Autistic people may copy other people’s behaviors. This is also known as mimicking, mirroring or parroting.
This kind of behavior is not to humiliate or attempt to replace the people in their life, but to fit in.
Autistic parroting is a form of autistic masking.
I’ll explain in a Q&A format. 👇
Do autistic people mirror you on purpose?
It depends on the person. Autism is different for everyone.
For me, mimicking other people is unintentional. I don’t even realize I’m copying someone else’s behavior until they point it out or I stop to think, “Wait — why am I doing this?!”
As an autistic person, I go about my life picking up the personality traits of other people…and their characteristics. This isn’t unique; non-autistic people do it, too!
However, non-autistic people aren’t as obvious. They do it for the sake of “getting along” with other people or adhering to the status quo.
Autistic people may pick up other people’s behaviors because we tend to empathize through connection and similarity.
This parroting behavior has been associated with autism masking, a form of camouflaging to blend into society as if you’re not autistic. In other words, mimicking may be a symptom of autistic masking. 👀
What does it mean when autistic people copy you?
It can mean a lot of things!
If you ask an autistic person outright, they may feel
- embarrassed
- self-conscious
- wrong
because they’re not directly aware of why they do it and/or aware at all.
Imagine going about your life and one day being asked why you walk the way you do. That would stop you in your tracks, right? Because you’ve walked that way your whole life.
Or being asked why your lips move the way they do when you speak. That’s what answering these questions feel like as an autistic person. 😅
Every ounce of our behavior and how we carry ourselves is pathologized when it’s simply the way we live our lives and the way our brains work. 🤷♀️
But I’ll answer some more specific common questions people ask about autistic people and hope I can give you a satisfying answer:
Do autistic people copy people they like?
This question comes up often and is nuanced because it depends on the person.
I myself feel pressured to be similar to a partner or to at least mask my autism as much as I can, to avoid being perceived as autistic.
So I don’t copy people I like because I’m autistic; I may copy them because I don’t want to be ostracized for being autistic.
Why do autistic people have unstable personalities?
Uh, we don’t?
Mirroring is closer to fawning, which is akin to people-pleasing but as a part of fight/flight/freeze/fawn.
When you couple this with masking, you wind up with an autistic person who might not fully know who they are at their core because the mask is that heavy.
The problem is not that we have an “unstable personality”, but the extent to which we try to fit in and seem “normal”. This has little to do with personalities.
Again, masking isn’t necessarily a conscious act. Neither is mimicking people’s behavior.
Autistic people are not purposely trying to fool you. We are not putting up a false persona; the mask IS our persona.
And because our mask is our persona, and it’s a MASK, it can be anything at anytime.
Like a chameleon.
Downsides to mimicking
Autistic people tend to pick up on what non-autistic people aren’t aware of…
And non-autistic people tend to perceive people outside themselves as mirrors…
Humans in general may project, depending on their insecurities or literal personalities.
A major downside to being autistic and parroting the people around me is that, when I do it, I’ll pick up on their
- emotions
and/or
- characteristics they don’t like to see.
So there may be interpersonal issues directly related to their own personality traits or mannerisms that I’ve unintentionally picked up as a part of seeking connection.
This leads to them saying they don’t like X about me, me realizing X is unlike me and experiencing cognitive dissonance until I realize X is something I picked up from them, then me not knowing how to communicate this to them. 🤷♀️
Other downsides include
- People liking what I pick up from them, then only liking me because of it, but me not liking it.
- Soaking up other people’s feelings, especially negative ones, or their unsavory behaviors (like talking behind people’s backs).
- Struggling even more to figure out where the mask ends and where I begin.
I’m not copying 100% of them/who they are…it’s like a lite version of their characteristics. But it’s still frustrating because it’s a part of masking and causes cognitive dissonance/leaves me feeling confused as to why I did things sometimes. 🤷♀️
If you know an autistic who’s copying you
Choose kindness.
Please have empathy instead of criticizing us for how our brain works.
Acknowledge that the parts about the autistic person in your life that you dislike may actually be
- literal characteristics of them because of their autism
- traits you actually dislike about yourself
Non-autistic culture tends to be annoyed when autistic people copy them, but…it also supports a faux originality standard where it’s okay to be unique and stand out — as long as you don’t stand out TOO much or you’re not TOO different.
Non-autistic people are better at following neurotypical social rules. Autistic people, not so much; the social rules don’t work with our brain.
This also emphasizes the importance of masking, trying to fit in, and seeming more like non-autistic people…because allistic people KNOW autistic people are different, and they seldom let us forget it.
More answers to questions about autistic people:
- Why autistics eat the same foods a lot
- Why autistics love beige food
- Why autistics speak with an accent
Love this post?
Support me by subscribing to my blog and/or buying me a cuppa:
Leave a comment