Published on 12, July, 2020
Can you truly learn social skills? This is something I've been wondering about since getting diagnosed.
My social skills aren't brilliant. I don't do well working in groups and I find social occasions difficult a lot of the time. I must have them to some degree as I manage at work (there have been issues but not regularly) and I do have a small group of friends who although not close, have not completely disowned me yet.
One thing my assessor said was that I don't really do 2 way conversation. He then added you probably know the rules but it is not something that comes naturally to you. So does this mean I can do it but I choose not to? Or I know how to do it but simply can't put it into practice?
I know there are people that have said they have used self help books with success but what I wonder is using these like acting/masking. You can put on a front and manage a successful social interaction or can you truly learn how to socialise better and it become an innate behaviour.
Apart from it causing me anxiety, my general issues with social interaction tend to be:
Sorry for this being a long waffly post but it's been on my mind for a while. What I'm wondering is, do I just need to accept this is how I am? Or can I actually learn to manage better?
I prefer to just think about it this way. Starting Point: I'm different. Therefore, my social skills will be different. It's not that I'm necessarily lacking social skills, I just have a different set of social skills and how I go about using them. Sure, I can try to make a bit of effort to bridge the gap with other people who have a different set of social skills to me, but if they're not willing to put in any effort in bridging the gap then I'm not particularly bothered. Instead of telling me how I should talk, communicate or behave, accept the way I do talk, communicate and behave, which will likely lead to some progress. As far as I'm concerned I manage just fine so anybody that tells me differently must be the one with the problem.
I don't care if people want to make comments that I'm doing something wrong, because for me it's the right thing to do. Therefore, I'm not the one doing anything wrong, I'm just doing it differently.
I suppose it's like the idea of computers running different operating systems and software. In order to interface there needs to be something to bridge that gap so that communication between the different operating systems and software can take place.
I couldn’t agree more Shadow, well said ~ I would have taken 10 pages just to say that and it wouldn’t have made sense! Lol!
I agree, too. The issue we face, of course - as with all minorities - is that because our way of doing something is 'rare', then it's 'wrong'. This isn't true, of course. But if you're in a situation where you have, say, 99 people who know how to do something the same way, and 1 person who does it in a different way, the majority are always going to see the different way as the wrong way. And they have all that back-up to 'prove' it.
But then, without people doing things differently, we'd never have innovations. We'd never have had things like Turing's code-breaking computer. We'd never have solutions to problems - just more and more people moaning about the problems!
I always rail against that old saying 'Go with the flow'.
As far as I'm concerned, if you 'go with the flow' you'll end up on the rocks sooner or later!
But mortgages are for 25 years (or more) - that's for ever for most people. My first house was a large 3-bed for 70k in 1989 - that's over 400k now - 600% growth.
That's providing all stays good, of course - job security maintained, income maintained, house prices maintained, health maintained, financial system maintained, professional skill set which will always be in demand and carry a premium rate of pay. What's life without some level of risk, though? Depends how well placed you are to manage the risk, I suppose.
I wonder, too, how many people before the crash thought it was all going to carry on alright. I mean, mortgages after all. What could be safer? Those greedy b******s knew what was happening, but they carried on anyway. Because they knew the financial system would never be allowed to fail. They knew they'd be bailed out.
And the likes of Michael Burry and his investors made fat sums of money out of busting the big banks. And people lost homes and jobs.
Personally, I'm less optimistic about where things are heading.
As with Brexit, I guess... everyone's got an opinion, but nobody really knows...