Realer Social Skills

realsocialskills:

xulsigae said to realsocialskills:

Is it common to feel a lack of inner ‘social ground’ to stand on with Aspergers?

I’ve kinda lost a sense of knowing when something I do is actually right or acceptable after years of thinking what I did was right, but then finding out it was inappropriate.

I know I have a strong moral compass, but my social one is wonky. Now I rely on the feedback of others to know when I’m doing okay.

Are there any ideas for how to create an inner knowledge of what is right without using others?

realsocialskills said:

That’s complicated. I’m making a lot of guesses about where you’re coming from which may or may not be correct.

It sounds to me like maybe you’re figuring out that it’s important to get feedback, and having trouble figuring out how to do that without losing yourself.

I think part of what would help is to keep this in perspective:

• Everybody makes social mistakes.
• Social learning is a lifelong process for everyone (including people who are not autistic)
• One of the most important social skills is figuring out how to get good feedback from others, and how to learn from what they tell you
• This is true of everyone. Needing feedback is not a flaw. Everyone needs feedback.
• Not everyone knows they need feedback; your awareness that you need feedback is actually an important social skill you’ve learned

Also, people who say that you’ve done something inappropriate probably aren’t always right. It can be hard to keep that in mind when you know that you make a lot of mistakes, but it’s important. The point here is to develop and improve your own judgment, not to abdicate it.

Learning how to manage feedback can be hard. Here’s a basic outline about some ways feedback should work:

• You realize that you’re not sure about something

• You figure out whose perspective you’d value about that thing

• Or someone else tells you what they think about something you did

• You ask them about the thing

• They tell you what they think

• You listen to what they think

• You think about whether you agree

• You might decide that you agree, or that you disagree

• Or that you partially agree

• Or that you need to process more

• All of those are fine

Dealing with feedback involves several skills:

Noticing situations in which someone else’s perspective might be helpful, for instance:

• If people are reacting in ways you don’t understand, it might be worth getting someone else’s perspective on what’s going on
• If you’re saying things that aren’t being heard, it might be worth getting someone else’s perspective* (eg: Is the problem that the people you’re talking to are jerks? Are you saying things to them that are invasive? Are there ways you could be communicating more effectively? Do you need to find different people to interact with?)
• If you’re really uncomfortable with something that’s happening, it might be worth getting someone else’s feedback on what’s going on (sometimes this is really helpful in realizing that it’s ok to object to something or have boundaries)

A more concrete example of a situation in which it might be helpful to look for feedback:

• You’re having trouble understanding what you’re supposed to do at work
• When you ask your boss questions, you don’t get helpful answers.
• You might ask a friend or coworker who you respect what they think is going on
• (eg: They might tell you that the boss hates email and that you need to ask questions in person, or vice versa. Or that the boss doesn’t know how to answer that kind of question and you have to find the answers elsewhere. Or any number of other possibilities.)

Figuring out whose feedback is valuable:

• Not everyone’s feedback is valuable; it’s important to figure out for yourself who you want to listen to and when
• Some people know what they’re talking about and can tell you valuable things about how you’re interacting with others
• Some people really, really don’t know what they’re talking about and will give you terrible advice
• A lot of people have good feedback on some things but not others
• Some people are really good at sounding right whether they know what they are talking about or not
• It can be hard to figure out who to listen to, especially if you’re new to realizing that you need feedback

Listening to feedback, and evaluating it seriously:

• If you value someone’s opinion, it’s important to listen to what they have to say
• And to figure out why they think it
• It doesn’t mean you have to agree; no matter how much you respect someone, they will be wrong some of the time.
• It does mean that it’s important to listen to them, and to make sure that you really understand what they’re saying and why, before you decide what you think

Avoiding some feedback-avoidance defensiveness pitfalls:

• Some feedback is hard to hear
• It can be easy to react defensively, as a way to avoid engaging
• One way to be defensive is to immediately say “no, that’s not true” or “no, I’m not the kind of person who would do that” without first listening to the person
• Another way of avoiding painful feedback is to panic-apologize out of fear.
• That can be a way of avoiding the feedback too because you can feel like you’ve dealt with it by apologizing even if all you’ve really heard is that someone is upset with you

An example of not listening:

• You: So, I was telling Mary how great my awesome dog is, and she looked really angry. What gives?
• Them: Mary’s dog just died. It was kind of insensitive to go on about yours.
• You: But I was just trying to be nice!

Another example of not listening:

• You: So, I was telling Mary how great my awesome dog is, and she looked really angry. What gives?
• Them: Mary’s dog just died. It was kind of insensitive to go on about yours.
• You (without really understanding the problem): Oh. I’m a terrible person. I can’t believe I would be so insensitive.
• (If you just emote about guilt without figuring out what they think the problem is and whether you agree, that’s not listening; it’s a defense mechanism)

An example of listening:

• You: So, I was telling Mary how great my awesome dog is, and she looked really angry.
• Them: Mary’s dog just died. It was kind of insensitive to go on about yours.
• You: Really? I was trying to be nice and connect around a shared interest.
• Them: When people are mourning the loss of a pet, they don’t usually want to hear about how great things are with someone else’s. It can feel like rubbing it in.

Sometimes it can feel like everyone else has it all together, that everyone else knows how to act, and that only you make major mistakes. That’s not true. Everyone is getting things wrong; everyone has social skills they could improve; that’s not unique to autistic people.

It might help to keep in mind that you don’t have to be socially infallible to be ok. You have a moral compass, and you know a lot about how to interact with people. And you also make mistakes sometimes, and have areas you could improve on. That’s an ok way to be, and feedback can make learning and improving easier.

Honestly, I could have picked any of RSS’s recent posts for this post:

RSS has gotten a lot better. They’ve been offering some pretty good advice, and mostly avoiding the pitfalls that got me thinking a counterpoint blog was needed. So if you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been posting critically, it’s mostly that I haven’t seen anything I thought needed a ton of criticism for a while. YMMV.

This post has some pretty good advice, on a reasonably hard topic, and it’s actually pretty well written, so I like it. They’ve done a lot of this lately, and I’ve been positively impressed.

realsocialskills:

Anonymous said to realsocialskills:

By the time alcoholism has put someone out on the street isn’t it slow suicide. I do think all people deserve help, regardless of their situation, and if I decide to give a homeless person money I generally make a point of not thinking about how they’ll spend it. But taking a moment to think about it, does it actually help them if the money is spent on booze?

realsocialskills said:

I don’t think “slow suicide” is an accurate description. If someone is homeless and asking for money, they’re not trying to die; they’re trying to survive.

Spending most of their money on alcohol or other drugs does not mean that someone is trying to die. It can mean that their life is difficult and they’re doing the best they can right now.

Addiction to alcohol or other drugs will usually kill someone in the long run through organ failure. If you think of that as the only thing that matters, you’re going to misunderstand the situation badly. 

Here’s something else that matters: If someone quits something they’re addicted to without a support system, that can often kill them a lot faster than the drug use.

Chemical dependence on a substance means that it has become a physiological necessity. If someone is a heavy drinker to the point of physical dependency, quitting without medical support is physically dangerous. People can die from alcohol withdrawal. Suddenly cutting off a homeless addict’s supply is not doing them any favors. 

Further, sometimes people drink because the situation they’re in is unbearable. Sometimes, people drink to make things tolerable enough that they can stand to remain alive. Ideally, people should transition to coping that are less physically damaging and allow them to survive longer and function better. Not everyone is in a place to do that. If heavy drinking is the main thing standing between someone and suicide, it’s much better than they should keep drinking than it is that they should kill themselves.

If someone wants to take those risks, it’s a courageous thing to do and they deserve a lot of respect for it. Being willing to take those risks shouldn’t be seen as a precondition for someone being worthy of help.

People in difficult situations with no access to better coping mechanisms than drinking still deserve life. And they need money to survive.

It’s urgently important to make support more available. (One thing that is especially important is getting people places to live that do not require them to be sober or attempting sobriety. It’s much more humane, effective, and affordable to give people housing not attached to coerced participation in programs aimed at changing them.)

It’s also important to create support systems that help people *before* they get to such desperate circumstances. (Some areas in which dramatically more is needed: disability services, support for veterans, support for children who age out of foster care, noncoercive mental health care, affordable housing, and employment opportunities for those who need modifications and support).

In the meantime, people who are living on the streets with no effective access to support needed to make things better need money to survive. Even if that means they’re spending most of it on alcohol.

They’re trying to survive in very, very difficult circumstances. That’s honorable, and worthy of respect.

tl;dr Preventing homeless people from having access to alcohol is not an effective or respectful way of helping them.

I haven’t been very active on this blog recently, because RSS has been pretty good. This is a good example, I think. This is a really good answer that does a good job of rebutting a common false belief, and doing so patiently while calling people to compassion, but also does a good job of making the purely economic case for the suggested course of action.

Good writing.

realsocialskills:

I got an anonymous ask yesterday asking me to post someone’s phone number so that everyone would send them angry text messages.

I’m not going to do that, or anything remotely like that. I deleted that ask, and I’d strongly urge any other bloggers who get requests like that to delete them as well.

This is not a platform for anonymous hate.

Absolute, total, agreement on this one.

This is an excellent response. Deleting the ask is, of course, a good response. But if you’re in a position where people follow you or think about what you say, pointing out that it’s a good response is also very good.

Nicely handled, and unambigiously good advice.

realsocialskills:

Anonymous said to realsocialskills:

Having grown up with abuse, and having been in an abusive relationship after that, I have a lot of trouble dealing with “normal” teasing. I was used to being accused of all kinds of terrible things out of the blue. So if, for example, I accidentally take something that belongs to someone else, and they say, “Haha, you just wanted it for yourself!” I want to cry and beg forgiveness. I’m terrified and I can’t laugh. I feel I can’t ask people not to tease me, but I don’t know how to deal with it.

realsocialskills said:

It’s ok to be bothered by this, and it’s ok to tell your friends not to tease you.

Playful teasing is only friendly if everyone likes it. A lot of people don’t like it, and a lot of people don’t do it. It’s entirely possible to be friends without insulting or teasing one another. If someone teases someone who they know hates it, that’s not a joke anymore, it’s just being mean. It’s not ok to be mean to other people for fun.

It’s ok to say “I don’t like jokes like that; please don’t say things like that to me.” You don’t have to explain in order for it to be ok to tell people to stop teasing you. Continuing to do stuff like that is already a jerk move, even if people don’t know your history. Not liking it is a good enough reason.

It’s also ok if you do want to disclose (and for some people, it might make it more likely that they’ll take it seriously and realize how important it is not to make jokes like that with you). But you don’t have to disclose in order for it to be legitimate to insist that people stop. If you do want to disclose, it’s usually better if it’s not in the heat of the moment, but when you’re relatively calm.

Most people don’t want to say intentionally hurtful things to their friends. Some people realize that some people find playful teasing hurtful, and will readily stop if you tell them you don’t like it. Some people don’t understand that some people don’t like it, and will probably have to be reminded several times before they take it seriously. Some people are mean and will keep saying things like that to you even after you say to stop, and some people might even start saying them more because they think it’s funny that it bothers you. Part of the solution to this might be to make sure you’re hanging out with people who care about treating you well, as much as possible. Having friends who are kind makes life a lot better on a number of levels.

A possible script for disclosing:

• “Hey, I know you weren’t intending it but playful teasing and joke insults really scare me. Too many people in my life have accused me of ludicrous things in order to hurt me, so I have trouble telling when it’s a joke and I tend to freak out. Can you please not say things like that to me?”

Another possibility: finding ways to tell whether they mean it or not:

Think about the person you’re with, and what’s likely to be their intention:

• How well do you know the person you’re with?
• Have you seen them joke insult people before?
• Have you seen them actually aggressively accuse people of ludicrous things out of the blue?
• If you’ve seen them tease people in a way intended to be friendly and haven’t seen them make horrible baseless accusations out of the blue, they’re probably not trying to hurt you
• That doesn’t make it ok, and it doesn’t mean you’re wrong to object
• But it does mean that they’re probably not trying to hurt you, and you’re probably not in any danger

Look at body language:

• This isn’t possible for some people who get scared in this situation, but it can work for some people
• Look at their face: Does it have an angry expression, or do they look happy?
• Look at their hands: Are they held in a way that looks angry or violent, or do they look like they’re just socializing?
• Think about their tone of voice: Did they sound mad? Was their voice raised? Or are they talking in a tone that seems more friendly?
• (Many people have a specific tone of voice that they only use for teasing or joke insults)
• Are they looking at you in a way that’s demanding an answer?
• If their body language and tone of voice doesn’t seem aggressive, they probably didn’t mean the words they said aggressively either.

Check how other people are reacting:

• Do other people seem to notice the offense you’ve supposedly committed, or are they continuing the conversation they were already having?
• Does anyone look mad, or do they just look like people socializing?
• Have other people in the group stopped what they’re doing to look at you, or are they continuing as they were?
• If other people in the group don’t look mad, or don’t look much interested, the teasing was probably meant as a joke rather than a serious insult or accusation

Another possibility: using a standard script to create some distance:

• It can help to immediately change the subject when someone says something like that
• If they were just joking around, they will likely be receptive to the subject change
• Changing the subject can show you that you are safe and not under attack
• It can be hard to find words in the moment to change the subject
• It might help to memorize some subject-changing scripts and use standard ones every time this happens
• Then you won’t have to think of something to say in the moment while you are freaking out
• Which scripts are most effective will depend on you and your group
• (This post on deflecting fight-pickers has a lot of subject-change scripts.)
• You can also change the subject back to what people were talking about before
• Eg: “So, you were saying about the cats we’re all here to talk about? What do you think about the fluffy ones? I see your point about their hair getting matted easily, but they’re so pretty and soft.”

Another possibility: asking what they meant:

• Sometimes you can defuse fear by asking people whether they mean it
• ie: “Do you really think I was just trying to take it for myself?”
• This can be awkward, but it can also be effective
• Whether or not it’s a good idea depends on your friend groups
• Some people might get offended and sarcastically say yes, of course they think that.
• If you can’t read sarcasm when you’re scared, this might backfire
• But when it works, it can work really well

It would probably also be a good idea to work on having perspective when other people are angry at you. Your friends and people close to you will be angry at you sometimes. That doesn’t always mean that you’re in danger or that they are going to hurt you. It also doesn’t always mean that you have done something wrong. Finding anger more bearable will help you in a lot of aspects of your life, including when people tease you. If anger is less terrifying, teasing will also be less terrifying.

tl;dr Teasing is only friendly if everyone likes it. Doing it to people who don’t like it is mean. It’s ok not to want to be teased or insulted, even as a joke. It’s ok to ask people to stop. Some people will take that request seriously and some won’t. (Everyone should, but not everyone does). If teasing scares you because you have trouble telling the difference between real insults and joke insults, there are things you can learn to look for that make it easier to tell the difference. It also helps to learn how to keep perspective in the face of other people’s anger. Scroll up for some more concrete information.

Okay, so, I periodically post things which are bad advice as part of the reason this blog exists. This is the other reason this blog exists: Because it’s not enough to just say “realsocialskills gives bad advice”. Because they don’t always. Sometimes they give really good advice. This is really good advice. (Although I have to admit, I have no idea how the looking at hands thing would work, since I’ve never noticed.)

And yes, my experience with adults who are not abusive is that they will always be willing to stop teasing if you tell them it bugs you, because it really is only a friendly thing if the person being teased is enjoying it.

This is a really good post.

realsocialskills:

Neutral-ish words like “Uh huh”, “ok”, and “sure” can sometimes sound like they mean “this is boring and I want you to stop talking about it”.

For example:

• Matilda: My cat just had kittens! They are adorable!
• Shira: Uh huh

This could sound to Matilda like Shira means “I’m annoyed that you’re talking about your cats and would like you to stop.”

If Shira actually wants to listen to Matilda talk about the cats but isn’t sure what to say, repeating part of what Matilda said might be a better option, eg:

• Matilda: My cat just had kittens! They are adorable!
• Shira: Your cat had kittens?!
• Matilda: Yes, she did. Last week.

Another option is to say explicitly that you want to hear about it, eg:

• Matilda: My cat just had kittens! They are adorable!
• Shira: Tell me about your adorable new kittens?

This isn’t an exhaustive list; there are any number of other examples in both directions. But if you’re saying things that you think are neutral and it seems to result in other people ending the conversation a lot, it’s worth considering whether you’re inadvertently sending off linguistic signals that you’re bored.

There’s a nice response from chordatesrock which discusses this, and I think that’s a really good insight. Intonation can be very flexible. I can respond to a statement like “my cat just had kittens!” with “and?” using a questioning tone and clearly communicate (to most people) that I’m interested and wish to hear more, or that I am annoyed and want to know why they are wasting my time.

So on the one hand, I think this advice isn’t all that great, in that it doesn’t cover what is probably the primary issue. However! There is a strength to this advice, which is that if you aren’t good at tone, it can be useful to make a point of using words that make your intent more clear. It’s still possible to offend someone by accidentally using tone which suggests that your response is insincere (“Tell me about your adorable new kittens” could easily be made to sound sarcastic), but if you’re mostly just prone to flat or uninflected tone, asking questions or specifically requesting more information will be a better way to express interest than the usual neutral responses like “uh-huh”.

I would note that I have seen people get offended by tactics like the “Your cat had kittens?” one because it’s asking for information that is already contained entirely within the previous sentence, and sometimes that comes across poorly.

(Also, as a general rule: You cannot avoid some risk that people will misunderstand and be offended. Life is hard all over.)

realsocialskills:

kyliebear submitted to realsocialskills:

In reference to the post about testing…

I’m assuming you’re a teen or adult, so I would warn you that a lot of these tests are designed for children and might seem silly.

Some of them don’t have anything to do with autism and are fairly offensive - in addition to the ridiculous Simon Baron Cohen questions, I remember doing Rorschach ink blots and a theory of mind test.

Many of them, such as the fine motor things like picking up little pegs and putting them in a pegboard, are timed and can be stressful.

I personally found the experience to be traumatizing since it was a lot of tests designed to show that I wasn’t very good at specific skills and it was a full day of being asked questions and failing these tasks in an unfamiliar environment.

I was also trying very hard to seem as “normal” as possible (since that’s what I had spent all of my life doing). I was trying not to stim at all or stimming under the table or when the person examining me wasn’t paying attention, and it ended up hurting me in the long run because I was so anxious from hiding these behaviors that they needed to see to confirm my diagnosis.

Some of the tests and the experience overall were triggering and my mom picked me up in the afternoon, I was sitting in a corner crying, and it’s still very difficult to think about the experience. I don’t think everyone goes through this, it’s possible I had a bad tester or something. Even though they will note if you’re scripting or stimming or anything else, don’t try and hide it. Do whatever you need to do to express yourself and take care of yourself, and make sure you have a safe space for after the testing.

realsocialskills said:

Those are all really good points.

My experience wasn’t quite as bad, but it was very stressful and somewhat humiliating. The people testing me were nice to me and were respectful, but the tests still got to me some. It can be draining to have to spend all day showing what you can’t do over and over and over, especially if you have baggage about your inability to do those things. (Most of us have baggage about that to some degree or another, because the world is not kind to people who are unable to do socially expected things.)

If you feel bad after or during the tests, it’s not because there’s something wrong with you. It’s ok to be autistic; it’s ok to be different; it’s ok to be disabled. Going through tests designed by people who think that means there’s something wrong with you can be degrading and painful - but it can’t make them right. You’re ok; the people who design these awful tests are the ones who are doing things wrong.

There’s a ton of variance. I’ve been diagnosed, and I’ve watched two people get diagnosed, and many of my friends have been diagnosed. Of those, the one negative experience was a person who was told there was no point in diagnosing her because there’s no cure, then asked to justify why she thought she was autistic and interrupted when she tried to do so. She was upset enough by that that she needed a friend to call around and find a less insulting and stupid doctor she could talk to.

But everyone else? Everyone else had pleasant experiences. What I encountered (this was the pretty standard procedure for Autism Society of Minnesota, apparently):

• Fill out an interview form in advance.
• If possible, have someone who knows you also fill out a form.
• An hour or two of conversation.

The doctor doing the diagnosis was friendly and respectful, and it was mostly just talking so she could see how you think about things. She showed me some pictures to see whether I could read facial expressions, but also asked me how I decided, because in adults the question isn’t “can you” but “how do you”.

So there’s a lot of variance here, and it may matter a lot what kind of doctor you’re seeing.

realsocialskills:

magicmattie replied to your post “Periodic reminder: liking my blog is not appropriation”

Never even crossed my mind that this could be disability-specific, all of the advice is applicable to everyone, I thought…

realsocialskills said:

I’m not sure why either, but I get a fair number of asks/reblogs from people who are worried that it might be somehow inappropriate or appropriation for them to participate.

So I think it’s worth making explicit.

I suspect it’s a combination of tumblr’s general habit of people demanding that cis people or allistics or whoever not reblog their stuff, and also your habit of blocking people who disagree with you and writing long essays about how you have the right to not interact with people, which some people might take to indicate that you think people need specific permission to like or comment on things.

An anon writes in:

I know this is from a really old post, but with regard to the therapy referrals thing, there is a third option: Not RSS’s “referral-maker is clumsily asserting a boundary in a mean-spirited way” or your “person who doesn’t realize quite how impaired they are is complaining about ‘useless’ referral” - but there is this thing called “scope of practice” that people have to be careful about - the real problem might be “I’d like to help but that is too close to Legally Defined Psychotherapy™ and if I the "service coordinator” or “skill builder” or “tutor” cross the line into Legally-Defined Psychotherapy then I could lose my job. Sometimes this isn’t legal but is agency policy because different types of “help” get funded differently and if you give the wrong KIND of help you risk your agency not getting paid in the right order, or at all. It would be like asking a registered nurse to write a prescription, they can’t and would be in huge trouble if they tried!

Oh, hey.

That is a really good insight, and I really appreciate it, because I would never have thought of that. And that is a really good thing to keep in mind!

Folks, this is why I never, ever, complain that someone’s commenting on an “old” post: Because if people are afraid to send notes on old stuff, you don’t get things like this that give you an alternative perspective which is quite likely relevant to a fair number of people. Thanks a lot, and I will keep that one in mind.

realsocialskills:

When people are in public places like a library, street, coffee shop,or subway, they often wear headphones as a way to create some private space.

People who wear headphones or earbuds in public usually do not want to be approached by strangers. If you know them well, it might be ok to ask, but it’s probably better to err on the side of leaving them alone.

The flip side: if you wear headphones, most people will assume that you don’t want to be approached. If you’re wearing headphones for sensory reasons but you want to interact with people, you will likely have to initiate it yourself. It also might help to let your friends know that you welcome interaction even when you are wearing headphones.

This is pretty good advice. I know a lot of people who wear headphones as a way to reduce the incidence of people approaching them. To expand on it a little: “Hey, you dropped your wallet” is a good reason to approach someone even if they’re wearing headphones. “You’re really hot and I want to ask you out” is not.