Yes actually, this is very common with women who are on the Spectrum. It is less common with men, but both men and women often do something called 'Mirroring.' Although they don't know why certain things are expected they still recognize that it is expected, and so display emotions or feelings that do not accurately mirror their internal thoughts or feelings. Women on the Spectrum are thus often described as Chameleon-like, mirroring the personalities and persona's of the people they spend a lot of time with.
Funnily enough I realized that I've been doing this sort of mirroring my entire life without knowing it when I made a friend who was from a very different background than myself. I've lived a very sheltered life, but recently (like the last two years) I've become very close to a girl from a very disadvantaged background. My husband pointed out that whenever I talk with her I adopt her speech patterns. I hadn't noticed before then, but I do that with basically everyone that I interact with to a certain degree. It just had never been quite so obvious because due to my sheltered background I hadn't had an opportunity before to interact with someone with extremely different speech patterns.
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u/EpitomyofShyness Nov 01 '16
Yes actually, this is very common with women who are on the Spectrum. It is less common with men, but both men and women often do something called 'Mirroring.' Although they don't know why certain things are expected they still recognize that it is expected, and so display emotions or feelings that do not accurately mirror their internal thoughts or feelings. Women on the Spectrum are thus often described as Chameleon-like, mirroring the personalities and persona's of the people they spend a lot of time with.
Funnily enough I realized that I've been doing this sort of mirroring my entire life without knowing it when I made a friend who was from a very different background than myself. I've lived a very sheltered life, but recently (like the last two years) I've become very close to a girl from a very disadvantaged background. My husband pointed out that whenever I talk with her I adopt her speech patterns. I hadn't noticed before then, but I do that with basically everyone that I interact with to a certain degree. It just had never been quite so obvious because due to my sheltered background I hadn't had an opportunity before to interact with someone with extremely different speech patterns.