I don't understand how aspies can "learn" social s

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Doesn't that mean there is a cure for a big part of Aspergers? I find it doesn't make sense. I've tried to learn. In fact I always thought my social skills were great... then I talk to someone. My brain doesn't process things the same as others. I don't notice tones in peoples voices and usually go by the context of their words to know if their voice is raising or sarcastic or not and I'm almost always wrong. I've tried "learning" social skills but find my brain just processes differently in, well, a lot of thing. Can someone explain to me why I read so much about aspergers and learning social skills and stuff? I just don't get it.

Also I apologize if this comes out rude-it's not meant to. I was recently told by someone something I worded on a forum was rude-I was so confused it was not at all my intention.

I think it is about learning patterns, in the same way a lot of us develop a system of surviving a conversation, by following a formula of "I will say, then I will say".
We'll never have the intuition that NT's have, but I think we can train to remember things.

Learning the causal relations in social interactions is a useful skill that NTs seem to learn instinctively.

I had to take acting lessons, instead.

Social skills are instinctive to NT's; it's not something they have to think about. The social skills I've learned, which are woefully deficient, were acquired through painful trial and error. Though I can now do proper voice intonations, provided I'm not stressed; and I can recognize many non-verbal communications, also provided I'm not stressed, I'm still not good at it. I've also learned to detect most sarcasm, and even to return it.

Interacting with NT's requires that these things be processed instantly and subconsciously. I'm at my best dealing with these things when I have time to think about them, which normally isn't possible in social interactions. I think this is why I find most social interactions to be both exhausting and exasperating. Thus, I prefer to be alone, or to interact with others on the phone, or better yet, the Internet.

Hopefulflower, you're very young and so there's a ton of hope that you'll be exposed to better tools for aspies. The "social skills learning" illusion is the best that NTs have come up with so far for us, and of course, as you correctly observed, doesn't help at all. At least you're one of the very rare few young aspies that have enough courage to see that it's not the way, and won't waste a lifetime trying to learn more social skills in vain.

I have been suggesting something that I believe is a lot more useful for us to invest in learning during our lives, I call it "empowerment".

I find I can learn social skills in the same way that you might learn to interact with a cat or dog or lizard or whatever. It's not intuitive but you can learn how animals operate and learn to respect their boundaries, what makes them happy vs. aggravated, what their body language looks like when they're expressing various emotional states, how to play with them, etc. Same with people-- you have to sort of study them and the rules for interaction and then learn to consciously pick up on various things about them.

Like theLibrarian, I've learned a lot of my social skills through trial and error; basically I screwed up and learned not to do whatever I did again. It's not the best way to learn how to do social skills, so recently I've been looking up things like "listening skills" and reading up on that and practicing with my friends. Works a lot better than the other way! it's still not intuitive and I have to think a lot to remember what to do, but it's helped me out in my interactions with people.

You can't learn the rules from NTs because NTs aren't consciously aware of what they do.

Why so defeatist? I've gotten to the point where most people don't even realize there's anything different about me unless I tell them. Throughout my life I've learned a few rules to help guide me. I also found that learning about sociology and psychology, but especially sociology, helped me to understand the reasons and the whys and hows of interaction.

Yes, studying Psychology and Sociology is a very good investment for us aspies. That's the basis to then observe people and learn from our own conclusions - much of the stuff going on between people is too "touchy" to be taught in mainstream academia.

It really is.

Here's a good website that breaks down social conventions and explains them in a straightforward manner. The author is just one guy, but he has some experience in psychology and such, as well as his own life experience.

http://www.succeedsocially.com/index

'learning' is a big word for the social skills of most aspies.
we have managed to find the social rules and deviced some way to incorperate them in our social behaviour.
for most of us however, this takes a significant amount of 'social energy', so (at least in my case) keeping up the act for a longer amount of time is hard, if at all possible.

There are some social skills that I have just learned automatically as I grew up, like other people. There are a few social skills I had to teach myself, but otherwise I have learnt the rest automatically.

I only have mild Asperger's, so that doesn't mean I have no social skills at all that can't ever be learned.

It's not that aspies can "learn" social skills as some of them are just developed over time with practice. To overcome the energy drain, I think you can benefit from better exercise, for all the more 'bitter' aspies out there.

Exactly. They're developed over time jsut like an athlete tunes his or her reflexes.

Case in point - my dad has Parkinson's and had a little spell during supper recently. I was eating with my parents and heard my mom ask if there was a problem/if he was full or whatever. I was still eating and for a split second I thought, "Why is she asking me this?" since I couldn't notice my dad had stopped and had a look on his face like he was a bit dizzy.

Like a shorstop moving toward a ground gball recalling there is a runner on first & he needs to throw to second, not first like usual, I quickly calculated with what happened in the next split second that she was addressing my dad, not me, based on the fact others were int he room, that my dad could be having a spell, etc.. It was more a thought process that said "here is something extra to take into account."

In other words, it's not about curing, it's about learning to do manually what others do isntinctively, developing patterns so those thigns become second nature based ont he situation, and acting accordingly. It's just that some of us can take more stimuli at once than others.