For the millionth time: Social skills can't be learned

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Agreed.

Perhaps you feel it is impossible for ‘you’ to improve ‘your’ social skills. Most would argue that you can.

Though to say that it is impossible for others to learn social skills is like me saying it is impossible for others to learn how to write neatly when taking notes quickly because I think I can’t learn to do so even though I have tried and tried and tried. My experience does not make a rule for others. Nor does yours.

It is possible to learn the social rule that it is rude to stare at people. It is possible to learn the social rule that using too formal language in a social setting can confuse people or simply put them off. It is possible to learn the social rule that certain body language gives certain messages (be them correct or incorrect). Many other social rules more complex than these have, and can, be learned by many Aspies.

It is more likely that someone will learn something if they believe they can and less likely they will learn if they don’t believe they can.

Perhaps any failed attempts by you to learn social skills have formed limiting beliefs in you. Perhaps because you believe you can’t you look only for evidence that supports that limiting belief. You can overcome the limiting beliefs you clearly hold. Give it a try. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is good for this. Good luck.

Social skills can indeed be learned. Not saying it's easy, or not tiring, or that a person will always unfailingly manage to remember which ones to apply in which situation, but they can indeed be learned and used. Sometimes social skills even boil down to just a brief "script" like remembering to say please, thank you or use the polite rote phrases to greet someone, etc.

It's absolutely possible to improve your social skills.

My social instincts are, um, non-existent. The Miss Manners for kids book was enormously helpful - I now know what fork to use, circumstances under which thank you notes are warranted, etc.

I took acting lessons. Eye contact, for instance, is easy. On stage, you shift your gaze away from the other actor's face in the direction of the audience. Eye contact isn't really being made, of course; but the unease is lessened considerable. Speaking only two or three short sentences at a time, enunciating clearly, and speaking just loud enough for your audience to hear you are also helpful. Personal space is still hard to judge, though. On stage, we're taught to maximize the available space, and not approach within arm's length unless it was a dramatic scene requiring physical contact.

You can learn to do the basics of socializing. But you'll never get what nts get out of it. It's a loser's game, because there is no gain for the autistic, only the nt.
Screw 'em. I'm done playing.

True though it depends on the filter. In my case filtering can sometimes feel like lying. For instance I am advised not to disclose my disability but that is lying because it is hiding a part of who I am.

I myself have learned social skills, so it can be done.
Sure, it is hard, they will remain rudimentary, un-automated and unpolished, but you can most certainly learn more than just the basics.

It is not just trying to relate to people without unnecessarily putting them off. It is mainly about regulating the emotions of others (and oneself), because NTs see the emotions much better that come up with a topic and have intuitively a better understanding about how damaging anxieties, anger, frustration can be, if you dont care about them immediately.

I think that the basic social skill set of an Aspie should be different from that of an NT, something similar to the attitude of the person I have already quoted: "That is why i consciously remain open to everyone and altruistic, and say truth (in a diplomatic way), even if i know i will have to suffer the consequences."

Not that all this is not also quite important for NTs, but an NT knows better when it is appropriate to shut down on someone and how to, to refuse to give without being egocentric or too arbitrary, to say things indirectly or to lie (very seldom!) without distorting the truth too much. NT s should focus on the management of emotions.

I agree that social skills can't really be learned, because the subtleties are the biggest stumbling block

Autism does not prevent people from being able to cognitively learn social skills. It only stunts our social intuition--barring severe cognitive dysfunction/delay (which are sometimes--but not always or even commonly--co-morbid with autism spectrum disorders), we can learn to compensate cognitively for our lack of social intuition.

But not fully.

An NTs social intuition has also been build up cognitively BTW, but then has been automatized (compare: The Empathy Imbalance Hypothesisof Autism, which says that people on the spectrum lack COGNITIVE empathy), it is like with driving a bike; then it is not that NTs reach kind of a standstill at the age of 14 or 16, and would not use any cognitive skills on top of their intuition, too, they constantly add new knowledge, so that their old social intuition gets better and their cognitive skills develop, too, even if comparatively less dramatically when as a child or when Aspergers might do at a later age. An apsie cant really catch up. He can bring his aspie view and perception instead, and can acquire a wisdom that can be equally rich and beneficial than that of an NT can, but only when he is fully aware that he cant judge people like others can.

The big value of an autistic mindset and an NT mindset is that they are complementary to one another, the big threat lies in the wrong belief that through their compensatory efforts aspies manage to judge people and social situations as well (or better) than NTs (for the millionth time: they very clearly dont), and in masking their deficits, so that they are allowed to occupy the corresponding power positions which otherwise we would not allow them to occupy. It would be very good if more aspies would be able to accept this simple truth.

At this point I would like to express my gratitude to the TO for this nice title.

it is sooooo tiring though.

Wrong Planet's Alex Plank and I are among several people I know who have described how movies in our childhoods improved our social skills. Mimicry of desired behaviors through "masking" is a useful (but, yes, tiring) tool. But, I admit that it might not be so useful for some or even many autistic individuals. Mileage may vary, and all that.

Even if you can't learn social skills, it may help if you are open to learning things that other people find offensive. Sometimes people will actually mention things you should look into--they may go into detail if you ask.

We don't lack cognitive empathy, it's our emotional empathy that doesn't work as well. We use cognitive empathy to compensate.

The idea that we can't learn social skills is self-defeating. It's not about "accepting a simple truth", it's about understanding how autism works and how it doesn't, so as best to live with it in a world in which autistic minds are a small minority in a largely NT world. Misunderstanding one's own deficits and strengths will not help in that regard.

Realistically, we may have some social challenges, but we can use our cognitive abilities to mitigate some of those challenges. It does take work and effort, but everything worth doing in life does. We do have the choice not to work on our social challenges if we don't want to, but we have to understand that-- living in a social world and being members of a social species--if we choose not to work on our social deficits those deficits are going to contribute to social isolation. If social isolation is not your goal, then you need to be willing to work at those social challenges. The human brain (even the autistic brain) is very plastic and never stops changing throughout our lives because of our changing circumstances and experiences--we can learn to harness this power to our favour rather than our detriment, if we have the will to do so.