. Since then I've found I get more anxious, am less appreciative of myself, value myself less and feel like a weirdo. If I could accept the kid that I used to be and take off the costume maybe I'd feel better about myself. I don't know.