For further reading

Real Social Skills

keelypizzapilgrim asked

Do you have any suggestions for books about social skills?

I don’t know of so many good books on social skills.

The one I’d recommend first and foremost is Power Tools by Dave Hingsberger. The most important social skill anyone can have is to be aware of one’s own power and mindful of not misusing it. This book is the best introduction I’ve ever seen to developing the habits of mind that lead to acknowledging and using power without abuse. Everyone should read it.

For that matter, his blog is also a really good resource for learning this, and also for learning social skills related to accessibility.

Ballastexistenz is also a good blog to read for learning about abuses of power that are not often understood or acknowledged, and some ways of dealing with life in a world in which they are common.

I think this is a good article, too: Five Geek Social Fallacies

And I’ve heard good things about this college book by the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, but I have not read it: https://www.navigatingcollege.org

I’m not sure what else to suggest, but I bet a lot of people who follow this blog know of things. Suggestions, anyone?

Keeping your touchy-feely off others.

Real Social Skills

“I’m a touchy-feely person.”

Some people say this a lot. Some of them are really, really scary and dangerous people.

Sometimes what people mean by this is “I’m the kind of person who is allowed to touch and feel people, and I don’t have to consider whether it is welcome”.

Sometimes this is physical. Sometimes it means people feel entitled to hugs. Or to stroke someone’s hand or hair. Or they think routine interpersonal touch is a basic necessity, and that the mainstream-expected physical boundaries are bad, and that they can make things better by unilaterally violating them and touching people.

Sometimes it’s emotional. Sometimes it means that they want to be an intimate part of people’s emotional experience. Sometimes it means they unilaterally share personal things, and act as though that creates a reciprocal obligation. Or they think that our society is too emotionally closed off, and by unilaterally imposing an intimate emotional tone to their interactions, they are making things better.

Sometimes people who do this think that people who don’t like this are just repressed. Or, worse, sometimes they think that people who don’t like this don’t actually exist, and that everyone likes it, deep down. That’s really dangerous, especially when people do this to people they have power over. (Which is really, really common, especially with people who work with children, especially with people who work with non-verbal children.)

It’s really important to interact with the person you’re actually with. You can’t do this by constructing an imaginary person you see as the Real Them, and by acting as though they want what the Real Them would want. You have to interact with the actual person, and respect their actual communication. Which means, if they don’t want you touching and feeling them, physically or emotionally, you need to take that seriously and back off.

Intimacy is a beautiful and important thing, but forced fake touchy-feely intimacy is a horrible thing.

If you want to be touchy-feely, touch and feel people who want that from you, and keep your hands and emotional feelers off others.

A mind-closing dynamic

Real Social Skills

Criticism is important. Everyone does wrong things, everyone does *seriously* wrong things. Often, other people know when you’re doing that’s bad.

And if you’re able to hear and evaluate criticism, they can tell you. Then you can find out, and know, and fix it before you do more harm.

There’s an attitude that superficially looks like openness to criticism that is actually the exact opposite. Sometimes people freak out about the possibility that they might have done something bad, and then say how bad they are, and need to be comforted. And then the interaction is all about them feeling like they’re not a bad person, and not so much about figuring out why the thing was bad and what to do better.

For instance:

  • Gary and Friend are having a conversation.
  • Friend: You’re standing kind of close. Can you back off a bit?
  • Gary: Oh no, I can’t believe I did that. That was horrible of me. I’m so sorry. I’m such an awful person. 

On the face of it, this looks like Gary is hearing that he violated a boundary, feeling disturbed by his actions, and resolving not to do it again. And maybe that’s part of it. But often, there’s also this subtext:

  • Gary feels humiliated by the implication that he did something bad, and he’s scared that maybe this means he is bad
  • He feels guilty, and feels an intense need for reassurance that he’s a good person. 
  • This is more important to him than fixing the problem
  • So he overreacts with excessive guilt and apology.
  • Then Friend feels obligated to reassure him.
  • And Friend learns that Gary overreacts to criticism. So, from now on, Friend is reluctant to tell Gary when he’s doing something wrong, unless it’s *so* wrong that his kind of reaction would be appropriate.
  • This makes it hard-to-impossible for Friend and Gary to communicate and solve problems in an ongoing way.

It’s really hard to break out of this dynamic once you’re in it, because realizing that you’re doing this can make you feel intense guilt and desire for reassurance. So it can get circular.

But, getting past doing this makes all kinds of things better. Even just reducing how much you do it makes things better. It’s not all or nothing, and it’s worth working on even if you don’t always succeed.

Hearing no

Real Social Skills

Sometimes this happens:

  • Person 1: X?
  • Person 2: No, because y.
  • Person one hears: Yes, if not-y. (And then acts accordingly).

No-because doesn’t mean yes-if. It doesn’t necessarily give you all, or even any of the reasons the answer is no. Changing things so that the no-because no longer applies doesn’t automatically make the answer yes. All it gives you is some information that might be useful in asking another question.

Some more concrete examples:

  • Hat-asker: Hey, can I borrow your hat?
  • Hat-owner: No, it’s raining and I don’t want it to get wet.
  • Hat-asker then assumes: If there’s no risk of getting the hat wet, then Person 2 agrees that it is ok for me to wear it.
  • Hat-asker  borrows the hat without asking, but only wears it indoors.

In this example, it would probably be ok for Hat-Asker to ask Hat-Owner, “Actually, I just wanted to wear it for a minute in the other room to entertain my friend. Would that be ok?”, but it would not be ok to assume without asking that it would be ok because the hat definitely wouldn’t get rained on.

Or this:

  • Person 1: Hey, let’s sit together
  • Person 2: I’m really not in the mood for company; I want it to be quiet.
  • Person 1 thinks: It’s ok if I sit there if I don’t make any noise. (And then sits next to Person 2 without verifying that this is ok).

In this situation, it might be ok to ask if it was ok to sit there quietly without having conversation, but it also might be better not to ask. (I’m not sure how to explain the difference, though.) But it would be invasive to just sit there and assume doing so quietly was ok.

Or this:

  • Person 1: Hey, do you want to go out on a date?
  • Person 2: No thanks; I’m too busy for dating this semester.
  • Person 1 thinks:  Person 2 will go out with me during winter break.

In this case, it’s important to bear in mind that wanting to date someone doesn’t necessarily mean they want to date you, or that they should date you, or that they should consider dating you. No-because doesn’t mean yes-when. In this case, it would be probably ok to ask again when it gets to be around that time, but it would not be ok to assume that the answer will be yes, and it would not be ok to demand an explanation of why the answer is still no.

Because people have the right to say no to requests for favors, attention, and use of their possessions, and they don’t generally owe you an explanation.

Response to an ask about money talk

Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Why is asking about money rude?

I get why asking someone randomly is rude, but why is it rude if it’s got to do with the conversation? On a tv show someone wanted to buy something really expensive and someone else asked how they could afford it, and another person said it was rude.

I don’t get why it’s so personal. Other times it’s acceptable to talk about how someone made their money, but only really if they’re rich.

I get that some people feel ashamed that they don’t make as much money as some people, but why wasn’t it acceptable in the first situation?

It’s hard to say without knowing the full context. I’m going to arbitrarily use an iPad as an example. Here’s some reasons it could be rude to ask someone how they could afford an iPad:

It could be (or be seen as) an indirect way of asking how much money someone makes. The perceived question could be “I didn’t think you had that kind of income! So how much *do* you make, anyway?”

It could be seen as a judgement about someone’s priorities. Eg, the implied question could be (or perceived as) “why are you going around buying *that* when your house is a dump and you keep complaining about how you can’t afford to get the roof fixed?”

It could be seen as contempt for the particular category of purchase. Eg, implied question “Why would you spend all that money on a stupid expensive toy?”

It can be (or be perceived as) a class dynamic. Eg “Who do you think you are buying an iPad? That’s for rich people. Do you think you’re a rich person who deserves that kind of thing?!”

It could also just be (or perceived as) someone trying to assert that they have the right to demand that you justify your spending decisions to them. The less money people have, the more they tend to be treated as owing people an explanation, and it’s draining. Even if you don’t mean that, it’s likely to be perceived that way.

Social skill: Places you might be in the way

Real Social Skills

If you’re on the train/bus, the disabled seats are there for a reason; don’t use them if you don’t need them.

Elevators get full of people who can walk up stairs and then people who can’t have to wait and wait and wait. If you’re using elevators, pay attention to whether this is happening.

Accessible toilet stalls often get occupied by people who don’t need them and take forever using them. If you can use the regular stalls and regular stalls are available, don’t use the accessible stalls.

People block ramps all the time by hanging out on or in front of them. If you’re hanging around a ramp, pay attention to whether you’re in the way of someone who needs to use it.

Don’t assume everything you know is obvious

Real Social Skills

Some things are hard to figure out, but are really obvious and clear once you know them.

When a group of people all know the same set of these obvious-once-you-know-them things, this is what they call common sense.

And it can be easy to think that these things are just obvious, and that anyone who doesn’t know them is somehow defective.

When the common sense is about something like how to use a computer, or how to do a math problem, or how to use correct grammar, this tends to play out as assuming that anyone who doesn’t know the obvious-once-you-know-it things is just stupid and bad at thinking.

When the common sense is about something like knowing why a particular word hurts people, or understanding how to communicate, or something like that – it tends to play out as thinking anyone who doesn’t know the obvious-once-you-know-it thing is just a bad person who doesn’t care about others, and who must be lying or willfully failing to understand, because this stuff is *obvious*.

The thing is, it isn’t always obvious before you know it. There’s a difference between clear-to-you and obvious-to-anyone-who-doesn’t-suck.

And it’s important to be mindful of this, because *everyone* is ignorant of something that is both important and obvious to people who already know it. Everything has to be learned; common sense is learned, it’s not just some sort of automatic knowledge. And it’s not right to treat people like they’re bad/stupid/evil for not understanding everything right away.

Some things to think about after a bad interaction

Real Social Skills

If after interacting with someone, you feel filled with shame, or fear, or just generally feel like shit – it’s an indication that there’s a problem. Feeling that way tells you that there’s a problem, but it doesn’t in itself tell you what the problem is. 

It’s worth taking some time to figure out what’s behind it, and why you feel bad. For me, it helps to use words to talk or write to myself about what I think is going on, and these are the kinds of questions I ask:

1) Do you think that you *did* something bad?

  • If so, what?
  • Was it something you did on purpose?
  • Was it something you did inadvertently but culpably?
  • Was it a minor mistake that is being blown way out of proportion?
  • Is it something you would consider a big deal if someone did it to you?
  • Do people whose judgement you respect think you did a bad thing?
  • If you hurt someone who didn’t deserve it, is there anything you can do to fix it?
  • If you angered someone powerful, is there something you need to do to protect yourself?

2) Do you usually feel awful after talking to this person? (If so, that’s a major red flag.)

  • Did this person get you to agree to something you hadn’t meant to agree to?
  • Are you really confused?
  • Do you understand the interaction? Do you know what they said and what you said? If you always feel horrible after talking to someone *and* you usually have no idea what the content of the interaction was, there’s probably a problem.

3) Do other people you know have similar interactions with this person?

  • If so, do they know what is going on?
  • Are your trustworthy friends worried about your interactions with this person? If so, why?