Social Skills Training for Adults

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I learnt a bit about small talk years ago. I still dont understand it fully, but I can do it.

Small talk is in a sense, reflection- reflecting what the other person says and perhaps adding a little more. It is like a game of tennis. ie,

Jack: "Hi Bob, nice day, isn't it?"

Bob: "Yes, it is a very nice day. Very blue sky."

This sounds a little idiotic, but this is what I was like when I first started trying to learn small talk. All I could do is reflect back what they were saying and make a small comment about it. It seemed pretty inane to me, but it is how NTs start off their conversation, by breaking the ice with "safe" talk about weather.

Also:

Sarah: "Hi Amy, your lunch looks nice. How was your weekend?"

Amy: "er..." (Amy had spent her weekend alone crying, and watching DVDs. How could she answer?)

Amy thinks a bit and then says.. "Yes, I had a nice weekend, very... relaxing."

Relaxing could be a metaphor for sad....

~

Anyway those are a few examples of what was happening when I was learning about small talk. Small talk is about sort of creating conversation which is ritualistic, and inserting appropriate pieces of information where they should be.

At first small talk seems strange, but what they really are, are a form of lubrication, to pave way to a little more conversation. NTs are nervous about talking to people they dont know very well so this is why they say these small talk things.


Personally, I think with social conversation, the aspie has a lot to learn, and it goes way beyond small talk. NT conversation is incredibly complex, and multi-layered, multi-faceted and detailed, whereas AS conversation is like a single layer of information. So the way we communicate is different from the outset.

Wow... Found this AWESOME site on the subject. I really, really like how this guy approaches the subject and how he writes.

http://www.succeedsocially.com/

Great resource, most of the time the links I find on the subject are for people with more severe social problems than me (like needing to know you shouldn't talk about someone's physical attributes loudly in public or when someone says how are you not knowing to just say good or fine). I really think this site is great for people like me with who know the basics but still can't seem to get things right.

I wish I had a better answer for you than the one I have. I have met a lot of autistic people -- hundreds just offline, more online. And my brain does this thing where it absorbs huge amounts of detailed raw information, stores it somewhere, and allows me little to no conscious or deliberate access to it. Then, as I encounter new information, it often delivers some kind of "feel" or intuition based on comparing what I'm seeing to that huge store of information. At least that's the only way I can explain the way my brain feeds me these impressions while giving me no conscious access to how it got there.

And when I deal with people (especially familiar sorts like autistic people) my brain maps out certain things about them, or so it seems. Even online, probably in response to patterns in the words that I can't even begin to see consciously. And from you, the sense I get is raw, rough, grainy, tight, and strained (I experience these things usually in a tactile or kinesthetic way, sometimes with color thrown in). This is not a sensed pattern I associate with people who don't have to work incredibly hard to get where they are. (There are other patterns that show the same sense of hard work to do what they're doing in a different way -- from observation of others, I have probably at times in my life had the same pattern as you, but right this moment it's more likely to be more a sense of precarious elaborate balance atop something high.)

People who don't have to work so hard (and who aren't currently doing so) have no sense of friction or tension the way you do. Nor do they have a sense of being balanced atop something that could topple any second the way I likely do. Nor any of the other sensations I associate with this kind of thing, such as a sense of parts out of sync with each other in major ways (something else I sometimes have). They feel more or less together, unstrained, quiet somehow in a physical sense, and as if they are standing on solid ground. You come across virtually nothing like that.

I'm afraid that may not be enough of an answer. But it's the only answer I know how to give. (This sort of thing is the way I know most things, I just don't always let on.)



The way I see it, there are at least two, not just one, areas I look at when I want to understand how someone is able to do something.

One of those is the action they're capable of doing. I suspect that's how you're measuring yourself.

The other is where they start from, and how distant it is from what they're doing.

Another might be the amount of effort required to get to their task from their starting point.

A person who is truly not struggling is someone who starts very near the skill they're using, and uses that skill with barely any effort. Whatever else you are, that is not you at all.

What's interesting about that is there's then much more complication in comparing two people's abilities.

For instance assume that the average writing skill is 10, and the average person's original starting point before they ever learned to write was 7. But most people then climb up to 9 over the years, so all they have to do every time they want to write is climb (like walking up a hill) from 9 to 10. Most people have trouble even conceiving of language skills below 7.

So... I not only have to start at somewhere from 0-2, but climb all the way up terrain that ranges from steep to vertical. But, at my best, I can climb all the way to 12.

So if you look at my writing abilities, at their best they're somewhat above average. But you can't truly see my skill level there without factoring in how far I have to climb, how hard the climb is, and the fact that unlike most people, I have to make this climb almost every time, instead of simply coming to live at that higher level the way most people do.

It also creates a weird situation relative to someone else. Let's say that person starts at 4 and can't climb higher than 5 no matter how hard they try. That person has writing that is very visibly worse than mine, and yet unlike me they always take the existence of language for granted and has no trouble with having language and symbol available to them at all times, something that I couldn't do in a million years.

Which is why I can be both better at writing and worse at writing than the exact same person in two different ways.

Anyway, I can't tell your exact starting place in the areas you are skilled at, but I know that wherever it is, the climb from there to your skills is hard work.

Also there's one more possible issue here -- not knowing how you appear to others. This was a serious problem for me. Still is in some ways. I always thought I passed until I heard enough people say otherwise. The final straw was going to a conference, and hearing people respond with amazement when I typed something -- like a potted plant had said something. I went home and videotaped myself and was completely shocked by what I saw. I suspect you don't know your appearance either, but I'm not sure.

@anbuend I think most of us would describe our functioning level in terms of

(Accomplishments)-(Assistance needed)

How much effort we need to put into get there isn't a relevant consideration. If I can compensate out for not being as clever as someone else by being better disciplined, and I can do so consistently across my lifespan so that I achieve more than he does with less assistance, why should I be considered lower functioning? My functioning (what I can do) is the same (or better). My way of doing it might be different. But that doesn't mean that I am less happy with my life.

A function is nothing to do with internal experience. In the same way a big diesel car and a small petrol car may function at the same level (pollute the environment to the same extent, be equally reliable, go at the same speed, cost the same amount of money) so they would have the same functioning level, although they achieved that outcome in a different way.

I would be interested to know what impressions you get from me generally, though I am assuming you haven't seen enough of me to comment yet.

I have been chewing on this all day and I think I like the functioning level to be equal to (Accomplishments) - (Effort) as per Anbeuend. The reason is that she is absolutely correct that the level of effort it takes to be high functioning will impact you. This is IMHO attributes to the whole "crash and burn" thing that we see so often in people who have Aspergers and HFA later in life services or not.

What really freaks me out about her post is how dead freak'n on she is in her "senses" RE me. I have heard those adjectives many times about me from other people and I have worked harder than most. BUT I am also in a place of great success and wealth. This is not easily acheived by NTs either. The quesion is if it is easier for them than me. At this point I really cannot say. Still thinking...

Note that I don't believe in functioning levels, so my views aren't as simplistic as they may look from the post I gave.

But what I meant was... I know people who can accomplish something with no effort, and others who can accomplish something with only great struggle. There's two ways this affects things. One, is that the people who can accomplish it with little to no effort can accomplish so much more if they put in equivalent effort. Two, is that the people who can accomplish it with only great effort, are more liable to all kinds of problems that the people who aren't needing to put in the effort, don't have.

Those problems include:

Burnout, obviously.

Other unrelated abilities dropping away to allow for the abilities that do exist.

Greater amounts of irritability, black and white thinking, emotional problems of all kinds, etc. Often, greater amounts of at least some of the stereotypical autistic traits because those traits come out more during stress (or come out at all due to needing to drop abilities to compensate for the energy being burned in the pursuit of unrelated things). Greater amounts of all stress-related problems both physical and psychological.

Greater amount of downtime needed, needed in the way that sleep is needed by ordinary people. This means less of the day is available to the person than to a person who can just naturally do this well. (I suspect that burnout begins to result when there is not enough time in the day to both sleep enough and get enough of this downtime and accomplish what is needed in a day. But that's just a theory.)

So even though the superficial accomplishments are the same, the person who is putting forth more effort is dealing with far more problems than the person who is putting forth none. It's just that those problems aren't (at least... not at first) in the specific areas under question that the two are superficially the same in.

Additionally, these superficial accomplishments may only be available to the person at certain times, and not others. That's what life is like for me. For brief parts of any given day, I can meet and even surpass many people with my ability to write. The rest of the day, as in most of the day? I can't even comprehend the meaning of objects let alone the meaning of words. In this way, most of my life is spent with greater trouble with language and idea-based thought than most people with intellectual disabilities, and yet a small portion of my life is spent with a greater command of some aspects of expressive language than most people in general. (My receptive language on the other hand varies from sucky to nonexistent. Even my receptive vocabulary at its best is much worse than my expressive one, and that's only during the limited time each day when I have a vocabulary.) (I should also note that the length of my writing is a fault, not a feature. It has to do with ways I think about the world that I can't truly turn off even as I am aping people with a much more abstract way of handling things. I can't summarize. But I can at least be somewhat eloquent.)

In the interests of accuracy I should note that I'm able to "borrow" time in order to allow language to exist for longer in any given day than my average in general. But that is time "borrowed" against other days and the more I do it the more I crash. And since my existing amount of language use is enough to crash me pretty often, that's bad, so I usually save it for emergencies (although the occasional Internet discussion that attracts my attention will cause me to borrow against my better judgement). And that requires more time spent in my usual state, as well as more time spent in an even less aware state than my usual one.

So for me, while my ability to use language is impressive and never to be downplayed the importance of, it's also truly the minority of my time. The majority of my time is spent in a default state of a "sensing" mind that can't comprehend what any given object is but that can gather information about it that most can't because their idea-minds are in the way. Even my language is handled largely through mechanisms different than the usual from what I can tell, but it's language and it's genuine communication and that's what counts.

Mostly I see myself (when I see myself at all) as a person in a constant state of flux, although I do have somewhat of a "default state" that most of my time is spent in (yet even in that default state, things are constantly shifting around). My highest daily-ish accomplishments (at least, "highest" in the world most people occupy... I do things in my default state that are more truly important, but few people realize that) are important, but they are also about as far from the full picture as you can get. For someone like me, judging my everyday functioning on those accomplishments is not only ridiculous but dangerous.

But as I showed above, even for someone who works really hard to get to a certain level and who stays at that level most of the day or all of the day, their life is different than someone who does the same work but doesn't have to work as hard, in really important ways.

As far as my accuracy goes... I guess that too goes back to my default way of perceiving the world. It delivers an intuition that, when it actually happens (which I have no control over), rarely misses. It's a much stronger cognitive faculty than my ability to juggle ideas the way most people do.

I tend to account for both the "burnout" aspect of things and the decreased performance aspect of things in the "Accomplishments" side of the equation.

So, because I have experienced a period of depression, which I don't think was due to burnout, but that might have contributed I am now ~ 3 years (or 15% less on the accomplishment side) than I would otherwise be. Because I can't deal with doing stuff I need to do to move my life forward and putting the effort in to look good at the same time, my performance level in the looks category is lower, and this affects my "Accomplishment" score. And also because of the depression, I have relied on additional support from friends and professionals (though I'm not sure whether it makes sense to count unhelpful assistance, particularly not if that unhelpful assistance caused some of the problems and solved none of the problems, but anyway)

My future performance is not a part of who I am now, so there is no reason to count that. It will apply to my lifetime average functioning level in the future, but there is no reason to count it now. Also, the fact that other people may be capable of achieving more if they put in the same amount of effort is meaningless unless they actually do put in that effort. Their future performance is not part of who they are now, so I don't see any point in counting the possibility that they could work harder as part of their functioning level. It isn't part of the level they are functioning at.

I suppose I'd also distinguish between my current functioning level, and my average functioning level, and consider the latter the most accurate description of "me" as it includes all of the functioning levels I have had in the calculation.

I was experimenting with these concepts for a while. Having a strong aversion to the idea of small-talk, I hit barriers (in interviews, etc) when I realized that small-talk in my areas of interest had also been difficult to reduce to short-soundbites. I decided to reframe/redefine the idea of "small-talk" as "concise-communication." I took on twitter (for awhile) as an experimental way to try and retrain my mind to reduce complex thoughts into short sentences like a puzzle; reducing, refining, and shifting ideas/words into more concise formats. For anyone with an aversion to Twitter, I'm sure there are many other similar/low-tech mediums to do the same thing. The idea (or hope) was that consistently doing it for a long enough period of time would add/change networks in my brain to more quickly and easily be able to reduce my thoughts into concise communication modalities. Although, in a way, I had a certain degree of trepidation, as it's essentially serving as a pattern-interrupt of my normal detailed response to communication and/or stimuli; retraining the mind to overly-simplify thoughts. However, some thoughts may actually be more useful (personally and socially) if they are in a more concise format; especially when it comes to managing time.

Ideally I would want to keep my depth of thought (as I've internalized it into my identity), but also be able to shift communication strategies (where needed) if it becomes beneficially useful. However, I don't know if this tactic would have been useful (yet) as I ran into various pattern-interrupt situations related to survival that I've yet to fully deal with. Though, I definitely think going full-force into a social-skills training environment, with verbal communication, would accelerate this process. The process may quicken this change (if possible), but may also cause more emotional perturbations depending on how abrupt the speed of change overwhelms. Compared to my "snails-pace" strategies of working in a quiet environment at my own pace, starting with comfortable nonverbal modalities, I can't help but think there may be a more balanced middle-ground that reduces emotional perturbations while ensuring faster progression with detailed strategies.

However, the next step, after following concise communication, is the ability to know/intuit when to add/interject into conversations. Having slightly progressed in simplifying my thoughts, but not enough to be able to start/continue conversations (interesting/otherwise) in a smooth manner, I still find it relatively difficult to contribute to a conversation in a meaningful way without interrupting other people and/or disrupting the flow of the conversation. I've also become aware that my shorter responses to an ongoing conversation often pop into my mind during contextually irrelevant moments whenever the conversation switches topic. I'm curious if this would be related to how my brain sifts through the detailed thoughts to arrive at concise thoughts, or if it's just a matter of sensory-integration processing and/or sensory-overload. For instance, If sensory-overload is reduced, would timely communication (at contextually relevant times) improve?

Congratulations on having your "feedbacks" removed. I also work a job with relatively good pay, and I also obtain similar feedbacks in my reviews (not exact). I am currently deciding whether to tell my team at work that I have Aspergers. I have had professionals recommend that I definately tell them, and others recommend I steer away from telling them.

It's obvious you told your company about your diagnosis, as quoted above. How did you go about it? Did you tell them at your performance review, or in some other way?

One of my biggest concerns is if I tell them, they will say that I can "easily learn" the required social and group interaction skills, and that it's not really an excuse to have my feedbacks removed from my review. Did you come up against this when you were in the process of having your feedbacks removed, and if so, how did you respond - how did you convince them that for aspies, social skills are not "easy" to learn, but rather require a lot of time, practice, and money?

idk... perhaps I got lucky. I simply told my boss that I just got DX's with Aspergers. He did not know what it was and I did not really know either so we both sort of learned together. An interesting aside here is that he was transitioning into the role as my new manager and my old manager actually had a son with Aspergers so she was able to sort of help us figure it all out. When my review came back from HR a few weeks later, he and I both recognized the feedback as being Asperger's related and HE was the one that insisted that the feedback be removed. He also made sure that HR recorded my disability. I am protected (as are you) under the ADA here and companies like Intel do NOT mess with the ADA. If he did NOT do that, my shrink was ready to go to bat for me. When I told him RE the review, he got very defensive for me until I assured him that my boss handled it correctly. In other words, they do not have a choice to believe you or not since it is easily defendable by a Phd or other professional. As a follow up to my first session, I have actually asked my boss to speak to my new social skills coach (AKA new shrink) to give him feedback on areas of improvement if he has them. Everyone is working completely WITH me on this.

I just completed a 4 hour class sponsored by my company on Microinequeties given by Steve Young and developed by MIT. It is about Body Language and how we communicate outside of words. It was a good class and I was able to pick things up pretty quickly. I sucked at the role playing stuff and felt a bit self-consious but was able to talk about neuro-diversity in the class. One of the managers in the class was speaking about an employee who he has who "stims" all the time which made him feel uncomfortable. He told the story that when he brought it up to the employee the employee told him that is just who he is and the manager was complaining that the employee would not change. I took that opportunity to explain to the class about what "stimming" behavior is and why it is NOT something that the manager should expect an employee to change. Afterall, we do not expect people in wheelchairs to walk because the wheelchairs make us uneasy, right?

I am really excited after this class because I can actually see where I will be able to gain some level of mastery of all of this. It will be a lot of work, but I am pretty good at working...

Me thinks you are a force of nature

Think tsunami here. Imma gonna roll right over this one. (she says hopefully)

Just got off the phone with my boss and I told him about the class that I took. I also discussed my social skills training offsite at the shrink's office and he agreed to have a discussion with my shrink in a few weeks after he had a a tiny bit more time to think on it. He immediately gave me feedback RE my inability to do "small talk" and agreed with the shrink that was the right place for me to start. He says I am getting a little better with it with him though.

A really cool aside from this is that he pulled up my 360 feedback from my review this year to see if there was any feedback (negative) that might be useful to my improvement in this area and he informed me there was no negative feedback. I laughed because I thought he was kidding and he told me quite clearly that there was NO negative feedback in all the review data collected this year. Wow... Cool.

Social Skills Training Session 2:

So very interesting that my previous log posting resulted in a conversation RE the possibilities of "burn out" due to stress of this undertaking. As the days progressed after my first session, I noted a definite increase in symptoms and also in stress levels. I started having nightmares and a reoccurring dream. Subsequently my sensory processing abilities and executive functions abilities began to drop again. I recognized these as issues and decided that I needed to deal with them before we went into more social skills training. So I sat down for a few hours and composed a short email describing the dream and the issues and explaining how I was between angry and denial in my process of accepting my label.

I did this via email because I knew that I would never have the ability to articulate that in a session with him at this time. As I get to know him better, I will be able to articulate more but because I suck at talking about feelings and deep concepts, I took the time to write this up beforehand. I expected him to print and read the email during our session (and told him that in fact) but he actually read it and responded. I thought that was pretty cool and confirms with me that this guy is a pretty good character.

Of most significance is my reoccurring dream. In it, I am drawing a Map. Actually I am drawing the path or route on an existing Map. I do not know my exact destination but I have an general idea where it is so am feeling okay with my route. Then I get interrupted and someone asks me what the Key is for my Map. I realize that I do not know it nor do I know where to seek the answers. (the key means the distance of miles per inch) I wake up with my heart pounding. I then remember RE ASD and I scan my brain hoping that my DX is just a dream. I then realize it is real and my new reality and my stomach gets a rock in it. That is how my days were all starting this past week. My sensory processing and executive function were failing me during the day and my sleep was interrupted with these weird dreams.

I will just cut and paste for you guys his kind response…

Thank you for your email. Integrating a new understanding of yourself and the people around you is difficult. You are right in viewing it as a grieving process.

I encourage you to think of viewing your world using two maps. There is the old map that you've used for decades. This map works well. This map feels familiar. You know the terrain.

Now you and I are taking a look at a new map. Reading the key to this map isn't easy. Right now this new map is a struggle to understand. Since its hard to understand it isn't as useful as your old map right now.

You can't switch to the new map overnight (or even in a month). Try not to stress yourself out trying to understand small talk, etc right now.

I encourage you to keep using your old map at work, when playing football, etc.

When you understand the key to the new map, then you can try using it occasionally, but you'll still use the old map most of the time. With time you'll be able to use the new map whenever you want.

Trying to change overnight will cause your brain to have all those thoughts in your working memory 24/7 (and the anxiety and bad feelings too). With those thoughts taking up so much space, it will be harder to concentrate on your work and play.

Pace yourself, be patient, and keep using that old (quite useful) map for now.

So while his concept of Map and even his interpretation of my dream felt a bit abstract to me, I think his advice was solid. We started this session discussing this email and my anxiety. The fact is that the Map to me was much more literal and I think that my real issue was that I have to come to terms with the fact that this social skill issues I have is going to take me a long time to actually work through. No "rolling over the wall" sort of thing as I was hoping. I realize and acknowledged that this will not be worked through in any "quick" sort of way. I actually sort of laughed at one point and said, "I think this means that you and I are going to be friends for some time." He agreed and we set up regular sessions over the next months starting 3 weeks from now.

He seemed to understand my view of the dream and the issue I was having in the dream but he also offered in more detail his more abstract way of looking at this dream and helped me to understand that I already have a very good way of navigating this earth. He reminded me of my success on this planet and how I have some pretty solid strategies already. He told me that I need to come to the sessions and experience them only for now. Then I am to box up the learnings and put them away until the next session without trying to implement anything. He said that after a few months of sessions THEN I will have the skills and the ability to go out and try the skills. (AKA build a new "life" Map)

That conversation and the email actually really helped me. There is no RUSH to fix this except in my mind. It was funny because as he was making my appointments he found he did not have anything open for me at my requested time until 3 weeks from now. He asked me very specifically if waiting 3 weeks would cause my too much angst. I promised him I would be "good" and that I think it will be fine. We'll see… LOL

It is obvious that I am very close to falling off a cliff here but if I stay honest about my symptoms, stay aware of what is happening and keep him as a resource I think we can do this without me breaking or burning out. We talked some more about my new "understanding" of the world and how I felt pretty stupid. He advised me to not use that word and said that he thinks that word best describes someone who cannot get better. I agreed to accept his definition though I don't have the same feelings RE the word and my definition is much more literal. (I will NEVER understand the emotional content behind words that people seem to have)

After that discussion I shared with him comments from my boss RE my tendency to come into a conversation with no "small talk" and just get into the "meat" of my business. He smiled and turned to grab the stack of cards for our game. There were red, white, green, orange and yellow cards. I inventoried the colors this time and I freaked out a bit as I wondered WTF all those colors were about. I also noted that seeing the cards made my gut ache and I felt like I wanted to run screaming , crying or both from the session. Instead I dug my feet in and started to listen to what he was saying trying to breath through the anxiety.

He confirmed what my boss said and he noticed my tendency to want to get to the "meat" of a topic as well. He again articulated that small talk was more about keeping the subject matter "light". He also stated that small talk in groups of people that are strangers is often kept to "safe" topics. He mentioned that the weather, food and maybe even other people were "safe" topics. I was surprised to hear him say that as I try to NEVER talk about other people. I asked him how "talking about other people" was different than gossip and he stated that you have to be aware that what you are saying is complimentary and not bad. I argued that I generally do not talk about other people because it is not safe for me. He acknowledged that might not be safe and then he asked me what topics I would consider safe for an Intel function. I answered that our projects or corporate news/events would be a few safe topics then added Industry events and news. He agreed with my answers and then we talked about non-safe topics for awhile. He "dinged" me for coming right out and saying something about "fat" people in the last session. I called him a bastard with my inside voice for having the ability to remember that despite seeing so many other clients between that session and this. (Note to self: He will remember the mess ups) Of course on the outside I just sort of grimaced because he was right. I did just come out and say that word but in my defense I made sure he wasn't overweight before I said it. (Yeah, I know… it's still wrong but I will NEVER understand the emotional content surrounding these words and why fat is wrong but obese is okay... Sigh..)

After that discussion, he launched into this really cool analogy that I will spend a great deal of time with over the next few weeks in my mind. He said that small talk was like "Improv". He asked me if I was familiar with Improv. I smiled because my oldest child has a degree in theater and she did a lot of Improv when she was in Portland. I told him I was. He talked about what Improv was a bit and then he got to the point of the matter which is that in Improv each actor has to "hold up" or "support" the other actors no matter how "weird" it gets. He made the example that if one actor said they were a Martian from another world, that the other one would then make a comment to the effect that they saw green ears or some such statement. He said that in small talk it is each persons responsibility to hold up or support the other person in the conversation.

He handed me 5 red cards this time and I felt myself begin to panic as that was one more card than last time which meant the game would go longer. This also meant the time for me to perform was about to start. He took 5 cards for himself. I want to note here that I have been practicing making "light" statements about random objects all week. If I saw a tree (for example) I prepared a few phrases and memorized them over the weeks so I felt like I was better prepared and hoped he would talk about trees or one of the subjects I had prepared for. He laid down his card and the said something about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. As soon as the card hit the table my breath stopped and a million images from the tragic event appeared in my mind. I saw people crying, I saw cars floating, people getting sucked into the water, houses being ripped from the foundation… etc… etc… The emotions and the pictures were everywhere. I looked stupidly at the card he had laid and said nothing. Then I got pissed because I should have known this topic would be the one he picked. Then I saw trees in my brain but could not fit them into the conversation. Finally, I looked at him and told him that I did not know where to start. There were too many images.

I told him I wanted to ask him if he had seen any of the videos on Youtube but I did not have question cards available. I asked if it was okay to ask questions. He first declined stating that he wanted to master the red cards but then changed his mind and handed me 3 green cards. On the cards where the words, "Who, What, Where, When and How". I sighed because there was still no way for me to ask him if he had seen the YouTube videos. No "if" word on the card. I protested his cards. He then launched into a lecture on closed versus open ended questions and he directed me to use the 5 words on the card to elicit and "open-ended" response. By this time I had forgotten what his last statement was and I could not think of anything to ask. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and I must have looked like I was going to cry because he then changed his mind again and told me to go ahead and ask him my question to see what happens. I did and then laid down a green card sighing with relief to get rid of another one. He responded that he had not seen any of the videos and laid down a card. "Oh, that rat…" Now I was stuck again and right back where I was before. My goal was to get him to talk instead of me and that did not work at all. I thought again of what to say and again saw a million different things in my mind. Finally, he asked me to describe one of the videos I had seen so I did. He stopped me a little while into my description and told me too lay down another card. I breathed another sigh of relief as the card left my hand… 3 more to go…

Whew… Yep…. It was that much fun to get through one simple little conversation. Have I mentioned yet how badly I suck at his game?

Besides all the struggle we did have a good learning or two. At one point in the game, he made a comment that he was worried that a big earthquake and tsunami would hit Portland like that one as he laid down a card. I giggled because it was an absurd statement coming from someone as smart as him. I actually looked up and quipped, "That's a stupid thing to say." He had to laugh at me initially because it was such a bold statement but he got serious right away and made sure I understood that I was not to say that in a real conversation. I told him I understood though truth be told I probably might have said it. He then said that we would attempt to take those feelings I had towards that statement and turn that into something that was socially more "acceptable" So we analyzed the reason I felt is was stupid and came up with several appropriate responses and he introduced me to the concept of making a "social lie". A "social lie" would be like me responding to his "stupid" statement with something like, "I sometimes think about earthquakes in this area too but I try not to let it bother me too much". I told him I understood the concept but probably could not come to it in "real time" at this point in my learning. He was okay with that. The foundation for "social lie" has been set.

I don't think there was anything else of too much worth to talk about in this initial post though I am sure more will come as I think it through some more… (3 weeks until the next one)

Last edited by kfisherx on 19 Mar 2011, 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you for the update.

One thing I noticed recently for myself was that if I removed one thing from my routine set of activities was that I suddenly had more energy for everything else and less stress around it. I hadn't even realized how much I was overloading myself just from... running internet chat clients. That sounds minor, but the way they alert me to new chat messages and how many people try to keep in touch (I know more than a few people online) just puts so much weight on me, and I didn't really know how to take care of myself and tell them I needed a break.

MY POINT is that it's so easy to feel like everything's under control and then just one more thing can be one too many things - not that learning social skills is one too many things, but it sounds like more need to manage everything to integrate it when integration time comes.

Agree with everything you are saying. He mentioned a few moths of work for him and me before I even have to begin and then we will start slowly. This will put me at the end of football season. This is my last season so when that goes away my life will free up tremendously and the integration of this stuff can then happen in a more serious fashion. I just have to hold myself up until June which seems to fit his timeline pretty well for me. If not, I will push back and he will be fine with that. We are going to settle in for a long run on this one. At least that is how it is panning out today.