Autistic communication is prevalently authentic in conveying information (truth, clarity, intention to be understood), while neurotypical communication is prevalently authentic to their intention (influence, managing perceptions, emotional nuance).
When conversing, we focus on conveying our thoughts and ideas as default. However, NTs' default when conversing is influencing their environment.
If an autistic person treats an environment like a game, they will be merely practicing NTs' first nature, which is what we call social masking. NTs are actually masking too, it's just that it's their default. You can figure out a person is certainly masking when they contradict themselves - either their lies are in conflict or they were only honest in one of the two situations.
NTs will also use transparent communication, but often they will do it only when their social guard is down.
Because a lot of NTs have so little practice with being transparent, it can be very difficult for them to be straightforward - perhaps as much as an autistic person trying to play the social game. If your parents are bad at this, then they will struggle to understand you. A lot of people have difficulty developing themselves because they can't be straightforward even in their own minds.
Of course, neither is right - being too transparent makes you vulnerable, being too performative makes you shallow and hard to trust. Balance is key to being healthy, as usual.
Instead of mirroring, it might be more efficient to learn social cues if you experiment with expressing yourself to people who are close to you in very indirect and in different ways to see what works and what doesn't, specially if a little later on you can ask them what what was their impression of what you said and did.
image https://pixabay.com/pt/illustrations/quebra-cabe%C3%A7a-c%C3%A9rebro-s%C3%ADndrome-5617012/
