Chamaeleon

[Dexter]

Does anybody here ever feel like a social Chamaeleon? Like as if you understand other people, behavior, and small talk enough to engage/communicate with other people and get by day to day, but also struggle to form real connections and engage with people in a meaningful way.

 

[ThatSkyWing]

I have actually been called a chamaeleon by many of my teachers due to my tendency to silently blend into the wall and do my best to remain unnoticed by the teacher and other students.
Yes, I do feel like that, I try to understand all of that stuff but usually I don't feel a real connection with people I speak to offline, it all just seems so boring and fake, like I can't be myself around them.

 

[Judge]

Does anybody here ever feel like a social Chamaeleon? Like as if you understand other people, behavior, and small talk enough to engage/communicate with other people and get by day to day, but also struggle to form real connections and engage with people in a meaningful way.

Sure. Each and every time I try to interact with someone and discover the only way I can have a real conversation with them is to discuss what they want to discuss and most often on their terms. Never mine. So I learn to sound interested even when I really don't give a sh*t. Yet in some cases the same people dictate to me that I'm not allowed to discuss certain subjects because they're inherently boring, and that I'm too intense and passionate about them. Unbelievably stressful at times.

Yeah, I "get by". Not to attain any sense of social fulfillment, but simply to avoid ridicule and abandonment. And yet I find myself best coping by living in near isolation. It's a dynamic I personally find very, very difficult to explain to NTs. Yet it's the story of my life...

 

[GabrielFlood]

Does anybody here ever feel like a social Chamaeleon? Like as if you understand other people, behavior, and small talk enough to engage/communicate with other people and get by day to day, but also struggle to form real connections and engage with people in a meaningful way.

This reminds me of a set of YouTube videos I found and watched last year, just after I discovered the probability of my unacknowledged Asperger's, that referred to a theory of prominent Aspie Subtypes. Most notably, the "Actor-type aspie."

The one who can observe, emulate, and duplicate successful social behaviors almost preternaturally, adapting even faster and with more precision than most NTs can to new techniques. The one who can (and does, and will correct others offhandedly when they don't) perfectly quote movie lines, accent and inflection and all. The one who might appear to be just casually watching, but inside is analytically studying the interactions of others, and who at some point in life development was surprised to discover that others don't do that and they are in fact just casually watching. The one who is more often called a "fake" aspie or self-diagnosed fraud even by other autistics and Asperger's sufferers, ironically because of their ability to cope and offset aspie social debuffs through chameleonic adaptation. The illusion that "protects" from some help and harm alike.

Of course, he or she is also the one who inside the dark and swirling silence of the mind behind all the barriers and facades of social function suffers the exact same patterns and winding raging rivers of every other Asperger's person. The same crippling daily doubt. The same shattering multiplier to confidence and balance and sanity penalties upon social failure. But merely having the ability to tell that chameleonic lie and dodge some of the disaster also becomes an addiction and an involuntary habit, one the adult aspie no longer knows how to unwind from their behaviors to determine where the facades end and the actual person inside begins. This type of aspie has a very different sort of journey to go on than others when the revelation drops and the terrible endless "An Entire Life Obsessively Re-Examined" reel has to begin. The same in basic form when zoomed way out of course... but very, very different in the individuality of the rocks and trees along the path.

So yeah... I know what you mean, neighbor.

 

[Judge]

I sometimes ponder what I might have done with all this knowledge had I learned of it so much earlier. It might have helped me get over stage fright and public speaking. After all, in real-life I've discovered I was "acting" much of the time. Maybe that's where I should have looked for a career, and gotten paid for it.

Daryl Hannah rocks.

 

[Harrison]

Because of my job I have to constantly change throughout the day to match the people I'm with. My previous work was similar in that I wasconfronted ny new people daily.

Guess I got used to changing quickly.

 

[Progster]

I work as a private tutor and have had to learn a role, that of teacher, and adapt to the individual style of each student. I'm actually better with the more extrovert students who are more likely to initiate and keep the conversation going. But this is work, I use teaching materials which follow a set script. Social situations are more tricky because they are more spontaneous and unpredictable. If I meet anybody new it's always very difficult at first. I need to watch them a bit to suss out their style before I can interact with them, otherwise it's just so... awkward!!

 

[GabrielFlood]

I sometimes ponder what I might have done with all this knowledge had I learned of it so much earlier. It might have helped me get over stage fright and public speaking. After all, in real-life I've discovered I was "acting" much of the time. Maybe that's where I should have looked for a career, and gotten paid for it.

Daryl Hannah rocks.

Honestly, the natural analytical perspective and the distance it gives us from the subject (and object) matter, the very same thing that makes even our perfect skillful chameleon shifts a glossy-cardboard-at-best facsimile of real social connection in the moment, would probably make a startling number of us phenomenal actors. You spoke in partial joke-tone about it, but seriously? I strongly suggest that you float past some aspect of your community's local theatre or performing arts outlet sometime, and see if you don't feel a spark of serendipitous ignition. Finding the ways our natural differences can socially and culturally produce is arguably the single most keystone element in the successful adult aspie's reintegration journey.

Don't aim to audition or anything else too lofty yet; that's just a scary-high starting bar that casts too long and deep a shadow. Just visit. Ask a question. Attend a show, maybe. Spectate first, analyze, assess. You know how we do.

But consider the notion, neighbor.

 

[Nitro]

I am the extroverted autie and can agree that it is an act,or a role you must assume to survive in the jungle.
In my younger years,I was very introverted and did not communicate well. My interests surrounded me with like minded individuals who generally asked me the questions and got their answers. I think greater exposure to what made me introverted was responsible for me becoming extroverted.

 

[GabrielFlood]

Because of my job I have to constantly change throughout the day to match the people I'm with. My previous work was similar in that I wasconfronted ny new people daily.

Guess I got used to changing quickly.

Genuine curiosity, neighbor:

How do you manage the high daily cost of having to shift like that constantly and because of outside (uncontrolled) stimulus that way? I was a professional salesman for awhile for a decade before I discovered my Asperger's, both in and out of retail, and... I just always found that no matter how I twisted and adjusted and dodged and reacted to developing a balance to try and make that work, it always, always ended up being a net loss of sanity over time, trying to hold those jobs. I never kept any one for a full year, in fact; at best I could balance things to slow the decay and daily loss to hold out for months and months, but it was always inevitable exhaustion in the end.

Are we just fundamentally different subtypes of aspie, do you think?

 

[Harrison]

Genuine curiosity, neighbor:

How do you manage the high daily cost of having to shift like that constantly and because of outside (uncontrolled) stimulus that way? I was a professional salesman for awhile for a decade before I discovered my Asperger's, both in and out of retail, and... I just always found that no matter how I twisted and adjusted and dodged and reacted to developing a balance to try and make that work, it always, always ended up being a net loss of sanity over time, trying to hold those jobs. I never kept any one for a full year, in fact; at best I could balance things to slow the decay and daily loss to hold out for months and months, but it was always inevitable exhaustion in the end.

Are we just fundamentally different subtypes of aspie, do you think?

May well be.

I was also diagnosed late, at 50, so I'd had many years of feeling like an alien on a planet full of weird folk. Therefore I learnt to adapt quickly in order to blend in I guess, although I've always been regarded as 'eccentric'. Part of my life was in the public eye, and you learn to 'play the game' very quickly.

Yes, it can 'add up', and at times in my life I have felt close to giving in. The other factor that perhaps works in my favour is my genetics, I am mixed breed (Tibetan/Scottish) and my life has been in pursuit of taoist values. As a result I look for solutions that do not disturb my psyche too much and balance any that do through meditation and tai chi. Doesn't work all the time, but it has been of benefit for most of my life.

 

[Judge]

Honestly, the natural analytical perspective and the distance it gives us from the subject (and object) matter, the very same thing that makes even our perfect skillful chameleon shifts a glossy-cardboard-at-best facsimile of real social connection in the moment, would probably make a startling number of us phenomenal actors. You spoke in partial joke-tone about it, but seriously? I strongly suggest that you float past some aspect of your community's local theatre or performing arts outlet sometime, and see if you don't feel a spark of serendipitous ignition. Finding the ways our natural differences can socially and culturally produce is arguably the single most keystone element in the successful adult aspie's reintegration journey.

Don't aim to audition or anything else too lofty yet; that's just a scary-high starting bar that casts too long and deep a shadow. Just visit. Ask a question. Attend a show, maybe. Spectate first, analyze, assess. You know how we do.

But consider the notion, neighbor.

Interesting idea. However at my age I don't see yet another career on my horizon.

I'm just trying to survive (literally) to a questionable retirement only a few years away.

 

[Nitro]

I don't look to ever seek employment as well. My jump to disability has forced retirement on me at 50,but within a year of being broken,I started a small internet business to finance a similar hobby that profits quite well. I have plans to do even more in the near future after my home is remodeled. This Sunday woodbutcher is doing an entire great room that is finished in 1x12 inch planking with new wooden floors. I figure it will take 3 more years before the entire house is done,I can finish the floor my garage and open a hobby repair business to finance my motorsports interests. Retired life was nothing I ever dreamed of and always though I would just drop while still employed. My odometer is about to hit fifty five miles now,and I hope to hit 75 with some quality in life.
Before I broke my brain,I felt like I was invincible...after I got hurt and died a couple times,I proved it

 

[GabrielFlood]

Interesting idea. However at my age I don't see yet another career on my horizon.

I'm just trying to survive (literally) to a questionable retirement only a few years away.

Oh, no, never a career. Community theatre is nobody's career, not one person involved in it, for the most part. It's a hobby. Part-time. Source: My mother, an actress and singer who has done community theatre for my entire life around raising two children and having/working a full-time job, even now. She's currently directing a production of Big Fish that's set to open in mid-March, as a matter of fact.

It could be an interesting new social endeavor, is all. Certainly not for everybody, but perhaps for actor-types like yourself and me, it could definitely be. I know I've never felt so empowered as I do when I find or luck or finesse my way into a situation where the laser-like aspie nature, normally so potentially destructive and on-different-rails erratic, starts to instead become a font of excellence.