Using books to overcome social awkwardness

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Jet102fm
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28 Jun 2011, 2:21 pm

Can anyone recommend fairly effective books that deal with training social skills?



Indy
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28 Jun 2011, 3:31 pm

I used this book when I was younger. It helped me learn how to compliment people properly and avoid arguments. I learnt a lot about how other peoples brains work.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Friends-Andrew-Matthews/dp/0843129697/

It's very basic advice, so it might not be useful for you.



JohnOldman
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28 Jun 2011, 5:23 pm

I've haven't read the whole thing, but this book has helped me with social phobia and it has a large section on social skills:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6893 ... nd_Shyness



arko5
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30 Jun 2011, 6:09 am

There's quite a lot of good information floating around on the internet, it's generally aimed at shy people but I've found it quite useful. Couple of things that helped me were starting to read the paper (news allows you to talk to pretty much anyone, just avoid politics) and cultivating some more 'mainstream' interests (personally I started watching films, again you can talk to anyone about that). For body language/facial expressions books are pretty much useless, check out videos of public speakers and make notes on their actions. Presidents are particularly good for this, check out videos of Bill Clinton. Finally it's important to actually practice social skills, all the books in the world won't help if you never actually speak to people.


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