Mirror Personality

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

But it gets awfully tiresome when everywhere you go feels like a foreign land.

green_tea wrote:"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

But it gets awfully tiresome when everywhere you go feels like a foreign land.

Very nice.

I don't necessarily mirror likes and dislikes, but I mirror facial expressions, tone and body language. When I'm around someone with a very strong personality, I usually need to take breaks from them, like escaping to the bathroom so I can breathe. It's very exhaustive when one uncontrollably has to mirror others and put on an "act". Uncontrollable.

I'm not sure why I do it exactly. Mostly because I feel I lack my own personality.

green_tea wrote:"When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

That's very succinct green_tea!

Why it is that some people adapt to their environment (do as the Romans), and others expect their environment to adapt to them? Egotism? Ignorance?

It's perfectly normal to act different to different groups of people. Straight up: a teacher should act different in the teacher's lounge than they act in front of 9 year-old students.

Now, mirroring how others act is different and not necessarily the norm (there is a huge sliding scale in play, though and whether the mirroring is in a good or bad way is mainly subjective) and seems to go well with AvPD. The reason for mirroring could be:
-no personality of your own
-afraid to assert your own personality for fear of rejection
-want of acceptance. Jay Walk said it best in the OP. People like themselves the most, so they will like a mirror image.
-messing with the person
-working on acting skills

I'm really just restating and agreeing with what many here have already said, the last 2 points withstanding.

This is a pretty standard disordered behavior, of course. Cluster Bs have it, but they're more in the no real self/manipulation camp than the fear of self-assertion/need for acceptance camp, as I understand it.