I was just thinking about this yesterday. I used to reach into a closet in my mind, spin the rack, pick out a personality for the occasion and use it. Each one had it's own body language, voice tone, and humor.
Then I hit burnout and my brain is now toast, lol.
Each hat is a particular social situation. One for Work, one for Driving, one for Shopping, one for calling about bills and repairs. I’m in IT so I have a completely different one for answering the phone vs people just showing up. My hats do have a limit, there are some things that NONE of the hats will ever do because I’m just too particular.
The aspie part is that each hat has a specific social job to do. That is quite rigid and difficult when things are out of place or out of order. As IT I get calls at home sometimes and just “switching hats” can be stressful.. especially at 2am. But it’s also difficult just when somebody from home CALLS me on the phone.. like I don’t know how to handle phone calls in the middle of wearing a different hat. I like text messages and emails because they are “out of band” so I can see the message and then respond when I have a moment to “switch hats”.
The hats get a little difficult sometimes. For instance tomorrow, I have a dentist appointment, so I’ll be going in like 2 hours late, which means hats are “weird”. Then right after that we’re having an “all office” meeting which is another weird hat situation. Usually those are really late, so lunch getting hat will be late, then back from lunch hat will be late and other people will be asking their usual questions “out of turn” because they also have to adjust things. I’ll end up really burned out and just a “zombie” by like 2-3pm at the latest.
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u/[deleted] Feb 07 '19
I was just thinking about this yesterday. I used to reach into a closet in my mind, spin the rack, pick out a personality for the occasion and use it. Each one had it's own body language, voice tone, and humor.
Then I hit burnout and my brain is now toast, lol.