Social skills training

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What do you call a person who helps people become better social skills?

Some have said that drama exercices are good for learning social skills. But that sounds more like acting exercices rather than social skills exercices.

Isn't drama way different from real social situations?

I don't know. But I suspect seeing how other people behave can help you learn how to behave similarly.

I'm not too sure about acting lessons, though. I'm thinking more about sort of being an audience.

I have a personal theory that watching a lot of Last of the Summer Wine [1973–2010] might help someone acquire a dry humor which I believe sometimes help lubricate social difficulties.

I don't see that it's been built up much in the industry for ASD adults, but some Occupational Therapists advertise "social skills". In my area general therapists specializes in ASD and communication (and sponsor groups).

My ASD BFF and I both enjoyed the book "What to Say Next"; we are past midlife and it was somewhat instructional for her and mostly review for me. In my 20s I took advanced level theatre, psychology and communication courses. The theatre was great for expressiveness, but the latter were book learned, and as you may anticipate they are not practical skills and I still flub up spontaneous social situations: e.g. talk too much, talk too little - moderation is my ASD holy grail. At this point, I think there may be more to Accept here on my part, than Change.

Good luck.

I went to Adult Children Anonymous, formerly Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, where there was a wide variety of personality quirks, as in real life, but a general freedom to talk about them within the group rules. Sometimes, we'd go bowling or play miniature golf for practice in real world situations. I don't know if anyone kept score, though.

Groups like that might want to adopt a prize that a friend of mine always used to try for in his quirky sport: the Mediocrity Prize, awarded for coming in half-way up or down the field. They also had a rule that "Cheating is a privilege, not a right."

You can also practice on people who want to sell you something, from a bored cashier to a charity group to a politician. I noticed that one charity had collected quite a few misfits into a loose alliance. In general, more artistic communities have a higher tolerance for or even encouragement of eccentricity.

Social skills training is just codeword for autism conversion therapy. We shouldn't have to change for the sake of neurotypicals, just as gays shouldn't have to change for the sake of heterosexuals.

RICH!

It's not always personally performative. It can be useful to be able to read other people and social situations, to get a better idea of what's going on.

Didn't you post in a different thread that you would like to see a cure for Autism?

Yes, I would. But that's something that would actually work and legitimately solve our problems. That's very different from social skills groups, which basically just bully us into pretending to be people we're biologically not.

I personally knew how to act convincingly for decades and I've still got massive issues with socializing, drama exercises are more likely to make masking more convincing, but not necessarily help with the other aspects of social skills.

I do personally believe in mixed diagnosis group therapy as it often times does help develop a sense of how NT brains are supposed to work as people workshop their own emotional challenges.

Not really, some of us are extremely high masking to the point where we do seem to fit in. We're still autistic, we just are fortunate to have the option of avoiding some of the pitfalls for a while. Even if we do occasionally commit a faux pax or get stumped by some sarcasm. The fact that we can do it, does not mean that we're not drained by a day of laughing at jokes we don't get and pretending that we understood things that we didn't understand because it seemed easier and less awkward that getting the person to explain what they meant for some trivial interaction. Or the getting hit by a random mine when we do miss the point entirely and then get to laugh at ourselves to avoid it being really uncomfortable for everybody else in the room.

I'm not really the biggest fan of masking as it is a massive expenditure of energy and resources that I'd prefer to put to other uses, but it's pretty much undeniable that some degree of masking does make it easier to live amongst the NT and to need less help just to exist.

I'm sure I do a bit of acting when I'm with people, but I'm mainly interested in less phony pursuits such as being a good friend to my friends, giving and getting a bit of help where possible, sharing goals and good experiences. I think it's important to try to figure out how people feel. I like being genuine and I like it when the people I'm with are genuine. I don't have much time for studying sets of social rules, I think they're more useful in a homogenous group full of cloned stereotypes, but I haven't encountered that much as I've always lived among people of rather differing attitudes and personalities. I can behave in an identical way towards two people and one will love it and the other will hate it, though there are some more or less universal behaviours that almost everybody will have the same reaction to. I think it's good to foster a sense of relating to people simply on the grounds of our common humanity.

Autism from the Inside had at least a couple good videos on topics like emotional intelligence and empathy.

E.g. How I learned Emotional Intelligence with Aspergers (and how you can too!) | Emotions Explained

PS Autism form the Inside — as a counseling/coaching website/company—, also has online webinars and also self-paced courses

List of webinars & courses:
https://autismexplained.kartra.com/page/ENL94

Eg “ A self-paced online course that will dramatically improve your social and emotional skills.” https://autismexplained.kartra.com/page/EQ101

I’ve only contemplated taking the EQ course, as I’ve read through an EQ book from work that EQ can be practiced & improved.

https://autisticscienceperson.com/2021/ ... ic-people/

I used to think I needed to learn social skills. I learned some scripting that gets me through the grocery store and other things that require minimum social interactions.

Here is the thing. I have 25th percentile (very low, 75 percent of people do better at this than I do) visual processing and 35th percentile (low too) that means I miss much of what is going on in "real time" interactions. No matter how polite I am and how I try, I will never be able to keep up with or understand all that is happening around me if I am not in quiet surroundings and interacting with just one person.

Groups and all the rapid input that goes on with that, multiple conversations, etc all leave me in the dust, far behind every single time.
You can't train a fish to climb a tree.
I have learned it is my neurology that is the problem, nothing I do can change it to make me a social success in "real time" situations. EVER, no matter how much I want to, no matter how hard I try.

This is why special job training often fails , expectations don't match the things expected of an individual no matter how much they understand what they "should" be doing, their perception, processing, and sometimes physical disabilities do not allow them to perform as they have been trained.
They can try until the cows come home, and still not get it right.
Simply telling us what we "should" be doing does not mean that we are capable of performing as expected.

I think all humans these days need to learn social skills, emotional skills, how to hold a conversation, how to get on with other people. The world seems to be turning into a free for all with everyone attacking everyone else. I have often thought of making a YouTube series called Conversation Skills or something. But I'd need friends to have conversations with and I haven't got any at the moment