affect – Real Social Skills

Civility is not the same as affect

September 29, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Having a civil conversation is about mutual listening and mutual respect.

Sometimes that gets conflated with affect — people act like the defining feature of respectful conversation is things like the position of your body, the volume of your voice, and whether you’re using polite words.

Sometimes things like that can be involved in what makes a conversation respectful, but they don’t define it.

The rules of politeness allow people to be dismissive and cruel. Similarly, it is possible to have a mutually respectful conversation that violates the rules of politeness.

For instance, it is often possible to have a mutually respectful conversation with raised voices and cuss words. It is also often possible to use a lot of I-statements and gentle-sounding language to have a conversation that is fundamentally disrespectful and cruel.

Conflating affect with respect ends up drowning out a lot of voices, and privileging people who are good at manipulating the rules of politeness.

(Affect matters, and it’s ok if some kinds of affect are dealbreaking for you in terms of your ability to have conversations with someone. I’m not saying that everything should be acceptable to everyone. All I’m saying is that affecting politeness is not the same as treating someone respectfully.)

Short version: Body language, tone of voice, and affect can be part of what makes a conversation civil and mutually respectful, but they don’t define it.

feelings and therapy

September 10, 2015June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Anonymous said:

When I have therapy or counselling, I notice that if I deal with real emotions in a way that is good for me, that I have to drop the neurotypical act of behaviours that show I am doing polite and kind listening.

I’m still listening but just not showing it in the way people prefer. When I do this, I notice that they get very hard and uncaring, even though I do it to make counselling work for me so I can tune into myself instead of acting. Do I give up?

realsocialskills said:

I’m not sure what you mean by “Do I give up?”.

If you’re asking about dealing with real emotions – I don’t think that you should give up trying to find a way to deal with your real emotions. I think that everyone can learn to deal with feelings, both feelings they’re having and feelings that other people are having. I think it’s really great that you’re working on that, and I definitely don’t think that you should give up.

Which leads to the question: What should you do about your current therapy situation? I don’t know the answer to that. I think you’re the best judge of that. Here are some considerations that might be worth thinking about:

I think that you have a lot of options. Some I see (there are probably others):

Trying to negotiate with your current therapy to make therapy work better for you
Trying to find another therapist
Staying with this therapist, but not expecting much out of it (or giving it time)
Trying a different kind of therapy
Deciding not to do therapy for now

Regarding working things out with your current therapist:

If you’re with this therapist voluntarily and could quit if you want to, trying to negotiate might be a good option
It might be worth telling them that you need to be able to drop attentiveness behaviors to be able to process
And that you want to process and deal with these feelings in a real way, and that you can’t both look attentive and do that
Some therapists are receptive to that kind of feedback; some aren’t
Therapists are human, and sometimes they misread things. Sometimes if you point it out, it helps.
Some therapists are not receptive to that kind of feedback, and might get really annoyed or manipulative
If it turns out that yours isn’t interested in meeting your need to drop affect in order to process feelings, it’s likely that they are not the right therapist for you
And that’s information worth having.
(If you’re stuck with this therapist no matter what, this might be riskier. I can’t tell you how to evaluate the risks in your particular situation, but I think it’s important to consider whether there might be some)

Not all therapists are the same:

It’s fairly common for people to need to look unusual in order to be able to engage with emotions in therapy
Working through emotions and psychological issues is hard work. Sometimes it means you can’t manage looking attentive
This isn’t a secret. A significant percentage of therapists expect that many clients won’t look like they’re listening when they’re processing.
Some therapists have the skills to handle this constructively; some don’t.
If you can choose who your therapist is, it might be worth trying to find a therapist who already understands this

Not all kinds of therapy are the same:

Not all therapy is about feelings.
Some kinds of therapy are about behavior, or learning specific skills.
If what you want from therapy is to learn to tune into yourself and deal with your feelings constructively, it’s important that you do a kind of therapy that helps with that
For instance, psychodynamic therapy or art therapy might work well for that. CBT probably won’t, since CBT is about behavior more than it’s about processing.
Just, generally speaking, it’s important to make sure that you and your therapist agree on what the goals are, and that the type of therapy they do makes sense for your goals
It might be worth learning more about types of therapy, and thinking through whether you’re in the kind you want to be in, or whether you might rather try a different kind

More generally regarding therapy:

There are a lot of therapy evangelists who talk about therapy like it’s the end all and be all of making progress in your life. They talk like therapy is risk free, universally helpful. They also talk like, if you’re not in therapy, you’re doomed to stagnation and that you’re essentially giving up on yourself. Real therapy is not like that. Real therapy is a set of people with a set of tools, which may or may not be helpful in given circumstances.

Real therapy is a mixed bag. Not everyone has the same experiences with it. For instance:

Therapy can be game-changing.
A lot of people find that therapy allows them to make progress dealing with problems they’ve felt completely trapped by for years.
Others find that therapy gives them skills or insights that dramatically improve their lives.
Others find therapy completely unhelpful.
Some people finds that it helps some, but not that much.
Some people are people are harmed in therapy.
Some people struggle to find the right therapist, but have really good experiences with therapy once they find someone who can work well with them.
And there are any number of other experiences.

I think there is no universal answer to “Should I work on this problem in therapy?”. I that’s always a complex personal decision. It depends on what you want and what you have access to and what you find works best for you. The answers to these questions are personal, and you’re the best judge of them.

And just, generally speaking: if therapy is not working for you, that’s a problem that you should take seriously. If you don’t feel respected, that’s a problem that’s a problem you should take seriously. Therapy is supposed to be helpful. If you’re in therapy that isn’t helping you, it means that something isn’t right and that it’s probably worth changing something.

Short version: Therapy means a lot of different things, and people have a lot of different experiences with therapy. There are different kinds of therapy and different kinds of therapists. Sometimes therapy is a good idea and sometimes it isn’t. It’s a personal decision and sometimes it’s complicated. Whether or not therapy is your approach right now, don’t give up on yourself. You can learn and you can make progress.

Appearing to enjoy behavior modificiation is not meaningful

July 17, 2015June 10, 2021 Real Social Skills

One common response to criticism of ABA is to claim that people subjected to it enjoy it:

“My child loves his therapist and asks to go to sessions!”
“All of my clients smile and have fun!”
“My ABA is play based!”

What people forget is that affect is a set of behaviors, and that behavior modification methods work as well on affective behaviors as they do on anything else:

You can reinforce people to look happy
You can reinforce people to praise therapy
It doesn’t have to be an explicit part of the behavior plan to happen
And it can keep happening even after you fade direct prompts or direct intentional reinforcers

ABA programs give the therapist massive power over the person. That power in itself can cause people to look happy, through a more subtle reinforcement mechanism than takes place on a behavior plan:

If you have power over someone in the way that behavior therapists do, they’re going to be highly motivated to please you
If they figure out that you want to believe that they are happy, they are very likely to act like they are
If you treat them better when they display the affect you want or praise you, they’re likely to act happy.
It doesn’t mean they’re actually happy
Or that what you’re doing is good for them

(Also, affect often is an explicit part of someone’s behavior plan. It is not at all uncommon for ABA programs to involve actively ignoring distress and withholding attention and rewards until someone looks happy. It is not at all uncommon for ABA programs to involve teaching people to smile, to hug, or to otherwise do things that would out-of-context indicate happiness, enjoyment, or affection. It doesn’t have the same meaning if it’s prompted or trained.)

Also, programs based on positive reinforcement involving controlling someone’s access to stuff they care about:

The first step in a program based on positive reinforcement is to find out what someone most enjoys or cares about
(This is called a preference assessment or a reinforcement inventory. Here’s an example.)
And then making sure they have no access (or limited access) to those things outside of sessions or other situations in which someone is actively reinforcing them to do something
Of course if someone’s only access to everything important to them happens in sessions they will ask for sessions
That doesn’t mean they like the fact that someone has that level of power over them
(No one likes being manipulated that way.)
That doesn’t mean they like the things that the therapist makes them do
That doesn’t mean the power dynamic is harmless
That doesn’t mean ABA is a good approach to teaching

People who can’t say no, can’t say yes meaningfully. Looking happy isn’t meaningful if you’re rewarded for affecting happiness and punished for looking visibly distressed. Making the best of a bad situation isn’t consent.

Journalists

September 27, 2013June 14, 2021 Real Social Skills

Journalists are not your friends or advocates when they interview you.

They might maintain a really friendly affect. They might sound really sympathetic. They might be really good at making you feel heard. This is often a way of manipulating you into saying things that are useful to them. Sounding friendly doesn’t mean that they are on your side.

Journalists write the article that they want to write. It is for their benefit, not yours.

If you keep that in mind, it’s a lot easier to avoid getting into trouble when talking with them.