What does it mean to "lack social skills"? & t

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What does it mean to "lack social skills"?

Many people on this board say they lack social skills for whatever reason. However, what that means for one person is completely different for another. To one person, lacking social skills means not being able to communicate with anyone whatsoever. If that were the case, then not a single person who posts on this board is "lacking social skills" because you need social skills to communicate with someone else regardless of what is said or what the medium is.

Or rather, does it mean "I'm not leading groups, am never the life of the party, am always the quiet and shy one in a lot of group settings, convey bad body language, etc."?

The truth is there's nothing WRONG with your social skills (or lack thereof as you may claim). Rather, it's more of a case of "My social skills are not where I would like for them to be."

There are many reasons why you may not have as great of social skills as you'd like to have, but there is ONE reason that prevails and overtops them all.

That reason simply is: It is what you think about, and thus it is the identity you created for yourself.

All the great philosophers, from Socrates to Buddha to Ghandi to Einstein, may have had opinions that confliced with each other, but there was one thing that they all agreed on - We are but a product of our thoughts, and what we think, we become.

So, for the person who claims to "lack social skills" or "does not have great social skills", that person's world of identity is that of someone who isn't great at socializing, and thus the actions he takes are those of a person who isn't great at socializing - much of those actions being thoughts. Next time you are in a conversation with someone, or if you can think back to the last time you had a conversation with someone. Recall the thoughts that were going through your head. Were you thinking a lot about how you were coming off, what the other person was thinking, etc.? Did having a conversation in any way feel awkward to you because you were telling yourself in some way or form "This is not me - I am not a conversationalist and my social skills aren't all that great" in your subconscious mind? Are you constantly analyzing how badly your conversations go or how they could have been better? If so, you are simply taking the actions of your identity of not being much of a sociable person.

If you wish to become someone with great social skills, simply think about the things that someone with great social skills thinks about. Redevelop your world of identity as that of someone who is sociable and then you will take the actions appropriately and thus get the results you want.

Oh Lord, it's "The Secret" all over again. This kind of New Agey "positive thinking" fallacy has been around at least since "Think and Grow Rich" was first published in the early 20th century.

Many people with autism have different brain wiring that makes it very difficult to recognize faces, interpret expressions and body language, or hold eye contact. They may have auditory processing problems which make it hard to follow a multi-person conversation, and exhibit unconscious body language that does not convey their emotional intention effectively. These are not traits people on the spectrum can psych themselves out of having--they are biological and inherent.

Sometimes saying "I have poor social skills" is self-defeating, but sometimes it is simply the truth.

I like the analogies I've heard about being immersed in a foreign culture. Ever lived in a predominantly Spanish speaking area, and you don't know the language or culture? It's beyond "Oh gee, I wish I could talk to people but I'm shy. It's a complete inability to grasp what to do in a situation, or to immediately understand what's being said. It's the reality that it never occurs to you to talk with anyone at all, and an unawareness of how your behavior may be perceived. Sometimes the realization will come belatedly (this person was making a friendly gesture), and sometimes not at all. It's almost like a partial blindness....if we convince ourselves we see just fine it's just denial, and causes more problems.(Think car accidents.)

So if a person with autism reads in a book or watches a video, etc. about what it means when someone, for example, squinches their face, will the autistic person simply just forget even though they were told directly what it means?

And the reason why you reject what you call the "new agey positive thinking fallacy" is because it's not in alignment with your identity. When it comes to negative thinking, do you see it the same way as you do for positive thinking? Or are you more accepting of it? The way you see yourself currently aligns with what you choose to accept and reject. If you choose to reject positive thinking, then it is a clear indication that the way you view yourself within your identity isn't positive.

We can read every book out there. It's not that we forget, but that these things don't register automatically. We might be able to reason our way there sometimes, but the fact is that we are wired differently.
The statement"I have limited social skills" is not a self defeating prophecy. It is a fact. It's not stated in a negative light, or in self pity. It's with the same investment as "I have hazel eyes." I can deny it to the world, apply colored contacts, and pretend to be blue-eyed all I want, but is it healthier to invest in denial, or to accept who we are?

Being "wired differently" doesn't make one incapable of doing things. That's just like me saying I bought a house, but I can't do things I want to do in the kitchen because it's way too small. Even though it's MY house and I have the option to renovate the entire kitchen to have more space to do what I want to do or just improvise around it, I'm just going to say I can't do it.

What you cannot see and what is subjective is not fact; it is your story that you tell yourself. No one said it had to be negative, but it is only a fact in the world of identity you choose to live in because it is what you think about and it is thus the reality that you have created for yourself.

That may be true for some people, but it isn't true for everyone.



You seem to be talking partly about self-esteem and confidence, yes? And assuming that self-evaluation as someone with poor social skills harms self-esteem and/or confidence?

Stuff like self-esteem and confidence are undeniably important aspects of developing and using abilities, but they aren't the only thing that determines success...self-esteem and confidence may affect the development and use of skills in indirect ways, but neither changes the quality/quantity of skills directly.

Also, recognizing weaknesses in certain abilities doesn't always harm self-esteem nor confidence...in fact it can improve self-esteem and confidence by giving someone knowledge they can use to make sense of otherwise confusing, hurtful, frustrating, or disappointing experiences -- knowledge they might be able to use to help them navigate future life experiences more successfully, even if for neurological reasons they cannot use it to actually overcome their weaknesses.

"Social skills" aren't really a special skillset totally separate from other cognitive skillsets like sensory processing or langauge skills or executive functioning. For example, if somebody has an issue with processing visual information, it could affect their ability to read facial expressions and body language and ultimately impair their ability to communicate effectively with others...ultimately impair their "social skills". If somebody has issues with language it will affect their ability to communicate effectively with others....ultimately affecting their "social skills".



I often go over interactions in my mind after they happen to see if I can figure out what was said or what happened because I understood nothing of the interaction while it was happening...my brain simply does not have enough bandwidth to make sense of everything as it happens. There isn't enough room for self-evaluation of my abilties and processing of other information more relevent to understanding the interaction, simultaneously...it's impossible.

I do try to understand how others have perceived me in terms of what they assumed I meant/intended/thought/felt during the interaction as part of trying to understand them. I do this for practical purposes that have nothing to do with judging myself and everything to do with understanding the other person and the interaction with them...trying to understand the other person's perspective is just part of interacting with people.



One squinchy face (don't know quite what "squinches" looks like but I imagine it involves lots of different facial muscles and movements) looks different from the next, and autistic people aren't the only people on the planet who vary in terms of how their nonverbals express things. I can recongize/read the facial expressions of some people much better than others... it's always a matter of degree (with how much specificity), and what the degree is depends on other things like how much information besides nonverbals there is to try to process.

Also, I have problems with information retrieval -- my brain doesn't call up what I know when I need it to. So in a sense, yes, I can forget things I know. (And you're not counting the fact that knowing how to read facial expressions is just one part of reading situations as a whole....you can know that an expression means "angry" without being able to figure out why someone is angry or what you should do about it, if anything. I actually have far less trouble with reading facial expressions than I do with figuring out the mechanics of social interactions...including why expressions are there and what to do or say.)

Last edited by animalcrackers on 19 Jun 2013, 2:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's a sweeping generalisation and does not support your point one bit. Fortune cookies may not indicate this much, but diametrically opposing points of view have been expressed in philosophy, which, after all, contains no universally correct facts.



I think that's the problem - some of us simply cannot fulfil that. Wishing is not enough; even trying to act leads to failure as you may find out from stories shared on this forum. At times the problem cannot be dealt with, and you simply cope with having to exist with it.

Good question.

I have social skills. Actually, they are pretty good...in my opinion. Unfortunately, the rest of society doesn't agree because MY skills do not comport with those used by EVERYONE ELSE.

I can't jump ten feet in the air unassisted. I can increase my leg strength, and do drills until the cows come home. Am I able to improve..yes, but I'm still not jumping ten feet in the air. Is this another negative paradigm?

LOL! I do not see myself as a person with poor social skills; my default belief is that my social skills are adequate to most purposes. And being such a person, I don't choose to "blame the victim" when others suffer from a lack in the social arena.

A person on the spectrum can certainly learn things like body language and etiquette from books, but they may not be able to process the cues quickly enough in real time in order to utilize that knowledge in the moment. It is only when lying in bed that night thinking obsessively through every detail of interaction that they realize what something meant (or maybe weeks or even years later!) In a number of threads on WP when an autistic realizes, say, the intricate layers of communication happening in so-called "small talk", they despair.

It's not about wishing; it's about reshaping your identity. You chose your identity, and your life has no meaning to it other than the stories that you have written for it. What other people say about you are just nothing more than stories interpreted by them. The way you think and feel about things, all things in life, are tied to the identity that you created for yourself.

I think what you meant to say is "I can't jump ten feet in the air unassisted ON EARTH". However, you can certainly jump 10 feet in the air unassisted if you are on the moon. Also, you can't jump ten feet in the air unassisted depending on what your definition of unassisted is. You could say using a trampoline is assistance, but from another frame assistance means involving someone else, therefore making jumping on a trampoline an unassisted jump if you do it alone.

What you are saying seems to suggest that social skills deficits are a choice or are imagined....I have no problem accepting that this may be true of any social issues that you have, but it is simply not true for everyone.

Why are you so insistent that what is true for you is true for everybody else?

What's true for me is irrelevant. What's happening is people on here are incapable of doing things because they are telling themselves "I can't do X because I have Y condition", making the Y condition much more powerful than what it actually is. If Helen Keller could read and write despite being blind and deaf, and if a legless guy could run a full marathon, then I don't see why certain conditions themselves are what prevent people from doing things they actually want to do.

So with the stars in proper alignment, and/or outside support it might be feasible to reach ten feet on occasion. That doesn't mean I should call Guinness World Records to declare myself a candidate.