Any point in social skills therapy?

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Since I have very few interests, no interest in discussing them and no common interests with NTs, I don't see what I'd talk to other people about. I don't need social skills for my job. Seems like it would be a waste of money but therapists say it's some kind of silver bullet for social anxiety.

If the goal is to treat SA, I'd say take the social skills classes. I've been going to a social skills group for two years, and it's helped me with my conversation skills, which were the root of a lot of my anxiety. Essentially it's all about exposure. The more you can socialise successfully without something terrible going wrong, the less anxious you'll feel the next time you have to interact with someone.

1. No reason why there are no NTs with your interests; they might be hard to come by where you live but you're making what seems just like a wrong assumption.
2. You seem to be assuming you would only be interacting with NTs socially, which is just plain wrong again. I bet you you've even met aspies who you didn't know were aspies.
3. Talking to other people will actually give you opportunity to find other things you might be interested but you didn't know it. Sure your mind can come up with all sorts of things it wants to explore, but that in no way, shape or form means that your mind is the ONLY thing that will 'find' things that you like. Just because you cannot fathom what you would find interesting to talk about with other people right now, that is not representative that there is nothing that you would find interesting. This is especially true if you've never really had any good conversations with people; one does not know what one is missing when one has never experienced it.
4. I don't understand that if you truly believe everything you've said above, why you have social anxiety in the first place. You seem to be completely and utterly uninterested in other people, therefore why would you have an anxiety about them? It rather seems to me that you could have the reality of your situation backwards, in that you do not want to talk to people about things because it is anxiety causing for you. Not completely for sure, I know that smalltalk and stuff can be odious, but have you ever actually communicated with people about your passions? It's wonderful, I find, to be able to do so.
5. It can help you find non-NT friends too. Accidentally being an as*hole because of poor social skills can offend everyone, not just NTs.
6. If you want a love life.

Anyways, therapy CAN get expensive. It's something you need to think about. But yes, I think that it could definitely help your social anxiety. I don't know how much your anxiety is a problem though. That's another thing to balance out. It's enough that your therapist seems to think that social anxiety is a serious problem for you in life. Silver bullet? Nothing will be, don't fool yourself, but if done properly it should be helpful.

It might help with other things like job interviews.

Last edited by slw1990 on 24 Apr 2016, 11:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know, I do care what people think of me but I just find people very intrusive and superficial.

When Im talking to someone I'm only interested in talking about me, I have little interest in what's going on with other people, even my own family. Also there's never really a conversation I wanted to join in. I've got to the point where I don't see the point in talking to anyone. Other people are just on an entirely different wavelength. I'm mean why bother with it, what difference does talking make. I'm more interested in doing things than talking about them whereas other people are the opposite...

Maybe you just need to meet the right people (not intrusive, not superficial, prefers doing to talking, on the same wavelength), or find people to have fact-based discussions with if you don't care about what's going on with other people.

And you could look at it like an exchange or a trade where the "price" of the opportunity to talk about yourself and be listened to is to listen to the other person talk about themselves.

I have nearly no interest in socialising. I would not benefit from social skills training because I just want to avoid socialising.

This is self-fulfilling. Why would you, or anyone for that matter, be interested in someone/something when you know nothing about them and you have not bonded with them at all? People are only interesting when you care about them, topics are only interesting when you care about them.

For me, my lack of wanting to socialize is part and parcel of a general lack of wanting to do things, among other things like not wanting to put in effort, not wanting to feel ashamed of myself, etc.

I’m interested in the online social skills training group.I have better social skills online than in real life.This was a very informative article for me.

I think learning social skills, or at least learning how to mimic them, is usually to one's advantage. Even though I am still extremely withdrawn, I am glad that I have learned what I have so far. It gives me more confidence if nothing else.

I was in a social skills class in high school. I thought it was stupid. I got nothing out of it. The teacher was extremely uptight. She got bent out of shape because the boys in the class and I were making references to a scene in a Family Guy episode. I tried to hang out with the people in this class outside of class but none of them wanted to.

I've been thinking of taking social skills classes. The trouble is that evening and weekend classes are hard to come by.