How to be less Socially Awkward with ASD?

Post Reply New Topic

All my Life, I've struggled with social awkwardness in social situations. What would be helpful to be less socially awkward?

A book called "The Charisma Myth"
by Olivia Fox Cabane.

I bought a copy from Amazon.
Been helpful to me, reading about body language
and how to project a good self-image.
In other words, show that you're confident.

thank you the_phoenix for recommending this book

I've been trying to improve my social capital (e.g. likability, executive functioning, etc.) by writing down social errors I'm prone to making and figuring out ways to be in control of various situations to make less social errors.

Henry

Pattern recognition serves a function

But it is a delicate balance between overgeneralize and under generalize


Every situation is different

For example, someone had the nerve to tell me off for knocking on the bathroom door

Someone had the nerve to tell me off for failure to knock on the bathroom door

It was the same bathroom

How does one keep conversations going?

My 2016 ipad pro 9.7 conflict aka enemy song by disturbed will be 18 years old pretty soon I feel old lol. I like the instrumental of conflict catchy drums music is life

I need help in this area as well. Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

Learn to smile and nod when people speak. It's enough most of the time. Sometimes you don't even have to listen to what they are saying if you do those.

This worked for me (in addition to listening and nodding):

--Memorize two or three factoids from the news every morning (entertainment and sports are usually acceptable). Determine your own opinion about them and memorize the opinion. Whether someone asks you about your day (or "life"), or not, ask if others had heard or read about one of your factoids. If they hadn't, briefly describe it to them. If they had, you can toss in your opinion. This makes you seem quite knowledgeable and possibly witty.

--As you get better at this, you can expand your conversational skills.

Life is your Life be yourself be unique

I've gotten way better at this since I started reading about body language. There are a lot of books and articles about "mind reading" through reading body language. Also, kinda cheesy, but articles about stuff like "how to act in a job interview" or "how to get your date interested" sometimes has useful advice, not only about reading others but how to act yourself as well. Some of them are all BS though, so don't take them too seriously.
I also find studying smileys/emojis and drawing them has helped a lot with remembering all the different facial expressions. I'm even nailing some of the subtle ones now.

Imagine the scenario where you're talking to a sibling(when talking to a friend)

I haven't tried it yet, but i read somewhere that a tactic salespeople use to make others like them is to focus hard on one positive aspect of the person as you talk to them. Find something about the person that you like, even if it's as shallow as their shoes or the color of their shirt, and focus on that the whole conversation (probably ensuring to maintain healthy eye contact as well ). Apparently, just thinking that the you like something about the person makes it feel like you really like them and they will respond to it and feel good about it.

I like to ask people about their family, their day job, what they do when they're not working, what their hidden talents are, whats a thing they hope to achieve someday, etc... asking something more specific than "how are you" usually helps spark conversation.

Also, i make it a game or a challenge to paraphrase and draw conclusions about what the person is saying as they are saying it. That way, when they finish talking about their job at the hospital, I can say something like "wow, it sounds like you are really doing something that makes a difference for other people", or "wow, so you're basically like a superhero, working 7 days a week and saving lives while you're at it". If you squeeze in a compliment, people often will take that and run with it, and this often leads to the more interesting stories