How good are your social skills?

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I think mine have gotten better, since I started working last year. I go down to the bars where I live, hang out with people, my Boss, at where I work has seen a HUGE improvement in me since I started working at my job. I like hanging out some nights and I feel like I am getting better.

WildThing121675

Mine are pretty average, but are made easier because of my quick mind and good sense of humour - I've found that humour is a good way of distancing you from a conversation and is a good substitute when you don't have anything real to contribute to a conversation (which I often find as I am so out of touch with teenagers).

Mine are okay... with people I know I can trust. The occasional (but rather potent) stammer I've developed doesn't help, since it leads to me not being able to talk without clearing my throat first, and nor does my apparent inability to determine the point at which I should shut up, but I seem to be able to talk well enough. I think sometimes I'm a bit too touchy... and other times I'm not touchy enough. For instance, I can quite happily put my arm around a friend - of sorts - at work (when I probably should ask first, if I had the foresight to do so), and I can kiss people hello, but people I don't really know getting into my personal space is often very stressful, almost to the point of shrieking "get away!" and running off somewhere to hide. Especially if they start touching my head. That sets me off something chronic...

And the notion of any sort of romantic contact is both appealing and terribly frightening at the same time. Which is somewhat annoying.

I've always been rather more comfortable on my own, in any case - when I was a little boy, my mother would be the one inviting kids round from school, and I'd tolerate them for about twenty minutes and then go off to be by myself. Secondary school brought a close circle of friends, but university was spent largely by myself. I had one real close friend throughout those three years, with a larger circle of friendly acquaintances.

And the less said about my workplace, the better...

I have the Social Skills of a Donkey. I end up saying the wrong things, no matter where I am, and I end up losing friends. It makes me want to crawl into a hole and die. I've even had to delete a post in another forum, because it had a reference to Body Weight, even though I wasn't talking about humans. I've once had a music teacher tell me that I was mean, in a joking way. All that I can hear, is his Cockney Accent repeating the words, "Yow mean...yow mean." I can't go on.

I have enough social skills to understand from an analytical and distant eye what's going on in a social situation.

But that does not mean I've developed any expertise when it's my turn. I interpret situations at face value - I am aware of the subtleties of conversation, but as I don't understand WHAT the purpose of making socializing so difficult is, I don't bother.

It can be said that I had to learn social skills from observing and writing about human behavior. I have a bunch of stories I wrote in eighth and ninth grade where I began to explore the idea of people behaving certain ways due to specific motives, the idea of certain behaviors being "acceptible", etc... Where these things are practically genetic in many people, I had to learn them.

As for politeness, that I can understand. Probaby because it's been drilled throughot many "social skills" classes I've taken. Which I harshly criticize, because although I've learned how to successfully do the chicken dance from these, they teach nothing about what I consider "practical" social skills.

I'd say my social skills are arbitrary ranging from non-existent to NT compliant, it really depends on many factors like stress, tiredness, who I'm talking with, etc.

One on one, it works but I'm either too much or too little..

In groups I feel left behind as they (in my eye) seem to talk about nothingness for hours.

Though I can totally guide a conversation if its a topic I excel in.

I can fake it, and do small talk, when I'm off-line.

I get a little carried away, here at WP because this is where I'm the most comfortable. The more at-ease I am, the more my Cockneyfied two-storiedness shows.

Ding! Ding!

I often find myself saying the wrong thing, and not really realising that it's the wrong thing until right after I've said it - which then leads to hurried backpedalling and much embarrassment. Things which sound really funny in my head bounce off other people without so much as a polite smile.

It's fine when it happens to my mother, because she knows me better than anybody, but when it happens to general acquaintances... well, let's just say I'm looked at as being rather odd, to say the least.

My social skills have improved to the point I can participate in normal conversation - if its about something I am familiar with. If not, I just kinda lock up and weird out whoever I'm with. Lets just say after hanging with me one time, people don't want to do so again.

I am good at small talk and holding conversations with people and I'm known to be very articulate at times, but sometimes I crave attention so much that I resort to innapropiate means to receive it, which results in me being ostracized occasionally. WP is also my main comfort zone where I have no fear of social screw-ups because everyone else here makes those as well.

About five years ago when I worked at a company before grad school, I got sent fairly frequently to conferences where I had to talk to people about company products. So I pretty much had to force myself to learn how to small talk. Now, I can do small talk fairly proficiently, but I get extremely irritated and exhausted if I have to do it for long periods of time. I can go hang out with other people, but if they end up talking a lot about something I don't really care about, or they start doing some activity that I don't particularly like, then I end up stimming quite a lot or zoning people out (much to the chagrin of those trying to get my attention). Overall I can fake it pretty well, to the point that people just think that I'm really shy and that's all, so long as I can go home afterwards and rest up by myself and recover.

AS a kid my social skills were non-existant. I changed schools a lot, which helped me overcome my fear of change and fear of new people, at least a little. I also started doing science research, so eventually I had to start presenting my work at scientific meetings. This of course scared me to death. But I got over it, and now I've given presentations all over the country and I'm fine with it.

At about that time, I also got a scholarship to the high school of my dreams, and finally settled down school-wise. At that point (8th grade) I was still really awkward around people of my own age (although I was fine around adults for the most part). I made it my goal to become more social. Due to a variety of other things and months of research and practice, I developed good social skills.

Now, I guess I'm pretty popular at my school. I have a lot of friends, go to parties almost every weekend...the whole bit. I'm pretty happy with my life as it is now. I like being able to consciously control my social skills (since they don't come natural). It gives me a different perspective on things than most people.

Gah that was way too long.

They've been getting better, although I still have trouble understanding the whole tact thing. My knowledge of body language is fairly basic, but it's not too bad, and I'm working on the whole "blurting out answers to rhetorical questions" bit. I have a lot of trouble discerning between possible teasing and genuine interest, though. I'm working on that. Still phobic of strangers as well, mostly, although happily greater involvement in Latin Club is helping that a lot. It's hard to be incredibly incredibly shy when you're taken from your family, dropped on a college campus with thirty other people from your state for a week, and get to make friends based on how much happy geekiness you share with random strangers.

Mine are pretty decent, over the years i've learned to fake interest and my current co workers make things easy for me.
The ppl i directly work with only speak when they need to say something work related and the other ones from the sales department always start the conversation so it isn't hard for me to regurgitate some facts about the current subject i picked up somewere
Over the years nobody ever noticed anything different about me (except my friends telling me i could be a real as*hole and that's what they like about me ).
I even fooled my psycholosomething (can't remember atm what it's called in english) for 1,5 years.

Wow, interesting thread. Amazed that I missed it. So here I go.

When I was a child they had no clue what AS was. I was friendly and outgoing, but so inappropriate that everyone thought I was weird and I got picked on. As an adult I can still be friendly and I have a little more of a clue, but I still talk too much, give out too much information, and freak out at large gatherings where I have to make small talk, and I can only handle people for so long. My family and my two few friends who "get" me are more than enough social interaction for me.