Improving social skills is like calculus for us.

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FranzOren
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20 Jun 2021, 8:20 pm

As a person with ASD, improving my social skills feels like doing calculus, even though it is like basic math. Meaning that improving social skills should be a simple thing to do, but because I have ASD, it is like calculus. That is the best way I can describe it.

I hope my explanation about ASD and social skills is very good.



Brainiac42
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21 Jun 2021, 12:19 am

It just means we must work harder for the same result, but it is not impossible. Remember that.



FranzOren
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21 Jun 2021, 1:16 am

Sometimes it feels impossible, but I agree.

Thank you!



jbmajord
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17 Jul 2021, 3:49 pm

I like calculus better tham social situations.


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Harry Haller
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17 Jul 2021, 4:40 pm

Calculus is easier :lol:



Edna3362
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17 Jul 2021, 5:18 pm

Calculus has rules. More logical. Can be put into paper. Is very linear. Not very multisensory.


Socialization isn't.


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Joe90
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17 Jul 2021, 7:25 pm

To learn the more complex social skills all I had to do was learn from embarrassing mistakes I made that I got criticised for by my peers.

Now the vast majority of my social skills feel so natural that I surprise myself when I do make an occasional embarrassing social blunder.


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ezbzbfcg2
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17 Jul 2021, 7:41 pm

^It would be great to hear of some social mistakes people kept making but then learned from. Anyone want to give an example? I personally find it hard not to be myself, but I realize to some extent life can be far worse in having to deal with people who don't understand us. They can be be devious and possibly dangerous.



Joe90
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17 Jul 2021, 7:58 pm

ezbzbfcg2 wrote:
^It would be great to hear of some social mistakes people kept making but then learned from. Anyone want to give an example? I personally find it hard not to be myself, but I realize to some extent life can be far worse in having to deal with people who don't understand us. They can be be devious and possibly dangerous.


Some of my social skills I actually learnt naturally along with my peers in early childhood. But other social skills I learnt after my peers did, and I learnt the hard way.

When I was a child I lacked some self-awareness and would go around thinking that people don't judge you because they don't notice what you're doing. It took me a long while to actually figure out that people do notice things and that being weird can cause people to bully you or laugh at you or not want to be your friend, etc.
So I think my social difficulties stemmed around lacking self-awareness and being slightly behind my peers socially. It took a few embarrassing situations to haunt me for the rest of my life in order for me to get where I am today.

I'm not speaking for anyone else here, but as a high-functioning and mild Aspie, I feel like social skills are like driving a car; you have to learn how to drive a car but once you know how it just becomes natural to you. So now most of my social skills are as natural as anyone else's.

Some basic social skills I did develop normally, from birth or very early childhood, such as making eye contact (occured from newborn age) and talking and having a conversation (occured around the normal age).


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ezbzbfcg2
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17 Jul 2021, 8:22 pm

American TV host Dr. Phil once said, "You wouldn't care so much about what people think about you if you knew how little they did." I feel this is true for an otherwise "normal" person who's overly self-conscious.

However, I've slowly begun to realize that people are actually more aware of me than I am of them. I think the opposite of what Dr. Phil purports may be true with Aspies, that our brain processing doesn't really include thinking much of others beyond the present time or current interaction; and NTs really do spend more time thinking about us (and people in general) than we think about them, and more so than we realize.

Example given above. Poster says she didn't realize how harshly she was being judged for being 'weird.' I think a key difference between NTs and Aspies is the amount of time and judgement they spend in evaluating other people around them. I knew they did this more than I did, just didn't realize the extent to which they did. Dr. Phil's quote doesn't apply in our scenario.



FranzOren
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17 Jul 2021, 10:44 pm

It makes sense.



Dear_one
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18 Jul 2021, 5:54 pm

FranzOren wrote:
As a person with ASD, improving my social skills feels like doing calculus, even though it is like basic math. Meaning that improving social skills should be a simple thing to do, but because I have ASD, it is like calculus. That is the best way I can describe it.

I hope my explanation about ASD and social skills is very good.


My understanding is that calculus, while requiring persistence to learn, is a logical system. Social skills can't arise from logic, because it is too slow with so many variables and initial unknowns.



cyberdad
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18 Jul 2021, 6:00 pm

TBF social nuance is more complex than calculus



FranzOren
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18 Jul 2021, 8:30 pm

Calculus is much harder for me than very basic math due to my symptoms of learning disorder.



ToughDiamond
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20 Jul 2021, 2:45 pm

Oddly enough I'd much rather work on social challenges than calculus.

I've found that with the right people I don't need to put much effort into "social skills." If the other people are fairly easy-going and friendly, it's usually just a matter of not being destructive, taking a bit of care not to bring them down with negativity or dominating conversations, and earning trust, being willing to co-operate with them and help them out. The right people won't get upset about a bit of eccentricity. If you do something they don't like, they'll talk to you about it respectfully and try to resolve the problem. They'll have a sense of proportion. If you like them and you're interested in them, they'll probably feel the same way about you.

Of course the flaw in all that is, there might not be very many people who fit the bill, and a lot of us get forced into groups of people who aren't that sound (like at school or in a workplace), with no obvious way out. Sometimes getting on with those types can be practically impossible, certainly challenging socially. Then it becomes a matter of who's strongest, and unfortunately it'll often turn out to be them. I survived a lot by ignoring the main group and looking for outliers. It was also useful to identify the kind of social gatherings that I was never going to fit into or enjoy.



FranzOren
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20 Jul 2021, 4:51 pm

I see.