To those who volunteer, did it improve your social skills?

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My first volunteer job was in an animal shelter for a school project. They basically had me washing kitty litter boxes in a dark room in the basement for five weeks. It's hard work that obviously needs to get done, but I found it overstimulating and was grateful when it was over. As for social skills, they didn't get any better there because I was so isolated from everybody else.

My second was in a library. I got to shelve books and I really enjoyed it. I like tasks that involve routine and organization. I didn't talk to people a lot, but that was fine with me. The people that work there are really understanding and had no problem explaining things to me so that I understood them.

Some did, some didn't. People will put up with some awkwardness for free labour at a routine task. Making people feel stupid was a hazard if I tried to do my best. I worked really hard for our town festival, missed one meeting, and was never invited back.

I volunteered for Samaritans for 2 1/2 years here in the UK. This was 2 years ago, before I was diagnosed with Aspergers but during the 3 years spell I was wondering if I was and was researching it.

It was one of the best things I ever did. It was also possibly the thing I have excelled at too.

It is such a calm, quiet place to be, and you have to be so focussed on the callers that the rest of my life was left at the door and I had a mindset of purely trying to help others for those few hours per week. It throws up some extreme situations but much of it is about following protocol (not a script), I also told myself that I was the one in the safe happy position, so no matter how difficult a call became I reminded myself that I was the lucky one and I would walk away at the end of my shift and go home happy.

Gave up as time wise it became difficult. Also night shifts were hard, I never coped well with lack of sleep the next day.

You can't do a controlled experiment

You can't measure social skills

And I worked at many volunteer jobs

Teaching assistant

Food preparation

Obituary enterer (typing)

It did more I think for confidence in social stuff.

Work parties were good because attention was shared on the tasks in hand, and through this sort of activity I came to know people, including the person who has been an honourary big sister for the last 27 years.

I also learned one or two basic construction skills and branched out into electrical installation from my background in electronics.

I also came accross one or two persons in charge of projects who were, to put it gently, a bit rubbish at managing people and as a result the project had a distressingly high turnover of volunteer effort.

Well, it's not exactly a volunteer group than it is a support group for trauma, and we volunteer to help each other. I was forced into it after avoiding "talking about my feelings" for years and ending up barely anywhere with my healing. Let's just say I wasn't exactly a "warm" person. More naturally logical even before trauma.

I've spent a lot of time empathizing with others. Trying to understand their stories. Handling controversial issues without hurting people. Reading multiple psychology articles. Learning how to understand people's individual personalities in the group. It hurt my brain like hell, and I found being more feely embarrassing, but I've gotten better socially. More trusting. Nicer.

I guess it was a little inspiring. Seeing other people with downright horrible backstories who still try to move on. What a crazy ride to do something completely opposite from my personality, huh? It's still counter to how I usually am, and it's too intellectually and emotionally straining to do it full time, but i'm satisfied with that.

Oh well then. Life goes on.

Yes, volunteer work (I had many) did expand my social skills repertoire. So did every paid job I ever had, including some I was fired from.

It made me a little more confident maybe, nothing drastic. I still feel really awkward talking to strangers though.

volunteer work game me an opportunity for social interaction.

some of those interactions were positive.

some of those interactions were negative.

the positive ones were like, whooptie do.

the negative ones were like, subject to imagination

cost benefit analysis

in almost all instances, it was not worth it

worthwhile

risk versus reward

unless you are extremely passionate about the cause

BOOK: The Chapter 'Ticket to Kaunas' in 'An Autobiography by Daniel Tammet, Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant' is a terrific chapter on Tammet's experience in volunteering with a group to teach English, and assist with small-business development in a time after Lithuania became an independent nation after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Despite Autism, Daniel Tammet mustered that personal growth to "step outside of his familiar routines" of his native East London to volunteer in Lithuania. If this awesome story can resonate with you, then that means we can never reject the activities of volunteering in our own familiar communities!

BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Born-Blue-Day-Ex ... 1416549013

the volunteer work that i did did not appear to have improved my social skills.

no significant change, positive or negative, visibly.

although volunteer work could have other good results.

Volunteering did not improve my social skills. I have the social awareness of a four year old. Part of what makes me unable to improve my social skills is that in order for me to do something, it has to make logical sense to me. Social skills very rarely ever make any logical sense to me. So I will never understand them nor do I want to. It takes me way too much energy and effort to try to understand something that makes no logical sense at all.

Not really. It just made my parents complain that I was prioritizing everything over them, so I stopped doing it. But what I did was to accompany mentally ret*d people to a few more or less interesting places, together with a few classmates vastly more socially skilled than me, mostly female, and I still had time to get two remarkable experiences:
• Being mistaken for one of the ret*d people. Now, in retrospect, it seems like it was bound to happen, but I hadn’t been officially labelled as mentally defective yet.
• Having my hand squeezed tightly and eagerly by a woman, interlocking her delicate fingers with mine. I’ve never even come close to experiencing it again. I was sixteen; she was twenty-seven, mentally ret*d and clearly desperate in some romantic way, as she’d easily start telling any male volunteer she loved him. We went to the cinema, where I sat next to her, and that’s where she grabbed my hand. It was extremely and surprisingly erotic to my completely untrained teenage self, though I was discreet and didn’t let anyone else know what was going on—particularly not what was going on inside my pants. I wonder if it could be construed as rape on my part, especially if it happened today.

Volunteering is a good way of making friends and improving social skills. In fact, I've found that joining activity clubs didn't improve my social confidence as much as doing volunteer work did. One time I joined an arts and crafts club, and even though I like arts and crafts, I still didn't seem to make any friends. I felt like a fish out of water. But I done voluntary work at 2 different places, and I made friends and I gained social confidence out of it. I don't do voluntary jobs any more, but I am still in touch with the friends I made. Maybe it's easier to gain social skills when volunteering because it's more like an easy and pressure-free version of a job, and work involves teamwork, so I've found that teamwork gives me confidence and more able to form social relationships with people.

So, I'd say go for voluntary work!

volunteer work, is similar to other social activities, in that it is good, until it ends up bad. kind of like playing Blackjack. the card game.

volunteer work could improve, have no effect, or reduce social skills. the impact could be temporary or permanent.

volunteer work affects other things, not just social skills.

for example, the volunteer work allegedly affects the original cause .

the volunteer work might be worth the time/$$/energy involved, even if it reduces social skills. sacrifice.

cost benefit analysis.

having said that, thus far, worked at many volunteer jobs. at most one of those jobs was worth the cost benefit analysis

post traumatic stress disorder

I've had a chance to participate in activities supportive of people with developmental disabilities; as well as supportive of people with Autism and Aspergers. I may have a chance to further participation in volunteering.

I all likelihood, our interest in volunteering is boosted where volunteer opportunities involve people who have similar needs/interests to our own!