Is joining a social skills group helpful?

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I discovered a local social skills group, but a weekly fee is assessed. Before participating, I wanted to get some feedback on if social skills groups are worthwhile. Many people have told me that I have poor eye contact, my stims are irritating, I gesture in an unconventional way, and I don't modulate my voice effectively. I also have challenges unraveling others' intentions. Particularly, I find myself getting manipulated a lot, and I want to stop myself from getting bullied in the future. While I would like to work on my social skills so I have more success with jobs, part of me thinks that I am fine the way I am. I have friends--not a ton, but several people I can reach out to--and meeting new people makes me so anxious. I know that everyone else in the group will probably have the same anxiety problems that I do, but part of me wonders if I should just stop trying to make new friends and be content with the friends I have; life would be a lot less anxiety-inducing that way. I think it would be helpful to receive some training on how to interact with others more effectively, particularly given my poor job history, but I am worried that I will be too anxious to benefit. In other words, going to the social skills group might increase my anxiety, which could spill over into other domains of my my life. When I started college, I tried to go to extracurricular meetings, in hopes that I could gain practice meeting strangers, but I discovered that the anxiety from the meetings would start to permeate my daily routine and simple things like going to the store would become more anxiety-provoking than they once were. Even if I had a writing club meeting at 7 pm, I would think about it from the moment I got up, and the anxiety would prevent me from accomplishing what I needed to do throughout the day. I almost regressed rather than progressed, if that makes sense. Could the same happen to me in a social skills group--did it happen to you?

Another concern I have is that I might absorb the behaviors of the other members of the social skills group. I already have a lot of visible symptoms of my ASD, and I don't want to unconsciously pick up any new stims. When I am around NT's, I work hard to suppress my urges to stim and try my best to make eye contact, but being around other autistic people I might let my guard down, and this might mean I am less conscientious of my behavior around NT's in the future. At least when I am around my friends who are NT, I like to think that they have a positive influence on the way I act, and I try to emulate their tone of voice, posture, and eye contact, even though I am seldom successful at this. If you were in a social skills group, did you find that you gained social skills, or do you think that being with so many other autistics reinforced your existing behaviors or even worsened them?

Another thing that I am worried is that I might be a poor match for the group. I need lots of help managing non-verbals, but I have been told that I am very polite (honestly, this probably stems from my fear of accidentally saying something which could hurt someone, so I make sure I give people lots of praise just in case). For that reason, I don't need to work on bluntness or not offending others. Would a social skills group be appropriate for me?

I also am worried I might not connect with other people in the group, because I have unusual interests. You are probably laughing when you hear that, because we all have unusual interests here on the spectrum, but the only people I have ever met on the spectrum liked video games and manga. Granted, I don't have extensive experience interacting with other autistics, so this is only a small sampling of our population. I am more interested in demographics, Soviet history, inequality issues, and Greenland, and I highly doubt anyone else would be able to connect with me over these areas What if everyone else talks about video games all the time and I am left out?

Finally, a concern of mine is that I am a female, and the group is all males. I am worried that the guys in the group might try to initiate romantic relationships (even though that would be against the rules of the group). I have not spent significant time around anyone else who has an ASD in the past (nothing like being kept isolated from my own species!), but the one man I do know with an ASD has a history of inappropriately touching me in a romantic way. I do not wish to stereotype because certainly there are many men on the spectrum who do not behave in this manner, but I would be interested in hearing from others who were/are in social skills groups, to see if this concern is valid.

im part of a group which is for depressed and socially anxious ppl.
there are 3 guys who are active member and im one female who is active

one of the guy keeps flirting with me and keeps on asking whether im happy in my marriage
or not
i have told him several times and ignored him several times
but same bullshite

one of the guy we banned and ignored
he was pretty cheesy type

now two more guys are there
who are kinda acting weird
they keep changing dates and what not rubbish

finally i dont know how long this group will last.

whether its productive and helpful
i cant say

if there were more females then it would have been helpful for me
but at present its crap