Social Skills Training for Adults

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Guys... I want to stop ^^THIS^^ discussion here if I may as this is my thread to log my social skills training.

I will also take the oppoturnity to set all this up since I did not do that at the begining.

I am a VERY senior manager type person at the largest chipset manufacturer in the world. I have made my way so far on my technical skills (AKA special interest), ability to focus, outside the box thinking and attention to details. I make more money than I can spend and am not in jeaopordy of losing my job.

I recently got my review with the following feedbacks..

1. Does not network well enough for grade level (AKA socialize/small talk)
2. Does not abstract (AKA too literal)
3. Black/white thinking
4. Inability to see the big picutre

I have had these same feedbacks on my reviews for the past 20 years and just always assumed that the purpose of these feedbacks was for us to work on our personality weaknesses. I learned this year that people actually improve on these and get DIFFERENT ones at some point. Yeah... uh.... Not me.

My company removed these from my review due to my recent DX but I realized that they were also causing me to bang my head in this one place for the past 10 years. I have avoided passionately any promotions to the next grade level because that is where the "s**t gits real" ( if you know what I mean) with respect to the "social"/human interaction thing.

Now that I know that my issues in these areas are ASD related and that there is available training to help me in these areas, I am willingly signing up. NOBODY IS ASKING ME TO OR MAKING ME FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO DO THIS. I understand that some of you feel like the world needs to embrace you more, but I don't view it 100% in that way. To me, it is like when I went to live in Germany for a year. I did NOT make my host family speak to me in English the whole year. I worked hard to learn their Language and with their help, I eventually did it. I will do the same thing here to the best of my ability. We live in this world with a Majority of people called, NTs and they have this Language and these rules that I am not yet completely clued in on. I can meet them halfway and (at least) understand their rules and use them then when I feel like it.

Hope that clears things up.

That isn't quite what I'm trying to say. I sincerely hope it all works out as you want it to. And, I don't consider it a bad thing. And, if someone is very, very functional into their 40's, it seems like they're not likely to suddenly fall apart.

But, for the sake of argument, say that in the course of doing this you find that you are losing your technical abilities. You go to doctors but they don't have a clue, except that neuropsychological testing shows you positive for brain damage. What do you do then? Would you push harder, or back off?

My point is not to complain (sh*t happens, right?), but to point out that the above is not the same as, "wanting the world to accept me as I am." If I had had less helpful family I could have ended up homeless. It's not about what's "nice," and it is a luxury to say "well, you have to adapt no matter what," because adapting to the n'th degree is not always an option (and not just because you don't like it). (And don't get me wrong, it's not like I come off like Rainman on the street.)

Ok, I'll make this my last post on this.

My old shrink was GREAT and he really helped me though my grief. I was his very first ASD patient ever. He suggested that I go see his wife in my first session (as soon as he ID'd me) and I declined. His job was to get me through my grief not deal with my ASD. Of course that meant he had to do a "crash" course on ASD and how to talk to me and all that fun stuff. He did a great job. Since he has acting experience, I was going to hire him to teach me social skills, but the more I looked into it the more it seemed like a person MUST know ASD to do this job correctly. In other words, I did not feel qualified to help him learn that with me. So as soon as my grief symptoms went away I discountined services with him and sought out someone to help me in this other area. If I was to do Life Coaching I would go back to this first guy in a heartbeat.



High level means (very specifically) no more than 2-3 sentences no matter what the subject. The way I kept getting in trouble in this sesion was that he kept driving the conversation into my special interest and he would then ask broad questions or make a sweeping statement and I was left to try to figure out how to take my subject and make a trivia statement about it. ummm... yeah.... Like, he mentioned the "buff" people on the beach and what my opinion was of them. Once I cleared with him that "buff" meant ript or muscled as opposed to buffed like a car or a floor or in the buff, I asked him to specify the bodyfat% of the "buff" people that he was talking about. He challenged me that was breaking a rule of small talk as small talk does not have to be specific. So without the information of knowing what it was "very specifically" that he meant about "buff" people, I did not know how to return any sort of comment.

I think this is where I wanted to cry. He asked me if I had pictures in my mind and I had thousands of pictures in my mind of people all different shapes, sizes and bodyfat %. So he gave up on that and changed it to bodybuilders in Magazines. Okay NOW I could talk. So I started in on the use of steriod and realistic expectations for the average man and he interupted with a "Stop" in mid sentence. I broke the 2-3 sentence rule on that one. Dayum... He got me going on and on...

Did I mention yet how much I SUCKED at this today?

How did you find someone who specialized in social skills? Did you get a referral from your previous shrink? It seems so specialized, that I am not sure where to begin looking for someone like that.

I did a LOT of research on what social skills training is and what my options were for getting better. A very interesting aside in this thread is that there exists a whole world of executive communication coaching that would fit the bill pretty well if you could find a coach willing to learn how to deal with ASD. As it was a search of social skills training in Portland landed me this page....

http://www.brookepsychologists.com/aspergersautism

which sure seemed to fit the bill just right except it is for kids. I emailed (contacted) the guy and he says he works regularly with adults and that the nuance in my training would require regular 1:1 face time with him for some period. So I agreed to go see him and get a feel for what this was about. The rest is history. Now I have to get good at this game somehow. He told me that an NT would be able to walk into his office and pretty much just get it.

Well, good luck at it. It does not seem easy. I think that I would find it easier than you, but much more difficult than an NT. Now I just need to find someone like your trainer.

Yeah, I figured it would be pretty easy for me too.

Very humbling experience actually. All my life I assumed that "small talk" was beaneath me and now to learn it is actually "beyond" me. Huh.....

Got my figers crossed for you to find something similar.

Last edited by kfisherx on 06 Mar 2011, 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

Fascinating. Thanks for posting.

You're welcome Musician999. I am keeping this thread as my journal to reference and for others to reference as well. So far it is fascinating.

I would do EVERYTHING I had the power to do to improve the things I can improve. That is who I am at my core and that won't change until the day I die I expect. The "things" I do may change as my definition of "improve" changes but I will never "back off" as you call it. My life is forward moving...

First off I have no problem with what you're doing. I'm just elaborating on what another poster said.

I'm not sure you understand what the person you were replying to was getting at.

There are many autistic people for whom simply being driven constantly "forward" (for certain definitions of forward anyway) like that is not possible. Not just that they don't feel like it. But that they can't.

I can easily compare it to a physical disorder I have. It affects my muscles. If I push myself more than a tiny bit physically, I collapse. This is because somewhere along the line, the cycle of muscular energy is not working. When I say I collapse, I mean that my muscles go so limp that I was once mistaken for unconscious, and had trouble breathing because even those muscles were affected. If I continued to push myself after I got more energy back, I would get worse and worse. At my worst, I had to rest for hours after turning over in bed, if I could even manage that.

The only possible way to get at least somewhat better from this, is to stop relentlessly pushing yourself physically, get a lot of bedrest, and do only a small amount of incredibly light muscle training to keep as much muscle as you can but without triggering collapse. It's a balancing act. It requires a completely different set of skills than simply endless forward momentum with no "backing off". To avoid backing off is both suicidal and eventually impossible (your muscles will do it for you if you refuse to do it yourself).

For some autistic people, autism works the same way. I personally have three main areas that will collapse if pushed too hard: Perception, cognition, and movement. If all three happen at once, I end up physically immobilized, in a cognitive state where I have awareness but nothing resembling thought, and unaware of my surroundings. Each can happen on its own, too, and there are varying degrees of each. Worse, the effects can be cumulative and result in prolonged, possibly permanent, difficulties in each area.

As with the muscular condition, it's completely foolhardy for a person like me not to back off. My tendency has always been to be like you -- to push forward at all costs. But I don't have a type of autism that allows me that luxury. For people like me, backing off is the only possible way to avoid spending our entire lives immobilized in every way. In fact, many people with my progressive autism related motor condition believe that one factor in who gets it is similar to post polio syndrome -- the people who try their hardest to act like their limitations don't exist are the ones hit the hardest. Being a supercrip has ugly consequences sometimes.

In this case, as in the muscle condition, the only way to handle things is to back off and cultivate flexibility instead of stubborn brute force. If I were to simply apply brute force, as I have done many times because I'm stubborn that way, I will rapidly end up in a state where such force would be impossible anyway because I'd lack the cognition to know why or how to do so. You haven't seen concrete thinking until even the concretest abstractions ("cat", "door", etc. and any symbolic thought at all) become impossible and all you're left with is raw uninterpreted sensory impressions. In that place you just can't conceive of notions like "improvement".

So I do really think it's great that some people including you can learn and adapt to all this stuff and just keep moving forward all the time. I've seen the amount of effort you put into life even before these posts, which is one reason I don't agree when you call yourself "as high functioning as they come" -- if I were to believe in functioning levels I would believe that title would go to the people who don't have to put in even a tenth of your effort in order to do things like you do. And I have similar sensibilities when it comes to pushing myself.

But what AIME was saying, was that for people much like me (who hit a very real wall of shutdown and the harder we push the harder and faster that shutdown happens), the "push ahead at all costs and adapt to the world expecting little to no adaptation in return" method is both impossible to sustain and dangerous to try.

Which is why, while practically every one of us does our best to adapt to the world (often to the point of doing damage to ourselves), we do push for the world to meet us halfway or however far we can get. Expecting disabled people to do all the adapting is a luxury of those who can do all the adapting. The rest of us need to make the world adapt to us at least somewhat or we die, it's pretty much that simple.

I do think however that my drivenness still affects me even if I can't brute force it anymore. My ability to communicate in words despite a starting point in totally nonconceptual thought says something about that. If I hadn't tried so hard to learn, I would still only be treating writing and speech as puzzles to be solved: "What would a person say now?" instead of "What am I thinking?", and I would also still barely understand the words I was using to pass as a genuine communicator. On the other hand, it's always important for me to remember that there are people who try just as hard and can't get as far. Sometimes it feels like my communication of thoughts (instead of "what would a person say here?" puzzles) hinges so much on chance occurrences that it's amazing it ever happened at all.

So I also have to be constantly aware that there are people much as I once was, that regardless of whether they appear nonverbal or highly verbal on the surface, cannot communicate many thoughts in words at all. I was highly fortunate during the time before I could use language for anything meaningful to me, to have met a person who met me halfway. I communicated in all kinds of unusual ways and she was the only person to notice or care.

When a person (again regardless of appearance) lacks true communication in words, the world really does have to meet them halfway and learn their "language" as if they are what one author called a linguistic minority of one, until such time that they may start learning the dominant language. But until that time (and frankly even after -- writing is still not my most comfortable language) at least part of the world has to adapt to them and learn their own language, both for respect and because it can be life and death.

So my views on the matter are complex: Everyone has to adapt to the world. But people can have true limits that limit their adaptation ability. And the world also has to adapt to the people in it: It's a matter of survival fir many of us. It's not easy, or quick, but there's no other ethical choice in a world with people who are limited in our ability to adapt. I would be dead if the world wasn't at least somewhat adapting to my presence in it. I need unusual equipment, housing, and services and those let me survive (this includes some quite basic survival equipment like a machine that gives me a breath of air when my brain literally forgets to breathe). Nothing in these matters has a single simple answer that works for everyone.

And I think all that is a more detailed summary of the points AIME was getting at. But since you can adapt, I wish you luck in your social skills training. My brother (autistic but opposite of me in all traits, and not the kind who burns out at all) went through something similar but I don't know the details. None of what I said is meant to disparage your accomplishments or aspirations, it's more just to elaborate on what I think AIME meant about the consequences of shutdown/burnout and various other things for people with less stable abilities.

Oh really??? I will addresss the other messages but ^^THIS^^ one blows me away a little and addresses something I keep struggling with. I would say that I am in the top 1% of Autisitic people in the world wrt "functioning" levels. How in the hell can it be that I "struggle" so much and yet succeed so well? Where are you getting the information that I am struggling so much compared to others? I do not have the "feel" for this big picture yet being a newbie to the scene but the comments made by professionals RE how very autisitc I am is matching your observations. They find me fascinating from everything I can tell just in that I made it this far in life without a DX. To them it is sooooo obvious so I must show the struggles in some "moderate" or even "severe" sort of way, but in the scales I am seeing I am very high functioning and low severity. I would love to hear more of your insight and how you are measuring this since you have a lifetime of experience with this...

I meant my words very literally and I think you and I are very similar in this as evidenced by these two statements. We each drive to OUR ABILITIES. My abilities happen to be VERY HIGH right now (which is why I consider myself as high functioning as they come) and I NEVER ONCE said or insiuated that everyone should do what I am doing in my social skills training. (I am perplexed where this whole side divergent even started or came from to tell the truth). I am HIGHLY aware that there are many (in fact most) autisitc people who simply cannot do the things that I do in life INCLUDING the social skills training. I am not only aware of the need for Self Advocacy and training of NTs RE autism and neurodiversity, but I am involved actively as a leader in my local ASAN group, I have founded a BBBS ASD organization to help emerging ASD youth integrate and advocate, I have founded an ASD board at my company to help NTs and ASD employees to learn about each other and I am actively talking to ASD professionals in my community to be a part of the change and reform that must come from the other side. This all since my DX in Novemeber. There will be much more to come as the local school district has agreed to allow me to come and educate them this year.

I don't know how else to say it other than I am aware that most ASD adults are not like me. I say that time and time again on this board. I actively seek ways to educate the NT community to our existance and our needs. I will continue to do that as much as possible while still seeking ways to improve myself. The ways that I chose to improve myself will most likely involve training and activities that cannot be reached by many others. What is it you guys want to hear me say to this end to demonstrate that I get this or what is it that I am missing that this thread keeps appearing here?

And on a personal note. to Anbuend. I <3 your accounts of life. It is SOOOOO helpful for me to really "get" it when I read it from you...

Thank you.
You explained that a lot better than I could've.

Well, if you can somehow explain why you think my social skills training thread is the right place for this thread of thought (what triggered these thoughts from the fact that I made a personal decision to do this to improve me) and how it is that I am missing your points given my work in advocacy and other ASD areas I would be very appreciative.

Fascinating thread.

I would be interested in how the outcome of the training itself might become a source of stress.

There was a time that left handedness was trained away. This was possible but I believe there were unintended consequences related to stress.

I suspect that there is a level of diminishing returns. I can train myself to do something that is contrary to my neurology, and I can make great strides. But my gut tells me the 80/20 rule applies. I wonder if at some point the effort of training ceases to pay enough dividends to be worth the effort. Clearly this is speculation, but it is an interesting one.

I suspect your intense motivation makes you an excellent candidate for this type of therapy. It would be interesting to learn how far your motivation allows you to push into the 20% realm.

Yes this is EXACTLY fascinating for these reasons for me too. Like I said, I figured that I would waltz in this session and just sort of "nail" it. NOW, I realize how disabled I really am in this area and I am questioning my ability to overcome it at any level. The coach (AKA shrink) says that I am going to be just fine at this and I will pick it up despite how horrible it all seems right now.

This is the reason it is so very important to chose the "right" coach/mentor whenever embarking on anything like this. I cannot speak highly enough about this guy after this first session. The training he was doing was very kindergarden-level on one hand. He was explaining this stuff that was so easy in concept that I felt a bit humiliated even having to hear it but he never made me feel lessor because I did. He patiently led me through the basics as well as ASD basics and all the errors and out of corners and he never once made me feel badly. He was just very matter-of-fact and yet very supportive. At one point (when I was reduced to shaking and the tears started to form because the enromity of my failures fell upon me) he stopped the session and told me that he was stopping for awhile so that I could have a break. He told me he saw my shaking and wanted me to calm down a little. Not wanting to waste time on stupid emotions, I told him I did not want to and that I could continue... He did continue but he managed to talk me off the ledge and back into the session without a meltdown or breakdown in doing so. Net is that he was VERY, VERY skilled with all of this.

Another interesting aside is that while we were sitting there in his 10th floor office, sirens began on the streets below. I was trying to focus on the session and be respectful but my shoulders rose as the noise of the sirens got louder. I was focusing really hard on NOT freaking out and just continuing the session sor of like I do at work soas not to make any sort of fool of myself. He immediately noted my shoulders rising and the tension in my body and he paused the game and the session very purposefully and matter-of-factly so that I could grab and hold my ears until the noise level subsided. I was very happy that he gave me permission to do that. Never did he make it any sort of thing. It just was. This is the "meeting halfway" thing that we are all talking about I think.

Somewhere in all of this learning, I am going to become a better advocate for myself if nothing else.