Social Skills Training for Adults

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I have my first meeting friday, maybe ill make a log like you its just some people seem to just want to argue on this site at times, gets annoying

Yeah - one step at a time! At least you have a reason - you know why you are so resistant and what is standing in your way.

Ha - maybe that would be a good place to start with Mars. Have a low pressure conversation and ask him why he is so reluctant to try [something specific] a different way. And leave it open ended. Don't ask for an immediate answer. Let him really think about it for awhile. I'm thinking he'll probably come to you out of the blue with the an answer or at least an idea. I use this frequently with my daughter in everyday situations - especially with the picky eating. For my daughter it is fear of the unknown and a reluctance to have to learn something new and challenging all over again. She actually had a conversation with her taste buds tonight about tasting steak for the first time. Basically I ask questions with some logical, practical reasoning tossed in and let her find her own answers. Maybe it will work for him too.

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Yes. Pressure doesn't work. In the beginning a "brushstroke" suggestion plants the seed of new things for Mars. He's doing better with waiting and listening. The pleasure he gets from a little success with this is very motivating for him. But poor auditory processing gets in his way.

Asking logical questions about his thoughts annoys him because it's just so tough to process auditory language--especially questions about his thinking instead of some info he has stored. He does better writing his thoughts without the "static" of spoken language.

Do any of you on WP have any suggestions about buying time in conversation when it's just too tough to understand but you still would like to be involved?

I had resolved not to post in this thread until I had read up to date... good resolutions and all that. And what I have to say isn't even on the main point (you could have made up a parallel example here and told yours just as well). But I see you posted this on May 24. May 22 was the Joplin, Missouri tornado, and I live 14 miles from Joplin, and spent time in my kids' tornado shelter that evening. I didn't know any of the 160 people killed, but a young friend was injured. Undoubtedly when shopping or going to church I had rubbed shoulders with some of the dead folks, even exchanged small talk. My son-in-law was over there with his chain saw doing search-and-rescue the next morning. It was an EF5 and totally demolished (I'm talking toothpicks and splinters, here) 5 square miles, in a path one mile wide, of mostly residential area, but some commercial, including damaging the major Medical Center so badly that it'll need to be built from the ground up, and all its surrounding doctors and satellite office buildings. Joplin will be a long time recovering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Joplin_tornado

The kid was right: it is one of the worst ever: from the Wikipedia article: "Along with the Tri-State Tornado and the 1896 St. Louis-East St. Louis tornado, it ranks as one of Missouri's and America's deadliest tornadoes and is likely to be the costliest; the cost to rebuild Joplin could reach $3 billion."

Yeah, I had that especially in the beginning of this thread. People soon got tired of it... It will be interesting to see if you can make a better go of it than I. I am useless at it still.

I am with Mars. That s**t annnoys me too. I also do significantly better writing than speaking. Start talking in email. Much less pressure.

So VICTORY for the day and for the week as well.

I waltzed in there today with some 3x5 cards (IPHONE actually) with some scripts and an attitude that I was going to "own" this session and this thing. I started my preparedness in the hallway. I paced and practiced asking if he and his family did anything fun this past holiday weekend. When he came out to get me I shook his hand but kept practicing with my quiet voice until we got into his office. Before he had a chance to speak (once we were in the office of course) I asked him the question.

I can tell he was surprised but he picked up on it right away and answered. He thanked me for asking and said that YES he had done some fun things. He mentioned them but I was too busy reading my next question to hear everything (actually anything) he said. He did ask me if I had ever visited a local amusement park called Oaks park so I derived that was one of the things he answered. I laughed at the thought of that and told him I had not. I then asked my second question RE the weather. Again I cannot remember what his reply because I was too busy thinking what my next step was going to be. He asked me if I enjoy the heat. I told him I did. Then I gave up and just laughed and stated that I was attempting to actually work "WITH" him this week and cooperate for a change... He gave my efforts high praise and told me that this would do for most any social type situation to allow me transition me into the "meat" of a conversation comfortably...

Next, he asked me a bunch of questions about my upcoming presentation to his peers. He asked me about the work I do with my presentation colleague (Dr.Arnold). I told him that she and him will have two very different views of working with me and that I worry a bit about one person talking to both of them at that meeting. You see... her work is not really like work. She gets to listen to me talk about ASD and to add bits and pieces to that work that I create. She does very little anything that "stretches" me and accepts me fully for who I am. She always tells me that she values me and makes sure that I am protected. He (on the other hand) asks me to do things that really stretch me and actually makes me angry. He gets the "Bad" Karla and she gets to see the "Good" Karla. I assured him that I rarely ever release the "bad" Karla as there is very little in this world that makes me angry. He asked me which one will be giving the presentation. I laughed and assured him that I would be professional as well as polished for this presentation. He seemed a bit worried for some reason. I don't get all the reasoning for his worry but I am not really worried about it. We will be fine next Tuesday night at the "big show".

The we moved onto how I felt about last session and the fact that I was a bit upset and had to process some stuff. I told him that I feel like I was at a huge crossroads in this whole thing. I was stating one goal (to improve small talk skills) but acting out in a different way then my stated intentions. In fact, I was totally sabotaging my desire to get better in my last session. I told him that I was 100% aware of that fact as I was spitting and arguing with him last session but I could not help it in the moment. It just was... I told him that I had to make the decision this week to get out of my own way and make a change or to de-commit from my stated goal because what I was doing up to that point was not productive. I quoted one of my favorite sayings that it isn't about me being right anymore and I have to start making this about getting it right instead. And then I told him that I have 48 years of rules and views RE small talk that I have made work. I made them work for me by bullying people into using these rules when interfacing with me and by seeking cultures where these rules were accepted (or more accepted). I went into a little bit then my "Anthropology of the ASD Culture" lecture and I could tell he learned some stuff. Anyway... Net was that I made a pact with myself to get out of my way and to commit to my stated goal which means I need to make some changes.

I know that in order to make changes in this thing that I will have to make consistent effort at it for a minimum of 4 weeks before it became easier or more natural. So I started last week with adding some of the "small talk" questions to the front of my meetings and conversations. I could not do it all the time but did it at least 1 time a day and some days many more. The result of this work was that I had to rest for 2 out of the 3 days this weekend as I allowed myself to adjust to the changes. (It totally exhausted me and I could feel myself shutting down) So I did allow that rest and by Tuesday I had enough energy to come back at it a bit. Today I was able to do this in the session though it was really, really hard for me. (I wanted to run screaming when he came out to get me...) So now starts week 2 of making the "change" that I profess I want to be. I will attempt to keep this at the front of my mind and make sure to try to keep up the "goodness" into next session...

So after our discussion about that he launched into a bit more detail RE small talk and the what's of it. One of the things he said that was completely mind boggling was during a discussion about "opened ended questions". I was stating how impossible it was for me to answer these real-time. We used one question as an example. He asked me "What is it like working at Intel?" At one point, as I was trying to tell him the issue I have with answering this question, I launched into this very long and detailed explanation of how big Intel is and how the groups are split up and how each one has its own function and each one is like its own company and he stops me politely but abruptly.... And he says.... "Uh, Karla when a person asks what it is like working at Intel what they really mean is... What is it like FOR YOU." My chin hit my chest as I contemplated that. Of course that made perfect sense given what I know about NTs and that narrowed the scope to ALMOST be a reasonable question. We spent much time then composing acceptable scripts for that. BIG take away for me is that they mean "FOR ME". (doooooop!! !)

During our discussion on up-leveling the possible answers to give to that question he latched onto one of the things I said as a "WOW" factor statement and that became the beginning of another very important lesson for me. The "WOW" factor. I use that concept in my PowerPoint slides that I do for my team. In fact all of this in concept is EXACTLY like the high level reporting that I do for executive management. He asked me explain that process and I did. He agreed. So I know how to do this... but it takes me hours to sort through data to do this at work. I must learn to do this more naturally and more real time. I will spend some time this week scripting out some of these bigger "open" questions. I remember the first one my first shrink EVER asked me. He asked me, "So Karla, what do you wish for?" I think I will try to up-level that and do the WOW points in the next week. This is doable now....

My coach reminded me that people want this information because they are saving "people files" in their own minds about me. They will not remember all the details about me but the WOW points may be retained and FOR SURE how I made them feel will be retained. For them it is about the enorphines more than the details. Looking back through my life experiences I largely do not give people good first WOW points or good feelings I think. I am not sure if that is a bad or a good thing. The "good" thing (for me) is that it allows me to quickly identify people who will accept me for who I am. The bad thing is only that I made someone feel badly... I am not sure I really care about that so much given as they are judging me based on such stupid criteria.... I will have to think more on that.

Until next post....

This thread needs a sticky!

Awww... Thanks Sibyl.

Soooo... HUGE updates but the plot has not yet fully played out so I may be a bit cryptic.... First update is that I did my second presenation to the Portland Autism Group of professionals.

http://www.portlandautism.com/Home.html

My own doctor is in this group and attended the presentation. I told him I wanted him to come in case anyone had any sorts of questions or in case I needed support of some sort. Guys, I work really, really hard to pull off these presentations. I work really hard to present for my job at Intel too. I rehearse and rehearse until the first 3-5 slides are 100% memorized and rock solid. Then I rehearse the rest until I have the words down to where I can nail the presentation at least 4 times. I do this all prior to my speaking to the audience. I practice jokes, facial expressions and body language. I learned all of this in executive communications/speech courses throughout my past 20 plus years in corporate America. The result of my presentation was that I did an amazing job of speaking. My colleague said it was almost too good and her fear is that people would think I was NT. My Little's Mom was there and she said that there is NO WAY I presented as an NT. She says I was stimming throughout. I think my colleague was most talking about my pragmatics. She said that during the Q and A it came out but during the presenations I really stepped up. When the questioning was all done, I made them all sit in their seats until I left the room as I was SPENT. The lecture with Q and A was around 90 minutes. My Little's Mom told me that she heard them whispering and saw the sribbling notes during many key points. So lecture number two is done and next one is on the 30th of this month. This one is going to be fun because it will be to the schools.

Okay so back to social skills sessions....

So I go to his office and I am pretty spent. My lecture was on Tuesday night and did not end until 9:00PM. I had a guitar performance from 7-9PM on Wed night and Thursday early afternoon is my small talk lessons. He asked me how I was and I told him that I was tired bu processing very well. And I was. Strangely my processing skills have been very strong this past 2 weeks. He then starts to talk about the lecture. He informed me that he learned a lot even though he and I had discussed some of this stuff previously in sessions. He also assured me that he thought my work with Dr. Arnold (my colleague) was very, very valuable to the ASD community. He asked me a lot of follow up questions from the lecture. One of the things he was unaware of was my working relationship with his peers. He did not realize that I worked with all the doctors as a colleague and not as a disabled person. Only in his office did I do that.... We talked about the possibility of working more on a colleague basis insead of patient/doctor relationship. I told him that I would not mind that at all. I actually like the guy a bunch and his stuff really is quite good. It just doesn't work for me very easily. We may be able to make it work more easily if I am not required to consume it but instead am permitted to critique it after chewing on it a bit. I think there may be a WIN/WIN in this arrangement. I am still thinking about it and may do some every other week thing but I think this was an amazing offer on his part. It speaks volumes about his character and his humility that he recognizes that his methods are hard and that I might be able to help. There are not many people with his type of credentials that would do this.

So the student becomes teacher and the NT/ASD minds meld to form one world for both cultures!

Does it occur to you that your own body's response is an indication that "small talk" will never be natural to you and will always cause this fatigue?

You've clearly put a lot of effort into this, but it seems to me that you are approaching this as something to be beaten or learned through the application of intellect and discipline, methods which have served you well in the past.

That's "quitter" talk and I don't do "quitter".

Okay more seriously now... Yes, it is hard but I think it is hard more because of my need to be "right" or my need to not change versus the fact that my brain cannot be rewired. I had the most fascinating exchange yesterday (email) with my Colleague (she is a pyschologist in case you did not know) She and I exchanged email and she made humor that I did not get at first. The "joke" seemed so random and non-sensical to me and my first response (knee-jerk) was a "WTF does this mean?" message. This caused her to reply that she thought I was supposed to have humore. This pissed me off so I studied her words and the context and then it hit me like a lightning bolt. I "got" the thought process that she used and the "social rules" she used to come up with that joke. It took hours but I did it and it was based on page 1 of this log. She took a small phrase that I had said and ran with it to another context item. It felt random to me but it is perfectly acceptable via small talk rules.

So you see... It is not impossible to improve. I still have MUCH work to make this real time but I have improved!!

The whole idea that one could get brain (or body) damage by learning something new and incorporating it into one's habits was really a stunner for me. But anbuend's account of what happens to (her?) and her own natural state, which is at one of the extreme edges of the range (I think) was also a stunner. I've been pushing at the edges of my envelope all my life, trying to get more functional, without knowing that there _was_ an envelope that could be labeled "AS", only knowing that I as an individual was not very functional, and a lot of it was my own fault, seeing afterward what I could have done differently, and while trying to function, being aware that I was fighting something in myself that didn't want me to function. I developed some complicated "subconscious mind" theories as to _why_ I wasn't functioning well, and wondering what that different mind wanted. I did know a bit about autism, but had no clue that any of it applied to me.

Along with a lot of work to understand the thought process and crack the social code of others, IMHO there needs to be time to briefly surrender and allow the rhythms, feel and music of an alien process to penetrate. Anyway, I am attempting to teach my son to tolerate bits of disorientation, hopefully, without stress or defensiveness as part of the listening process. I think his stress over not being in control exhausts him as much as struggling with the difficulty of listening.

The Shutdown Experience

As I write this I am coming out of a partial shutdown from this morning. (about 3 hours ago actually) Interestingly this little event happened to me as I walked into my therapist’s office for “Social Skills Training”…. Except it did not happen exactly at that time. There was actually a long lead time into this and several factors all played. But I remember the trigger for me was the light from the lamp hitting me in the eye and the subsequent noise that it made as well as the pain it sent soaring through my body. Let’s start at the beginning….

My psychologist asked me last week if I could change my time of sessions. Besides being a change in my routine, this change also put me at risk of having to be in traffic before my sessions. I have avoided the 10:00AM or earlier time slot for this reason until this time. When he made the request though I figured that I could try it to see how it was at that hour. I have sat in traffic before and can handle that most of the time after all. After our last session the Doctor and I also talked about changing our relationship and/or session format. We left things a bit in the air and he said he would settle his intent for this session with me in email prior to the session this morning. That never happened.

So here I go… New time, more traffic and the anxiety of not knowing what to expect when I get there. Keep in mind that being in psychologists office in general is really hard for me. The exception to this is my time spent with Dr. Arnold as she really does treat me like a colleague/friend. Every other one sees me as this “mystery” or disabled person and so I get anxious around them as I try to navigate communications with them.
When I get up in the AM I feel stress over the meeting I am missing to make this session. Additionally I have 2 emails that are very “heavy” from friends/family and require action on my part. My facebook page is exploding with stuff I have to answer. I put that all aside and jump in my car for the hour plus commute into this session. All is well until I am about 7 miles from his office when the traffic gets thick. I sit in traffic that is moving from 0-2 mph for 30 minutes as I become late for my appointment. The noise of the brakes squeaking starts to get louder and louder. The truck next to me backfires, the exhaust smells become heavy as does the smell of the city. I feel anger welling in me and I scream silently about how stupid this all is. I curse the Doctor and his sessions and I curse my ASD and my life. As I am screaming, the noises, sights and smells assault me and mock me.

Finally, I make it to his office at 15 minutes past the hour. I ascend the 10 flights via elevator (I hate elevator) since I did not have time to do the stairs. I ring the bell in the wait room and pace madly in the hallway waiting for him to show up. When he shows, I am incapable of any sort of pleasantries and my language was gone (though I did not know it at that time). I storm past him. As I enter his office the light from the little lamp on the table next to the door hits me in the eyes and I see a flash (like photography) and hear a loud pop (like backfire) and that is when I could no longer process visually. I saw nothing but purple and black and tan pieces of data. I threw down my bag and sat in the chair. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to tell him how stupid he was but I knew it was irrational. I tried to think of how to speak but all I saw where thousands of pictures and senses. The room would not uplevel. He said something to me but I did not hear it.

At that point I began to panic and fight this thing. I saw myself being lifted in a bubble (tear shaped) as all the data came at me as if through water. Sounds, sights all warbled. As I fought to come back to the room and to the session I was assaulted by the sounds of the traffic outside. The little lights in the office burned my skin and my eyes. I wanted to tell him to shut them off but I had no language. I mouthed the words, I typed them with an invisible keyboard and I wrote them in the air. I saw my Father after his stroke. He was mouthing words in an attempt to speak but he could not. I was doing the same. That part of my brain was essentially useless to me. Panic kept creeping into my systems and I kept being lifted from the office. I fought hard to stay connected. I opened my eyes. I could see the office except the colors were all messed up. Everything was brown and black patches. I stimmed, I held my ears, I rocked and I prayed to please just let me come back.

He did not recognize what was going on but sat quietly by. I wished for him to vanish as his breath took mine away. I could not believe that I was crashing this hard in front of someone. I had never done this before to this extent or this visibly. I simply had no control over this. He saw that I was working on language but did not get that I could not speak. He requested that I tell him what I am trying to say. (duh…) This shut me down again for awhile. Finally, I was able to look up and piece together the room visibly but still could not speak. I pointed to the white board and he set it up. I wrote the words,

Shutting down cannot speak
Traffic = bad
Everything hurts me
This was stupid

He then comprehended that I was compromised. He apologized for the time change and said we will not attempt to do that again. He also wrote on the board that he was sorry that I was in pain. For some reason that angered me though I know it was well intended. I did not wish for his pity in that moment, only his understanding.

Finally I grabbed my laptop and typed out a message to him asking if we could reschedule. I knew that if he and I tried to communicate with me in this compromised state that I would hurt him. All I wanted to do was to hurt him and I knew that was wrong. He agreed and he also agreed that he would FOR SURE tell me what to expect BEFORE my next session.

Lesson for me is that this work as a stressor is a more real than I had realized. It really is causing me some system failures and that if I want to continue that he and I will have to play a very careful game of managing routine, control and my needs as a person affected by ASD.
Interesting stuff all around. My day at work is nearly shot as I have been 100% mute and not able to call into any meetings. Hopefully I can recover before the evening to get some of my key tasks done so that I can go and relax into the weekend…
I will not quit dammit!! !

I hate losing speech around people. When I'm alone it doesn't cause nearly as much stress, but around other people, it's like what you describe. It's extremely frustrating. Especially when they start talking to me. If I'm lucky, I can get a single word out.

That is the first time that I can remember it happening where I could not run and hide it.... It totally sucked.