has anyone attended a social skills programme?

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I was wondering if anyone joined a social skills training type programme? What was it like and what do they go through?

The first thing that comes to mind is some really basic stuff i.e. when to shake hands, how to greet and so on.

However, I would imagine that those joining, whether Aspie or not, would have social deficits of varying degrees, so do they have different levels and how would they judge these levels?

The biggest problem I have is not in the small and mundane social things, though I still have problems in understanding the flexibility of certain meet and greet protocols (I can be a bit too polite with those, I think some of it is due to obsessive compulsive thought i.e. did I meet and greet right, would that person think I am ignoring them or being aloof and so on ...), but rather the difficulty I find in sensing the hidden debris of social interaction. I mean by this a personal difficulty in accessing this secret world, that I sense is there but can't get my thumb on it. Why are people's judgments triggered in certain ways e.g. character judgements (examples include the use of lables, that can make no sense to me in certain contexts e.g. 'dishonest', 'manipulative', 'conceited', 'arrogant' and so on).

Another problem I have is understanding what gets people's emotions triggered e.g. the pattern in which being angry, pleased, suspicious can come about and to recognise the patterns of the referent that triggers such emotions. Another thing that I find baffling is understanding how networking takes place and what is appropiate in these so called 'networking' meetings (Oh, do I dread the term 'network' and avoid it like the plague). I believe there is a protocol and if you don't follow them you get these character labels put on you, I think? Am I right in that observation?

That is where I can find some difficulty and hence the question.

well yes - i did - when i was in rehab. I attended what it known as a "Therapeutic community" and its aim was to help the individual to become a participating member of a community. and so i lived with 25 or so other people (shared rooms and shared houses on the property) with staff as well. They knew i couldn;t handle people and so for the bulk of my stay there- they gave me my own room - THANK CHRIST.

we did groups all the time and learned all about social skills. I actually learned the bulk of what i know today . Prior to this program i either lived alone or lived with a loser junkie boyfriend or was homeless and self-medicating. I was EXTREMELY isolated and could not maintain friendships or even contact with people. I could not even make phonecalls to others beyond my family or cope with day to day things involving other people. (i still can;t much, but i am a 1000 times better and can talk on the phone and have some friends from 12 step programs who are weirdos.)

I found the whole experience to be totally HELLISH.
Am i glad i did it? yes. It gave me some skills i jsut missed out on ever having until the age of 36 when i went into the program.


What did i learn there?

how to be in a group (which i have not implemented since, mind you!)
how to say hello
how to stat a conversation.
how to help a conversation along.
how to feign interest in what someone else is saying or contributing (even though i still cannot comprehend face to face very well.)
to and fro conversation (i am stiull bad at it and can only comprehend a bit of what others say.)
active listening.
how to refrain from interrupting (still not good at this.)
how to DISGUISE my social deficits!
how to get out of the rehab and go and find my own little cave again - with a couple of others who cared about me.
How to turn personal development and recovery from addiction and weird isolation and social problems into a special interest for five years - which consumed every waking and dreaming moment.

In all sincerity though... i learned a great deal --- enough to get by. i still find too much contact overhwelming - and i am on the computer right now because my son and his dad were just too close in proximity and were talking and exchanging too much in the lounge room and i started to have a meltdown - which i do at this time of day - i get frazzled and start seeing white light shards in my brain and i know i am going to start screaming - and so now i know when to get out and go and get on WP and jsut calm down on my own with a bit of my own pursuits to calm me.

I still do most of my socialising and contact via email and facebook and now WP. it seems easier for me than trying to comprehend the spoken/verbal word and trying to follow a face and body language as well. that freaks me...i can do it now cognitively and have learned skills at 46 - but it is utterly exhausting and i often go into a spin.

i think developing skills of any sort is a good thing.

and there is a trick i learned. I still cannot look into another's eyes without feeling completely overhwhelmed and spun out..... so i look at their teeth. (20 years ago i stared at the floor and the ground with my head tilted at an angle and long hair covering my face.)

I'm in a social skills program right now.

Well I joined a program by accident called rehab. It wasn't just about drugs and/or alcohol. I learned skills such as how to control certain emotions without suppressing it all. We would go through a regime of writing down a feeling that was negative and write hypothetical factors as to what caused them. I come to learn that most emotional reactions aren't always expressed appropriately.

For example, you might take your feeling out on someone who didn't cause that specific emotion. The reason this emotion was displaced might be due to many issues. For example, you might be stressed from having to cover people who want to take days off at your job. So out of fear from looking bad, you politely take it as your obligation. The emotions that build up are usually going to be taken out in the most inappropriate times. This might be triggered due to the fact that you have issues with asserting your feelings without feeling bad about it. This is an area many people can work on.

I've also heard that drama classes and/or theater are good tools to learn in such as non verbal cues, body posture, and how you come across to your audience. Most of us aspies have trouble in knowing or recognizing how we come across to other people on varying degrees.

There are some behavioral things we can learn and other things that just can't be learned such as neurological reponses like meltdowns from external stimuli or the time it takes us to process information before responding to a conversation. It all depends since aspies have strengths and weakness in various areas just as NTs do.