The "social skills" dellusion

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I'm frankly fed up with all the talk about "social skills" and about aspies lamenting their "lack of social skills" and planning on learning them.

The truth is that there's no such thing as "social skills". Ok, there are a few basic tricks that can be learnt, and a lot of applications of those, which can be gained with practice.

It helps nothing. What aspies lack is not the mastery of a set of tricks, but something much more intuitive and profound that cannot be learned or practised. From personal experience, at 46 and having devoted my life to learning the stuff, I can tell you it made absolutely no difference. I could write a book on how to greet, eat, smalltalk with a client, show interest, be a good listener, etc. but I still don't pass the minimal relating acceptability threshold.

I think all this "social skills" hoax is another way to get your money, just like all the anti-wrinkle and hair growth products in the market.

When people are talking about social skills they are referring to intuitive/instinctual.

People give contradictory advice on their social skill for this reason, and are not necessarily able to pass them on.

Some behaviorists might have learned enough to be able to provide advice, but they also suffer from the same problem. Except they have fancy names for things like 'transference'.

Sorry to hear you've found it to be a waste of time. However I have found it to be very useful and it has certainly helped me.

IMO, social skills is not something that can be learned. It's something that comes natural...and, if you don't have them well you can try to act more NT but they still know your different. Really social skills help in getting jobs, making money, and functioning but "learning them" doesn't help you in social situations.

I beg to differ. I recently got a book on conversations and tried it out. The stuff worked! It corrected mistakes I've been making for years. I finally learned why my questions seemed more like interegration sessions for most people rather than showing interest
They may be NT but they aren't all trained psychotherapists who can spot every single communication error you make. They have an advantage but they aren't superhuman.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that it is good to try and learn them to a point just to be "acceptable " at least on the surface... just to get by.. BUT that I will never be able to be intuitive to the extent that NTs are.. Trying to be something that I am not will just make me miserable... but learning some basic niceties and trying to practice them is O.K... as long as it doesn't get too obsessive...

Practice has made a difference in my life. There's no point in accepting the loneliness and the crappy social skills when I'd be better of with a job, a girlfriend and friends.

Temple Grandin speaks of social skills vs emotional relatedness. I think that is the real point for me. I have learned a lot of social skills and they are useful for avoiding mis-communications and unintended insults. They also honor others as human beings entitled to at least minimal respect.

I have never been able to quickly get to the emotional relatedness that most folks claim they can engage in at a moments notice. I get there with a few friends and family and that is PLENTY. I can never be the salesperson who has "never met a stranger".

Social skills can definitely work OK even when done in a monotone. I wish I had learned more of them at an earlier age.

I didn't say that aspies can't become better at the social tricks. I said the opposite, actually. I'm extremely good at social skills nowadays. I'm complimented as a wonderful listener, showing appreciation, warmth, interest, interesting conversation, etc. etc.

What I said is that it doesn't make a difference in regard to actual relating. So as someone put it here very well, it helped me a lot with looking more appropriate in very short interactions such as job interviews, it never ever got me one friend.

I tend to agree that there's an innate ability that NTs have, to be able to empathize and socialize. That can be trained into most people by their teens and twenties.

AS is different in that, for most of us, the ability is not there. You don't yell at blind people to see better, and it's hard to tell AS that they're just ignorant. I can fake things fairly well, and have stock answers to many of life's questions.

I describe AS to NTs this way - remember Junior High (Middle School)? where you didn't know what to say, do, or how to act? Imagine that never ending. Now imagine further they drop you in Tashkent. You don't understand the language, and have to guess about everything...

Social skills training are like teaching ju-jitsu to a little Japanese girl. All these fancy techniques are not going to be very effective in a cage match. One punch to the gut and she is sushi.

However if she learns weight training she will develop a body hard enough to take the punishment and also give it. Her techniques will be more affective and so will her defence even against those unexpected scenarios.

I am looking into ways that can prepare an aspie MIND for NT socializing.

BRING IT ON TYSON!! !! !! !! !!

Last edited by Aspie_Chav on 13 Apr 2008, 2:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I have brilliant social skills now, if I do say so. Nobody has a clue about the problems I have and the second-guessing I do when a conversation goes slightly differently than the norm, or someone responds differently than they normally do. I find I can relate to people, and I'm very, very empathetic, I just don't really express it too well and I can't really pick up on it unless it's pointed out or there's time to do so. The whole small-talk with strangers is a matter of bumbling along and hoping for the best, based on my previous experiences in similar conversations and what people generally tend to think/say/do.

I think my life is based on the way I closely observe what others say and do in various situations, and then applying it to my own interactions. I just watch every movement, every nuance, every pattern of speech, every word used, every bit of 'body language'...

Social skills is an illusory concept - a fallacy in itself.
That said, there are some basics of interaction that people might find useful to learn - but, for the most part, what's called a skill is no less than fitting in with a certain group; and that for the most part, means being average. Social success points to the center of normal distributions, for traits; not the ends. . . .but most people are mediocre and socially successful at the same time, so they like to call that a skill and rub it on the faces of those that are more different. Past a certain point of basic civility a lack of social skills might be no more than an euphemism for other people's racism, envy and general intolerance. . .


In my past job, at the beginning, I was outspoken and happy to help others. Then, as it turned out I wasn't in good terms with some HR b***h who had her nephew around, I spoke English fluently, was smarter, was wealthier and had already graduated, after they stalked me online and found just how different I was from them. . . at that point they began doing things like looking at the ground and fidgeting when I approached to say hi or just ask them something (is that being skillful? seems rather stupid instead. . .). Later I learned they were saying that "I had a degree and spoke english fluently to cause them envy".
As I had seen and now see in other similar cases, these socially skillful people who scoffed at my presumed lack of street savvy were unable to speak to managers; and when they tried, they just made themselves look stupid.
There was this time when we had to attend an interview with a middle manager, a twitchy guy who kinda ran our group, the HR's b***h nephew and me. When the meeting was over - the manager having been overall pleased with what we had to say - the two idiots said "ok", stood up, turned around and walked stiffly to the door hands in pockets. Meanwhile, I was still taking my time to shake hands with him, make eye contact and thank him - when they saw this, they rushed back like crazy to shake hands with him as well. They obviously had their own schedule and issues with me but that's no reason to act like a clown in front of a manager that's not even supposed to know!

I changed jobs.
My capacity to go about doing smalltalk must have dropped if anything, yet, I'm not the harassment target I was at the other place because a degree, some brains and fluency in English are more of an expected thing in my current workplace; I'm now average.

Last edited by Whisperer on 13 Apr 2008, 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"one punch to the gut and she is sushi"

I do say by all means learn social skills. But don't expect it to diminish your AS. It's just make-up on our social blemish.

An interesting take on autistic social skills