Why Do People Refuse To Practice Social Skills?

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Jayo
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25 Apr 2025, 7:49 pm

belijojo wrote:

I've heard the idea that you need to be aggressive when you first meet someone so you don't get bullied in subsequent interactions. I think this is a distorted social skills born out of a toxic environment, and unwillingness to learn.But I don't have the ability to tell at a glance whether the environment is really friendly.

Ummm...I think you just described prison culture!!

Yeah, it's definitely distorted. Maybe you heard that idea at a rough school??

Can't see this being the case in SOOO many other contexts.

Edna3362
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25 Apr 2025, 9:36 pm

belijojo wrote:

Incidentally, that was by very first go-to strategy... As a kid.
Not that I need to be aggressive nor I was told to -- more like that just how I was at a really young age that I had a no choice in the matter, developmentally.

I was constantly very dysregulated, it might as well be the only thing I can access to express myself.
And because I got pride, I don't run, I fight. Was too angry to feel fear.

Didn't matter if the environment was toxic or not, because I'm still dysregulated regardless of how I was treated as a kid.

Maybe I got it from my parents.
They're the ones who's fighting a lot in my presence and that's practically the only real memory I ever remembered about both of them unless they're on the phone or something.

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ArticVixen
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26 Apr 2025, 12:51 am

Honestly, I just have never made the effort. I am more focused on other stuff and socializing is least of my priorities. I hardly relate to anyone at my job anyways and I have the lack of transportation to meet up with my old highschool friends.

This isn't to use as a crutch but trauma has hindered my social anxiety and I often wonder if I have C-PSTD. I do relate to a lot of the posts on that one subreddit.

I feel the 9-5 lifestyle and having a family takes up your free time to go out and about. Not that I have kids but I still take care of my siblings even if they are near their adult years. My dad on the other hand often declines his friend's offer to go golfing due to his daily errands like shopping. They at least occasionally talk on the phone.

belijojo
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26 Apr 2025, 7:03 am

Jayo wrote:

belijojo wrote:

Ummm...I think you just described prison culture!!

Yeah, it's definitely distorted. Maybe you heard that idea at a rough school??

Can't see this being the case in SOOO many other contexts.

This is how it is said, whether at home or in formal schools, etc., except for textbooks. "Perhaps this is the special feature of East Asia that is different from other places"I guess.

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Mona Pereth
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13 May 2025, 9:41 pm

utterly absurd wrote:

It's always been hard for me to separate "social skills" from "masking". For a while I tried to learn social skills until I could talk to someone for a couple minutes and (I like to think) sound almost normal. But I didn't enjoy these conversations and I didn't feel like I was connecting with these people. The first time I did enjoy a conversation and feel like I was connecting was with an autistic person who, I realized, was conversing exactly how I would if I hadn't tried to learn social skills. That was when I realized I wasn't just learning social skills, I was masking, and I needed to stop if I ever wanted to actually connect with people. That friend and I always have very unorthodox conversations that we both enjoy. I still practice basic politeness, especially with people like professors where the point isn't just to chat, but that mostly amounts to not being a jerk, rather than trying to be like everyone else.

My point is that social skills haven't really helped me very much. What's helped me is finding people who don't care if my social skills aren't good.

I think it's important to distinguish two very different kinds of "social skills." It is important to distinguish between (1) conformity to NT norms
(e.g. regarding eye contact) and (2) what I call autistic-friendly social skills, the kinds of skills autistic people would need just to get along with other, even if there were no NT's in the world and no pressure to conform to NT norms.

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14 May 2025, 2:44 pm

I've reached 50, had autistic diagnosis for a year, and my desire to socialize has left the building. I tried and failed. I'd rather spend my time doing other things. Especially as I work full time (which actually is enough socializing) and have two young children. My parents didn't have friends with children my age, and I'm following suit. My kids don't see friends of mine come round, because I don't have any. One person I message from my childhood, my parents and sister, and my partner and our two kids. 99.9% of everybody else I've ever met I'm not in contact with (even my partner's family I'm not really in contact with). Sometimes it was barriers such as simply not having anyone to socialize with - spent pretty much my first three decades in a small village (except for university but socially that was a disaster, and to be honest, was better off without them). Then the first decade of my working life was spent in factories and warehouses as a complete nobody, alone at noisy machines nobody to shout conversations with everyone older than me. When I finally did get to a workplace with younger people... I'd got older, and they all looked down at me because I clearly had some sort of issues - what I never knew until a couple of years ago.

CapedOwl
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25 May 2025, 3:59 am

BillyTree wrote:

To get any enjoyment or benefit from social interactions with other people or friends you have to behave in a way that somewhat reflects you thoughts and feelings. If it's too much acting, performance and pretending in order to project a certain persona there's a point where the strive for "improvement" is pointless and even toxic.

This resonates with me as well. Too much masking being implicitly required or expected is so beleagering that the enjoyment of the socializing is a "net negative" (it's a downer)

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Vitowski
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30 May 2025, 5:42 am

CapedOwl wrote:

BillyTree wrote:

This resonates with me as well. Too much masking being implicitly required or expected is so beleagering that the enjoyment of the socializing is a "net negative" (it's a downer)

Exactly like that.
I think we don't have to practice. We just struggle, because most people are not like us. Why should we change?

I don't think we have any social deficits among us. We only have them in relation to non-autistic people.

VioletKnight
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30 May 2025, 6:29 am

funeralxempire wrote:

I understand that many of us struggle with social skills, yet some of us seem prone to flinching away from any sort of social interactions that might lead to improving our social skills?

Has anyone here gotten good at something without practising it?
Well, why would one expect social skills to work differently?

If you have poor social skills, more social interaction is the only path towards improvement.

This may be a bit late, but the topic was in "Active" and I felt like giving my two cents. Sorry.
First, there are, in fact, things that people are good at without practicing. Some people just have natural talent for something or even multiple somethings while others don't. On that note, there are also people that are naturally bad at things and some are so bad that they can practice diligently for years and never improve. Not everything can be learned by everybody. Not everything can be learned, period. I know when you're young alot of people will say things like "you can do anything you put your mind to" but the reality of it is that limitations do exist. And that finally brings me to answering your title question: Generally it's not a refusal, it's an inability. Alot of neurodivergent people simply aren't built for it.
As for why people that struggle with socializing, not just neurodivergent people either, often tend to shy away from social interaction... Well, I can only speak for the US, but I'd say it's because of the way they're treated for their lack of social skills. It's a culture of putting people down, not helping them up. Instead of guidance, social mistakes tend to be met with ridicule. Especially before adulthood and by one's peers. Such an environment is not conducive to improving social skills. It, in fact, tends to lead to the opposite: loss of self-esteem, social anxiety and feelings of alienation. The more one tries and fails at social interaction, the worse it gets.

CapedOwl
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30 May 2025, 6:57 am

I've had some really good experiences practising social skills with Insight Dialogue. It's a group practice speaking and listening mindfully in pairs ("dyads"), trying to integrate meditation with Social Interaction. They do many different activities involving speaking in pairs, to investigate and discover where surprising challenges or insights are to be found.

I've gone on 3 of their 10-day retreats, and I also attend Zoom meetings. Be advised it is a Theravada Buddhist aligned organization; run by laypeople, not Buddhist monastics. It's an inclusive environment, and a safe space. People experience strange reactions sometimes, like crying, etc. People can be triggered by seemingly innocuous interactions. It's always a new, interesting experience with no end to the suprises.

As a neurodivergent person, I can't even begin to tell you of all the huge social lessons which came from this, and it's a treasure in my life.

Do a web search if you're interested.

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Edna3362
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30 May 2025, 9:22 am

At the moment?
I need a speech language pathologist.

Or at least a huge internal cognitive systems overhaul or an upgrade from whatever I've been putting up with since my academic days.

I need that first -- and it's conditionally progresses as long as I get a reliable executive functioning -- to actually progress in socialization.

Because, really -- what is socializing to someone with language processing issues, in cognitive processes deeper than the pragmatics (deeper than contexts, reading between the lines and tone or/and more closer to associations vocab, syntax or/and basic pronunciations)? :roll:

And this was after the relentless years of chronic sensory, emotional and mental related interferences that largely kept me from observing and processing the external.

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funeralxempire
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30 May 2025, 3:34 pm

VioletKnight wrote:

First, there are, in fact, things that people are good at without practicing. Some people just have natural talent for something or even multiple somethings while others don't. On that note, there are also people that are naturally bad at things and some are so bad that they can practice diligently for years and never improve.

I think you're exaggerating both ends of the competence spectrum.

Some people have innate talents for certain skills. This means their learning curve tends to be highly compressed, not non-existent.

For example: someone who has a talent for learning instruments can't play guitar if they've never handled one before, even if their first hour of practice might have them already mastering riffs that would be considered intermediate level. They weren't good without practising as you phrase it, instead they picked it up quickly.

Conversely, someone like me who's limited at what they can master on the instrument, might never be able to play at an advanced (or honestly, even intermediate) level, but still can show improvement compared to not ever practising at all. I might never be able to learn Master of Puppets, but I can go from a sloppy and mistake filled cover of Nervous Breakdown to a semi-competent one if I spend a few hours focusing on reducing those mistakes.

I agree with you that there's people with low ceilings who will never master skills at a high level, but to say they're incapable of any improvement simply isn't true. If you want to argue that it's a poor cost/benefit ratio, that's fair but also a separate argument from saying they're incapable of any improvement.

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VioletKnight
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31 May 2025, 6:04 am

funeralxempire wrote:

It's not an exaggeration, just a simple truth I've both witnessed and experienced. Yes, there are plenty of people that can learn things but at a faster or slower pace, but there are people that don't need practice to be good at things and there are those no amount of practice can help. There are people that are naturally talented enough to sing beautifully even without any lessons or have a natural talent for designing fashion and there are people that get years of lessons but remain tone deaf and a sense of taste can't really be taught. Yes, people need to learn or figure out the minimum of how any tool works first including a guitar, but there are people that, once they have that basic information, can pick up a guitar and create something beautiful. There are plenty of things that I've been naturally good at, things I have no talent for and have had to work at and even a few things that I've tried much of my life to become good at and have never managed to even improve at despite my best efforts. And I've seen the same thing of others.
The second paragraph of my initial reply was in answer to a different question you asked and was meant to be separate from the first, hence why it is it's own paragraph.

BTDT
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31 May 2025, 1:34 pm

Covid-19 lockdowns were an opportunity to observe if normal kids had difficulty socializing after being kept apart from each other.

E_the_AuDHD_LMFT
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04 Jun 2025, 2:41 pm

funeralxempire wrote:

Summer_Twilight wrote:

funeralxempire wrote:

Some people believe that learning social skills is a form of abeleism.

I think it's wise to ignore anyone who wishes to argue that position.

Self-improvement is ableism is certainly a take, just not a worthwhile one. If they wish to self-sabotage their lives by not making any attempt to grow as a person, they're welcome to, but I wouldn't want to allow myself to be infected by that attitude.

I think there's a middle ground here. Both Autistic and Allistic people need to learn that we have different ways of communicating that come naturally to us and that feel right for us to communicate in. I'm well versed in Allistic-preferred modes of communication (small talk, eye contact, asking questions of the other person, avoiding conflict and taboo topics, indirect asking (i.e. don't say "can I have a cookie," but just look longingly at the cookie). I mask very well and frequently have to argue with people about "whether I'm Autistic." I learned these skills not through instruction, but through a painful journey of a lot of ghosting, rejection, incredulity, bullying, and rudeness from Allistic people. Nobody that I know who is Allistic is expected to learn Autistic social skills. However, our ways of preferred communication are also valid and useful. We can be honest, detail-oriented, highly ethical, avoidant of eye contact (or seeking of it intensely), direct, egalitarian, literal, and prefer no more than 1-2 people to communicate with at a time, among other things.

The difference between an Allistic person experiencing Autistic communication and an Autistic person who is immersed in Allistic communication most of every day is that as an Autistic person, if I mask/camouflage for long periods of time or days in a row, it is a major drain on my nervous system. I have even gone out from my job on disability pay because communicating all day every day in Allistic ways has led to whole-body fatigue, overwhelm, irritability, and a loss of skill when it comes to understanding and producing spoken language. Alternatively, Allistic people who are surrounded by Autistic-preferred ways of communication might feel uncomfortable, insulted, affronted, or baffled, but they are not going be be "disabled" by it.

Learning ALLISTIC "Social Skills" is not really optional if we want to survive in a neurotypically privileged world. It's my hope that one day all Allistic people will also have to learn that their ways of communicating are not "better," and that they are even harmful, uncomfortable, painful, and disabling for those of us who prefer communicating in a different, NOT "deficient" or inferior way. We communicate in the ways we do because it feels right to us, and because it protects our nervous system, promotes our passions, and champions our ethical and moral allegiance to truth and accuracy.

uncommondenominator
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06 Jun 2025, 9:10 pm

So-called "natural talent" is a myth, rooted in misunderstanding, and often used as an excuse.

If you're not improving, you're probably doing something wrong.

Lotta strange conclusions in here.

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