reader questions – Page 6 – Real Social Skills

Asking for reassurance can (sometimes) be manipulative

June 26, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

My response to this post from wasthatnotsideblog:

just gonna say this: if someone has social anxiety and they ask you something akin to ‘are you mad at me’ or ‘do you hate me’, it isn’t because they don’t trust you, it’s because their brain literally tells them that all the time

it’s not a personal slight, it’s insecurity caused by mental illness

thanks

realsocialskills said:

It’s manipulative if the only acceptable answer is “of course I’m not mad at you and nothing is wrong”.

It’s ok to worry a lot that someone might be mad, and to need them to be explicit about it. It’s ok if you need to check in much more than most other people do.

It’s also important to accept that sometimes, the answer will be “yes, I am mad at you”, and that people are allowed to be mad at you even though your mental illness makes other people’s anger frightening.

Because sometimes, something will be wrong, sometimes you will hurt people, and sometimes they will be mad at you. That’s part of how relationships work, and it’s not ok to try to evade it.

Pushback on “don’t hate younger versions of yourself”

June 25, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

About the “don’t hate younger versions of yourself”- I can see that with ignorance and inexperience, but wouldn’t it make sense if someone used to be violent and/or mean to hate who they used to be?

realsocialskills said:

I don’t think that hating your former self helps in that case, either. Some people have a lot on their conscience for which the only appropriate reaction is horror and atonement. That is not the same as hating yourself. Self hate will not help.

Partly because – the person who did and believed all of those things is still you. You will always be someone who once did those things, even though you now know better.

I think that kind of past creates obligations. You have to be able to face what you have done, and do work fighting the kind of evil you were once responsible for. That work has to be done with love.

Part of those obligations have to do with – finding ways to communicate to others who are cruel in the way that you once were that it is immoral and inexcusable to do those things.

I don’t think you can do that if you hate them, or if you see them as worthless and irredeemable. You were not worthless or beyond hope when you acted that way. You learned to stop. You are not unique in that regard. There are others who can stop, and there is work you can do to make that more likely.

It doesn’t mean that you have to renounce all boundaries and let mean people hurt you, or that you have to be close to people who are doing the kind of harm you once did. But it does mean that you have to do things beyond feel disgust. Hating your former self is a cop-out.

Push come to shove, you have to live with yourself. Hating yourself won’t make your past go away, it won’t undo anything you’ve done, and it’s not a way out of your obligations going forward.

Learning self respect

June 21, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

I’m twenty years old and I can’t help but think that everyone thinks I’m stupid. I stutter, I feel slow, I say dumb things, and I sometimes catch people giving me judging looks. No one’s ever said that to me except maybe once or twice when I was much younger, but I can’t help be bothered by it.

I feel like there’s something wrong with me mentally, but people don’t want to address it. I hate it. I’d rather be messed up and not aware of it than this. How do I learn to love and be okay with myself?

realsocialskills said:

The most helpful thing I know about this, I learned from Dave Hingsburger’s book _The Are Word_. And, in the simplest form, it’s this:

You’re ok. They’re mean.

If you stutter and think slowly and have cognitive problems and have trouble communicating, there probably are a lot of people in your life who think you are stupid.

They may think that, but it isn’t true.

You’re ok. They’re mean.

People who think that you are stupid are being mean. People who give you judging looks are being really mean.

You’re ok. They’re mean.

The way you talk doesn’t make them look down on you. The way you think doesn’t make them look down on you. Your voice is not the problem. Your brain is not the problem. They’re mean because they’re bigoted and mean.

You’re ok. They’re mean.

And, in the words of Laura Hershey: you get proud by practicing.

I know it hurts. It hurts terribly. It’s not your fault, and you won’t always feel this awful. It takes time. It takes practice. It’s slow, and incremental. Try not to be hard on yourself for struggling with this. We all do. It’s hard. That’s not your fault, either.

You’re ok. They’re mean. And as you practice understanding this, and as you practice getting proud, it will be easier to feel ok and harder for them to hurt you.

Empathy With Storybook Villains

June 16, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Does it say something bad about me that I empathize with storybook villains?

realsocialskills said:

I doubt it. There are a lot of good reasons that people emphasize with storybook villains, for instance:

Storybooks can be very simplistic.

They don’t tell the whole story.
The things villains do often don’t make apparent sense
They’re crying out for an explanation
And if you make up a backstory of a character, it’s likely to be a sympathetic read of them. Because people create characters they like, more often than not
In that case, it’s very likely that you’ll sympathize with your version of the villain over the canon version of the hero

Sometimes the villains seem to have more agency than the heroes in storybooks.

Sometimes, villains make choices and do things, while it seems that the hero just sort of has a lot of things happen to them
Eg: the hero wanders into the enchanted forest and shares his lunch with a witch, or doesn’t, according to how he’s accustomed to behaving. The witch had decided to hang around that part of the forest, and decides in fairly creative ways how to curse or bless the hero.
That’s sort of.. more personal, somehow?
So it’s possible that you have more empathy for the villains because they seem more like people and less like simplistic embodied morals of the story

The heroes are sometimes not actually in the right.

You don’t have to like the hero just because the story says they’re the hero
Eg: in Jack and the Beanstalk, the hero steals all the giant’s stuff and then kills him.

It might have to do with your experiences being treated as bad:

If you’ve been taught to think of yourself as bad, it can be easier to identify with villains than heroes
If everyone treats you like the wicked witch, ogre, giant, or evil queen, you’re likely to identify with the villain than the people who kill the villain
When you’re bullied by a mob a lot, it’s not so appealing to cheer on a mob that rips someone apart
The story may call them the villain, but so do the people who call you the villain
And the villain may have had the chance to defy them, or come close to winning, in ways that you’ve never been able to do

I think the only way it might say something bad about you if it’s part of you convincing yourself that it ’s ok for you to treat others badly. Or, if it’s part of building your identity as a person who is intrinsically destructive of everyone, and seeing that as a good thing. If you’re doing that, you should stop. But that’s probably not what’s going on.

Bathrooms

June 11, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Hi, I have a social-interaction question. What is the appropriate response when someone knocks on a restroom door, when you are using that restroom? Do you say something, and if so, what?

realsocialskills said:

You should answer.

There are two basic reasons people knock on bathroom doors:

To find out whether anyone is in the bathroom
To alert whoever is in the bathroom that someone is waiting

You should answer so that the person knocking will know that the bathroom is occupied. Otherwise, they might think no one is in there and try to come in.

Some responses that are generally considered acceptable:

“Someone’s in here”
“Occupied”
“I’m in here”

Generally speaking, don’t identify yourself or say anything with much content. Bathrooms are considered private space, and talking to someone while you’re in a bathroom is likely to be seen as a violation of both your privacy and theirs. (There are exceptions to this, but I don’t know how to explain what they are, and I think they may not be relevant to your question).

Also, if you know that someone is waiting for the bathroom, it’s good to hurry up if you can. Eg: if you know someone is waiting, it’s probably not a good time to start fixing your hair.

Trauma aftermaths when you’re not sure what to think about the people who hurt you

May 25, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Is it still considered abuse if the person doesn’t mean for it to be, or doesn’t think it is? My parents have always been really harmful for me (manipulative, intimidating, not taking my health concerns/disabilities seriously, screaming at me, etc.), but they won’t even say that the stuff they said/did caused harm.

Or they will say they didn’t know/couldn’t have known. And now that I’m an “adult” they’re a lot better, but it just makes them deny them ever being harmful to me. like, some of it I can kinda get.

They didn’t know I had fibro, so me sleeping too much they thought was just me being lazy. And like they didn’t know how them yelling made me shut down because Id just sit quietly.

They didn’t know I was queer and that the shit they’d say was hurtful to me.

But at the same time I’m just like, it all messed me up so bad. But was it “bad enough” to be considered abuse? Does it even matter now?

realsocialskills said:

It sounds like, whether or not it was their fault, you’ve been hurt very badly by people who had the responsibility for caring for you.

It also sounds like they haven’t acknowledged that.

I think that “is this bad enough to be considered abuse?” is probably a counterproductive question (because no matter how bad something was, you can *always* find a way to convince yourself that it was Not Real Abuse if you try hard enough). I think a better way of framing it is:

Was I hurt?
Were the people who hurt me culpable?
Are they still hurting me?
Where do I stand with them?

It seems like getting clear in your own head that you were hurt will help you. And that, regardless of the conclusions you come to about the extent to which your parents were at fault, your suffering is real and your hurt is real and things happened to you that shouldn’t have.

Even if all their mistakes were innocent, even if they had no culpability, that doesn’t erase your trauma. What happened to you matters. Finding a way to erase their culpability would not erase your hurt.

Further, denying that they hurt you in the past is something they’re doing to you *now*, in the present. Keep that in mind, too. It might have a lot of bearing on how you relate to them.

I don’t know them or you, and I don’t know how you should relate to them now. That’s a very personal choice.

Some people find that it’s better to drop the subject (either by not bringing it up or by refusing to discuss it). It might be that you can’t get them to understand, but that you can avoid the subject in the way that makes a relationship possible. If you go that route, it doesn’t mean that you have to forgive them or concede that anything that happened was ok. It just means that you’re not discussing it with them.

There are other approaches, but I’m not quite sure how to describe them.

Making phone calls

May 6, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

youratheistfriend asked:

Do you have any tips on how to make important phone calls when you need to but it’s difficult? I always end up getting myself all panicked about them and sometimes consequently unable to make them, but I can’t not worry about them because then I’ll put it off too long or forget about it. Thank you so much for having this blog, by the way, it’s amazing.

realsocialskills said:

I’m not great at making phone calls, but I’ve gotten a bit better in recent months.

I use my computer for cognitive support in making calls. Whenever I make a call, I usually do three things:

Take out my computer and write a plan for the call
Make the call
Keep my computer at hand so I can take notes

Here is how I use my computer before the call:

I write out notes for what I need to say
Sometimes I write a script, and sometimes I just write bullet points for topics I need to hit or questions I need to ask
If there’s a possibility that I will need to leave a message, then I write out a script for the message.
(One of the worst parts of phone calls for me has been worrying about what will happen if I have to leave a message, so writing out exactly what to say helps a lot. It makes the thought of leaving a message more bearable, and less of a barrier to making calls)
There’s a thread about phone messages here here.

Here’s how I use my computer during the call:

I type notes on things that sound important
Or that I think I might not understand
And if I’m not sure I understand something, sometimes I type out the question I want to ask before I ask it (It can be hard for me to use my voice to generate questions in real-time)
Writing out notes is considered normal; writing out questions is not
But if you say you need to write something down, people won’t know which it is. So if you need to type things out in order to form a question, you can say “Let me write that down” or “hold on a minute”, and then actually just type the question then ask it

I’ve found that, now that I have strategies in place for managing phone calls a bit better cognitively, I procrastinate slightly less. It’s still not great, though.

Sometimes I also have someone sit with me while I make the call, or tell me to make the call. Like, I will ask a friend “So, I should call x now, right?” and they will say “Yes, go do it”, and that will get me unstuck.