Autistic-friendly social skills vs. blending in with NT's

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I think there's a range of thoughts on what works best for online forums

One thought is to have a safe space for newbies who only want to interact with other NDs. Almost all of WP is relatively safe for NDs.

The only area where NTs frequent regularly is the parent forum. I have observed NT parents also pop into the news forum. However with the exception of me I can't recall any stayers (DW_a mom might be an NT but I could be wrong).

NTs who are researchers occasionally pop into other forums seeking guinea pigs *cough* I mean participants for research.

I also see NTs venture into the love and dating section of WP asking questions about their significant other who is on the spectrum.

Thanks for the link CarlM

A possibly useful article, for those of us who have difficulty responding gracefully to criticism: 6 Ways to Not Take Things Personally: Walk the line between overreacting and underreacting, by Ellen Hendriksen, Ph.D., Psychology Today, Nov 17, 2020.

On the other hand: how to win an argument ... NOT! A list of aggressive behaviors, as distinct from being assertive. Alas it's how all too many people try to win arguments.

My NT mum actually learnt a social skill off me.

To be fair I read it on a site which was like a magazine.

She learnt about frenemies. People who seem like friends but are really enemies.

She's lovely, NT and an ambivert. This combination of traits means she always tries to have everyone in her life and to help them out, putting her own needs aside etc. I told her she doesn't have to do this with toxic ppl who drag her down and make her feel bad.

It's years later and she still uses it and thanks me for it.

It's easy for me to use this trait cos my version of autism (I get a sense on this site not everyone's autism works like this) doesn't really need people/friends and simply benefits as a nice extra from having additional people. But it's interesting to see that it helps someone like her out as well.

Inside My Autistic Mind: Active Listening by Nathan Selove, Sep 4, 2019 -- a funny video showing some of the pitfalls of trying to imitate NT body language.

I've added a collection of tutorials about active listening to my website. Here's my introduction:

I just now added the following important paragraph to the above:

For those of us who have difficulty speaking or processing other people's speech but are better at written/typed communication, the purely content-oriented aspects of the "active listening" methodology can be applied just as well to written/typed communication as to spoken communication.

I don’t want to offend anybody, but it appears to me that this discussion omits one important aspect of social interaction – the fact that the behavioral patterns that NTs expect from others are primarily aimed at making others feel comfortable and important. Consider eye contact in 1-on-1 conversation. In comparison with the verbal content, eye contact conveys very little additional information value to the participant and for that purpose it’s unnecessary; its main purpose (it seems to me) is to make the speaker feel important by conveying that what he says matters to the listener.

I therefore think that instant of trying to “blend in” with the NTs, much more sensible strategy for NDs is to learn the kind of social skills that make people around you feel important and comfortable. The thing is that most NTs are actually decent people who tend to naturally reciprocate positive behavior. Furthermore, majority of people tend to be quite forgiving when dealing with odd behavior of someone they like and accept so learning those social skills eventually pays off.

As for the particular social skills themselves, I think that it is much better to focus on modifying your own behavior and body language based on the type of social situation you’re in rather than on the perceived mood and body language of the other person. The thing is, the variability of types of social situations encountered in everyday life is relatively small and as such it is not that difficult to learn and practice blueprints of acceptable behaviors for every single type of these situations.

Personally, I made a considerable progress in my social interactions after I started to learn and apply social skills described in How to Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which deals with patterns of behavior that are aimed at making other people feel important, and body language as described by Joe Navarro in What Every BODY Is Saying, which, among other things, raises the important point of what gestures and body postures are perceived as accommodating and make others feel comfortable. The thing is, most of the behavioral patterns outlined in those books can be memorized and applied relatively easily irrespective of the individual’s ability to read emotions and body language of others. Furthermore, learning those patterns can give you significant advantage over many NTs in social interactions. You would be surprised how many NTs do not follow the patterns outlined in these books, even though they’re clearly advantageous (consider how majority of people criticize others, are underappreciative, etc.). I could elaborate more on this point, but the post would be too long, I’m afraid.

Finally, regarding the autistic-friendly social skills, while it’s definitely a good idea to educate NTs about specific behavior of NDs, still I believe that those NDs who make the effort to learn the abovementioned social skills will be preferred (at least unconsciously) over those who don’t, for the simple reason that the NTs are simply “hard-wired” to feel more comfortable around people who exhibit certain behavioral patterns.