Social Skills Training for Adults

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PARAPHRASE OF KFISHER THREAD ENTRY: I mentor people by giving them objective advice.

This thread raises questions in my mind on neurodiversity and human values through mothering. It makes me ask: Are there two different ways to mother and nuture?

1) The neurotypical way in the mothering video you put up where the Mom and baby tune in to each other with a rhythmic dance of expressive eyes, smiles, coos--mother love communicated face to face during the first months of human connection. In later life, does this evolve into the kind of neurotypical socialization you are now studying so energetically with your therapist?

2) Is there an alternative ASD way? Would the ASD mom finger the stripes on the infant's sweater while engaging in some different kind of connection? Or perhaps express mother caring to the baby in other ways? In later life, could this evolve into the kind of nurturing you describe with the mentoring of so many others you do?

I have so many questions. Are you inclined to look into your own experience with ASD mothering? If so, I would love to know:

How did you mother your baby girls?

How were you mothered?

What positive ASD qualities do you remember bringing to your girl babies?

How do your grown girls view their early life with you?

What are your therapist's views, if any, on mothering and socialization? Michelle Garcia Winner's views, if any? (Is that how she spells her name?)



As a neurotypical mom of a teen with Autism, I want to understand the underlying psychology of ASD human connection and how this plays out in later life. I need help learning how my son and I can foster mutual respect and become "bilingual" and "bicultural" in human relations both on and off the Spectrum.

Is this just one book? It would be so valuable (and profitable) if your girls might also be motivated to write "Raised by an Alien" or somesuch memoir about growing up with you. I bet a book like this would be a best seller in the lucrative Young Adult market.

Michelle Winner Meets Karla Fisher (My adventures last week)

Quite awhile ago I contacted Michelle Winner in order to see if she could help me to understand why I was struggling so in my social skills sessions. My intention was to learn small talk but I found myself not learning so much as getting frustrated. Sure, there was learning involved but it came at such a high price. It made me exceedingly angry some weeks and many other weeks it took me a few days to come down off the anxiety rush that it gave me.

Michelle and I had a number of emails back and forth with a pretty large amount of misunderstandings. It was only through some good graces on both our parts that we ever did meet. Michelle had a conference in Tacoma and offered to meet me the night before her conference for dinner and some discussion. It was her opinion that she could not continue any email threads with me without first meeting me.

So it was that I found myself sitting in the lobby of the Mariott on Oct 19th. My stomach was ill from anxiety. The patterns all over the carpets and walls made me even more motion sick. The lobby acoustics were highly reverberating causing noises to bounce all around me. I studied the room again. Everything was in fragments and I struggled to hold myself together and to not bolt. Michelle texted me to let me know she would be late from her TV interview. The only thing that kept me in that lobby was the fact that I had worked so hard up to this point to make this evening go well.

I got to Tacoma in the early AM that same day and started to scope out/explore the city just for our date. I found 3 different places that we could eat and I spent time in all of them. I memorized menus as well. I walked the paths to these places from the hotel a couple of times each so that I could see all the interesting stuff on the way and act as tour guide/leader. I knew that this would give me best advantage. I felt ready and yet my gut ached.

I studied the patterns in the wood of the table in front of me trying to settle the churning when I suddenly saw a sparkle. Not just one but two. I sighed with relief at the single focus point that could quiet down the data from my eyes and ears. I spent the rest of my waiting time focusing on the sparkle and the rainbow of colors it made. The prism as it were. My fun was interrupted by a person approaching calling my name. I looked up and it was Michelle. She had not yet checked into her room so I got to sit and to study the lights again for awhile. My stomach was feeling a bit better.

She came up again and sat down next to me. I showed her the two sparkles that had saved me. I don’t know if she saw them or not. She started to talk. She was still taking texts and settling down from her very busy schedule while talking to me. She told me about how she was working with this mortgage broker and how he could not figure out that she travelled. She dropped the “F”-bomb. And with that I started to laugh out loud. With that “bad” word, we were bonded. I have only met a handful of people my entire 48 years on this planet who have managed to drop that word before me. It is the number one piece of advice I hear all the time from my friends. LOL! Anyone who beats me to that is A-okay in my books.

I spoke up then and told Michelle of the options that we had for eating. I had selected the restaurants based on carbs, fats and proteins and tried to ask her which she needed for the day. That did not really work so I switched tactics. I knew that she was an active person and the “carb” place was by the waterfront requiring a nice healthy walk through some very interesting art. I suggested we go there. It was the loudest of the places but it was called “Social” and it was on the waterfront. I recited the menu for her. She agreed that would be ideal provided it wasn’t too loud and off we went.

The walk was nice. I was happy to be out of the lobby and to be able to show her the cool glass art on the way. It turned out that she really enjoyed glass art and even could identify an artist. At one display she and I stopped and I murmured, “Shiny” as I reached up to touch the glass. She asked me what I saw. I told her that I saw patterns everywhere. I pointed to one piece and called out all the fragments of colours and then explained how the fragments aligned. I went from piece to piece to call this out. She said she could not see that. She asked me about my sparkles in the lobby and what it was about prisms that was so cool. I told her it calmed me by giving me a single focus point. “Shiny is good” in that way.

The restaurant really was quite loud but the food was really good. We had a bit of wine. She asked me a lot of questions about my life. I answered them as well as I could. We talked about social skills and social rules. I told her my mind about them. She went off at one point on some personal story and asked me what did I think about that. I told her that I did not really care about her personal story as she was saying it but that I was trying to find the point in her story because she had done a context switch and I could not tie it. She asked me at one point how something made me feel before I had fully digested the words or translated them. We talked about idioms and how when she says “chip off the block” how I see pictures of potato chips, cow chips, poker chips, etc… until it hits me that it is chip/block combo and that it is a phrase that means something else. She asked me about a few of these. I am pretty okay with them though I sometimes have to work at them.

I complained about how I don’t like it when people say things they don’t mean. Like when I get stuck in traffic and am late for an appointment that person will say that THEY are sorry when they did nothing wrong. It was I who was late so it is I who should be sorry. She asked me if I understood the premise of this. I told her that I did. She asked me to explain it and I did. But I told her that it did not make sense to me because it is a lie. The other person is NOT sorry and I would not feel “sorry” in that situation. I would just tell the person that it is okay they were late. I did not let her win that one.

After dinner we took a walk along the bay in the cool autumn air. The lights from the city, the bridges and the boats made pretty shiny patterns on the water. As we walked we continued to talk and eventually we sat down on a bench. Or rather she sat down. I remained standing and paced. And we continued. She asked me now a bunch of questions about work and about my motives behind learning this social thinking stuff. She asked me about my friends and what did I talk to with friends. I informed her that all my friends were categorized into groups according to activities. I told her that we talked about our shared activities mostly. I informed her that I did not ever remember initiating a friendship. They just sort of happen as an offshoot of the stuff that I do.

She asked me about my work and how do I talk to people there. One specific question was about if I am in a meeting and someone is shooting the bull do I call them out bluntly or do I try to soften it. Oh I call them out quite bluntly but I do not really get into trouble for that. You see the culture of high tech and Intel is one of constructive confrontation. I explained that phrase to her.


Finally she looked at me and said, “Karla, I have never said this to anyone before but I recommend that you not learn this stuff in a clinical setting.” I stopped pacing and told her that I was listening… she informed me that she found my social skills to be quite good actually. In fact she told me that she found me rather charming and even went so far as to say that she enjoyed our time together about more than any other time she had spent in business that week. She said that I was attentive to her and her needs and that I had good communication skills. The only place that I did not do well was eye contact but somehow that did not really matter so much. She argued that if getting this promotion was going to put me in a position to have to work so hard as something that I so hated then what exactly was the point? I laughed again and told her that I liked her even more. She then again said that I was charming and asked the million dollar question… What is charming anyway if not good social skills?

Yeah… Anyway. LOL!

After that is when the talk got real. I started to share with her all my worries about me teaching these young people and how I take this responsibility seriously. I shared with her that part of my learning this is so that I can be a better teacher. We talked “shop” then and I pulled out some of my presentations to share with her. We discussed the “disability” centric nature of some of her books and she explained how she was writing and learning and that things are changing as she is learning. I am purposefully making this part very short because this is the part that has volumes and volumes of learnings in it. 

Upon our departure from one another she invited me to the conference the next day. I was very hesitant to say that I would go because it was a huge change of plans for me and there was an anticipated 600 people going to be in the conference room. She told me she would hold a chair for me in the back of the room and have someone look out for me if I came. I managed to work it out to change my plans and not drive back that night and did make it to the conference. She had lunch with me in a private room at the conference and we talked some more. I absorbed so much during the conference too but I think I will end it here as this is enough reading for one blog post….
To be continued….

Part II:
Michelle and I had dinner in Tacoma followed by a nice long talk along the waterfront and then we had lunch the next day. Besides all the questions to me, we had some actual discussions. On several occasions I pulled out my slides and spoke to her from my pictures. She took in the information and gave me some really good feedback on the slides. We did some word alterations so that we could come to the same understanding about the concepts that I was teaching. Her insights from years of teaching in the school systems were invaluable to my “school” presentation. I am excited to take this out to the next round.

The conference was fascinating. There was over 600 people in attendance. Michelle told me to come late to the event so that everyone was sitting and that she would have a seat reserved for me in the back of the room. Dr. Crooke (Pam Crooke) was designated as the person to look out for me and to make sure that I was okay during the conference. Michelle instinctually knew that I would need accommodations. When I entered the room, the din from the people all hit me at once and I just stood up against the wall trying to absorb all the data attacking my senses. I stood there for some time (I don’t know how long) looking confused when this woman came up to me and asked if I was Karla. I nodded. I do not remember if she introduced herself but I assumed she was Dr. Crooke. The woman showed me to my seat in the very back corner of the room. It was a good spot for me to observe the conference. Michelle was on stage talking.

The din from the room and all the people kept assaulting me so I started to pace and stim madly as I tried to focus on the presentation. Michelle opened by asking the audience about themselves. She identified all the SLPs, the OTs the teachers, the parents, the shrinks and even the ASD people. I believe there were two of us and the other guy was in the middle of the crowd obviously doing better than I. I paced in the back of the room the entire 5 hours that I was there but I did stop hitting myself after about 2 hours. LOL! Michelle told me later in email that she was very aware of my pacing and was thinking how hard it was for me to be there versus the NT crowd. (She is learning my “token” theory by observing which is awesome)


I learned a TON watching her presentation. The presentation was on her Social Communication Profile system that she and Dr. Crooke developed (along with others) I was informed that I was an ESC (weak) per that profile but the night prior (after our dinner and talk) Michelle said she would put me in the outlier group. The RSC group. Per her document and the way it is described she is dead wrong but as she went over it in the conference and when I saw one on video I thought she was right on. The interesting thing about this sub-group is that it really isn’t a functioning level per say. I would still be in the ESC group (though Michelle thinks I am higher than a weak ESC and possibly even WISC though I think she is changing her mind as she gets to know me better – more as it unfolds) The point is that the RSC group is not about functioning level so much as about traits of the group. It is called the “resistant” social communicator. She informed me that the way to work with RSCs is not like the other kids. She says that NET for this group is what she calls, “Inside-out” treatment. Also they need intensive 1:1 CBT with a therapist that they trust. I shared this information with my social skills coach. It will be VERY interesting to see where he runs with this.

I left before the presentation was completely over but I had learned a lot of the stuff that I needed to learn and felt like I did not waste my time in making this trip. I got new perspective RE the books and materials and new insights that allowed me to better read the stuff. (without getting so angry about it) I got new insights to me and new insights to the various “types” of ASD people that her clinic sees. This actually helped me tremendously in my teen workgroup later that evening. I got a new appreciation for this thing called “social thinking” and for the good that it does even though it actually hurt s me to try to learn it right now. And finally, I made a people connection that could possibly prove to be very important and very good for the ASD community as a whole.

When I first pinged Michelle and told her my motives for contacting her, it was under 2 objectives. 1 was that she help unblock me about her stuff so that I can reach for this promotion and the next level of management at my job. 2 was I wanted to reach her because she teaches the world and I knew that if I was to “reach” the world that I had to touch the people who teach the world. ASD people and advocates are not yet there so this is just as good IMHO.

The very cool thing about this whole thing is that I am getting more than I bargained for. Michelle and I had a very bumpy start as I apparently annoyed her a few times in my initial emails… We nearly did not meet at all. Now we are in constant communication and with any luck we will do great things for this world of ASD together… ASD and NT.

Tomorrow is back to regularl sessions.... Let's see what he has to say.

Fascinating session today.

We talked a lot about my visit with Michelle in Tacoma. We also talked in more detail about my RSC versus plain ESC profile. While the description does not really match her description on the profile itself there is one thing FOR SURE that we agree upon. I will only respond to therapy that is done "inside out". A classic example is noted as I was asking him about this thing called, "Thinking with your eyes" that Michelle talks about so much.

At the workshop, she showed videos of clients in her clinic to give us a chance to see the different profiles of ASD people that she normally encounters. One of the things she did with all of them 100% was she did this little "Listening with your eyes" test. What this means is that the autistic person looks at the therapist to see what direction they are looking and then they are supposed to guess what that person is looking at. After they make a guess (Michelle talks about smart guesses in her books btw) then they are supposed to make a guess about what that person is thinking. This whole thing BLOWS MY MIND! However can people do this? I asked my Therapist today to explain. He did so using the words that are in the book RE "thinking with your eyes". Once he was done, I complained that this concept did not compute for me. I stated it did not compute because it was impossible.

He started to object so I told him to tell me what I am looking at. I looked across the room at the wall and found a section of wall (about 1 sq ft large) and identified quickly the pattern made within that boundary from the dimples in the drywall under the blue paint. In the lower right quadrant (quadrant 4) was a splatter of dimples that disrupted the pattern.

The Doctor looked at my eyes and then over to the wall and told me that I was looking at the wall.

"What am I thinking Doctor?" I challenged him with a grin.

He stammered a bit and tried to get out of that one but then suggested that I might be thinking about an object on the wall (like a picture) and how it might connect to me.

I then informed him about the area I was focused on and the pattern I had seen. My thoughts were on how that disruption may have occurred in the manufacturing process for that piece of dry wall. I was actually thinking as to if that was a quality issue or not in the processes.

I then challenged him again and asked him how this concept can possibly work. I told him that there are thousands of possible things to look at on the wall and around it. There are an exponential amount of things I might be thinking about within the constrant of that focus area. How could he (without being inside of me) possibly "guess" or "smart guess" as Michelle calls it what I am thinking?

He assured me that NTs have simpler thoughts and see things a bit more abstract than that. But I do not have these abstraction skills! How can I just do that?

Now I am angry with him as I realize THAT little fact is never specified in the training or the books. The fact that NTs see things so differently and more simply. How could this critical component have gone missing from the books?! ! Is it the case... Could it really be that nobody EVER took the perspective of an ASD person when insisting that we understand these concepts? Am I to just KNOW how he (and these others) sees the world?

The Doctor told me that he understood my need as an RSC person with ASD to have him understand me (and the world understand me) from the inside. He cited how many times he watched me passionately teach others about this. He said that is the very core of this "inside out" therapy and what it is about. (I have to give him credit that he did do his homework on this one from the data I had sent to him over email) He said that he sees it very clearly and that I am very good at insisting that he see it my way. I sort of just sat there then because it boggled my mind that there would be any other way. How can therapy or treatment be FOR me if it is devleoped WITHOUT my perspective?

The Doctor thinks that besides expanding my lexicon that I also need to do some more thinking with my eyes training to learn this other perspective. This NT perspective. He said that he was thinking about how I did not see the faces of the Mom in that video the other week and how I was drawn to the objects. He thinks it would be good for us to spend some time learing how to read faces and eventually getting that skill to real time processing. He intends to start me on cartoons and with the very core (5 or so) expressions. Once I get that, we can move to real photos and eventually videos. My abstraction abilities are in the toilet so it make best sense to work from these concepts.

Sigh... This is hard man.

Making a guess what the person is thinking, well what do I think of the item they are looking at? Well they are probably thinking the same thing too and I would make that guess. I wonder if that would pass me off as NT?

As for someone staring and looking at something, I have no idea unless it was that obvious like if someone was looking down at the table in front of them they were sitting at. Anything that is sitting right in front of them I would assume they are looking at that. I notice when my mother looks at something and shows it to me, at least she names the item or describes it and I look for it. I just assumed that's how everyone communicated but I guess not. My husband will go "Look at that" and point and sometimes I get confused and sometimes I guess right what he is pointing at but I still find myself asking what he is pointing at. Honestly I don't see how this is so important. What's so important about looking at what people are looking at and imagining about what they may be thinking?

Me being challenged would also frustrate me. My shrink used to challenge me about feelings and my thoughts and the reasons behind it and none of my answers were good enough because he keep challenging me.