boundaries – Page 6 – Real Social Skills

About apologies

May 18, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

There are three situations in which apologizing is a good idea:

When you’ve been inadvertently rude:

Eg: If you carelessly bump into or trip someone
Or if you take away a chair away that a scooter/wheelchair user wants to sit on
It’s good to say “excuse me” or “sorry” in that situation
That kind of apology says implicitly “What I did was inadvertently rude. I don’t mean it as an insult, and I don’t think it’s ok to be rude to you.”
(It’s better not to say that explicitly, because saying it explicitly sounds like you’re pressuring them to reassure you that you’re a good person)

For the sake of someone you’ve hurt:

Sometimes when you hurt someone, apologizing is a way to undo some of the hurt.
Because it can be a way of saying “That wasn’t your fault, it was my fault, you deserved better and I’m sorry”
(That can be powerful, because people often think that it is their own fault when someone hurts them, and they are in fact often pressured into thinking that it’s their fault or that it didn’t happen by their entire social circle. If you apologize without offering any defense, that can go a long way towards fixing that, particularly if you are also honest with third parties)
If you hurt someone without apologizing, it can be an implied threat that you will do the same thing again in the future.
If you realize that what you did was wrong and apologize for doing it, the person you hurt might feel safer and be spared the stress of living under the implied threat of harm you’ve created
(but this is something you do for their sake, not yours. The point is to stop threatening them, not to get them to feel better about you, forgive you, or trust you. You don’t have any right to any of that and shouldn’t put pressure on them to give it. They’re allowed to be afraid of you, whether or not you feel you deserve it)

For your own sake:

Sometimes, you offend someone with power over you (eg: a boss, a teacher, a nurse, a social worker) without actually being in the wrong
Or a group with power over you (eg: an activist group)
And, in that case, it is often a good idea to apologize even if you have done nothing wrong
The point of apologizing in this case is to appease powerful people enough that they will stop hurting you
Everyone does this at some point; there’s no shame in it even though it can be humiliating
Sometimes it’s also good to draw a line and refuse to apologize and take the consequences of taking a stand. But you’re not going to be able to refuse every time you offend someone with power over you

It’s very important to be clear about which type of apology you are making:

If you’ve hurt someone, it’s important that the apology be for their sake and not yours
Sometimes if you hurt someone, they will be angry at you. They might also tell other people what you did. They might be afraid of you. They might avoid you. They probably think of you as a person who does the kind of thing you did to them (because you are: if you did the thing, you are the kind of person who does that thing). They might be afraid of you.
None of those things are wronging you; they have the right to do all of those things and you don’t have the right to stop them
Since all of those things hurt, it can feel tempting to use the scripts you use when you’re apologizing to a person who is wronging *you* to get them to stop.
It is not ok to do that when you’re the one who is in the wrong.
The point of your apology is to give them something, not to get something from them or make them stop doing something

If you’re really sorry, you have to be willing to admit what you did to third parties without defending yourself:

Eg: “Yes, they’re telling the truth. I wish I hadn’t done that, but I did, and they have every right to be angry with me”.
This will mean that some people *other than the person you’ve hurt directly* won’t trust you either
It means that some people whose respect you value will have a low opinion of you
You have to be willing to accept this without trying to gloss over what you have done; anything less is continuing the harm done to the person you hurt
Even if you have sincerely changed, you still did what you did, and no one has to trust you. Everyone gets to decide for themself

Sometimes it’s important not to apologize:

If you have reason to think that someone would find contact with you terrifying or otherwise unwelcome, leave them alone
In particularly, if someone you have hurt has told you not to contact them, do not contact them with an apology
When they said “don’t contact me”, they meant it. They did not mean “don’t contact me unless you’re sorry” or “don’t contact me unless you feel like you have a good reason”
It is not ok to violate that boundary, no matter how much you regret the circumstances leading up to it. Your victim does not owe you help in your healing.
If you’re considering contacting your victim to apologize even though you know they don’t want you to, you probably haven’t improved nearly enough to be capable of offering a sincere apology anyway. Go work on understanding boundaries and your actions some more before you think you’re all better.

A rude thing that people do to wheelchair and mobility scooter users

May 14, 2014June 11, 2021 Real Social Skills

So, here’s a thing that happens a lot:

Someone rides a wheelchair or mobility scooter into a room that has many chairs in it
They want to sit on one of those chairs.
Several people, trying to be helpful, dart in to remove the very chair they wanted to sit on

This is very annoying.

Especially when it happens several times a week
Especially when the people who dart in to remove the chairs are very proud of themselves for Helping The Disabled
Even more so if they don’t understand “actually, I want to sit in that chair”, and keep removing it anyway
Even more so if the person has to physically grab the chair they want to sit on to prevent it from being removed
(And sometimes people react badly to being corrected and become aggressive or condescending)

Do not do this annoying thing.

Instead, find out what the person you want to be helpful to actually wants
People who use mobility equipment are not actually glued to it
And different people have different preferences about where they want to sit
You can’t know without asking them
(You can’t read their mind, Some people seem to think that mobility equipment transmits a telepathic call for help regardless of the person’s actual apparent interest in help. Those people are wrong. You have to actually ask)
You can’t know where someone wants to sit unless you ask, so ask
One way you can ask is “Would you like me to move anything?”

If you forget to ask, and make the wrong assumption:

Recognize that you have been rude
And apologize, and say “Oh, excuse me” or “Sorry. I’ll put it back.”
This is the same kind of rude as, say, accidentally cutting in line
Or being careless and bumping into someone
This is not a big-deal apology, it’s basically just acknowledging that you made a rude mistake
People make and acknowledge rude mistakes all the time with nondisabled folks
The same people who say “excuse me” when they bump into a nondisabled person, are often completely silent when they do something rude related to someone’s disability
Being on the receiving end of a lot of unacknowledged rudeness is degrading and draining. Particularly when you see that the same people who are rude to you without apologizing say “sorry” and “excuse me” to people without disabilities they interact with
Do not be part of this problem
When you are inadvertently rude to someone who has a disability, it’s important to acknowledge and apologize for it in the same way you would for any other inadvertent interpersonal rudeness

About making therapy referrals

May 12, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Content note: Today’s post is primarily directed at people who make therapy referrals and recommend therapy as part of their job (social workers, doctors, ministers, rabbis, school counselors, etc). This post is specifically about something that goes wrong when people make therapy referrals for the wrong reasons. If you haven’t been in a position to recommend therapy from a place of authority over someone you have a responsibility to help, this post might not make a lot of sense.

There’s something that can go wrong in therapy referrals. This is a thing that happens:

A social worker, doctor, teacher, clergyperson, chaplain or someone in a similar role is faced with someone suffering really serious problems
They don’t know how to help with most of them
And they are afraid of the magnitude of this person’s problems, and need to set a boundary to avoid becoming responsible for managing them
And, so, they default to making a therapy referral, as a way to assert boundaries and feel that they have done all that they could
Therapy referrals are often appropriate, but sometimes people make therapy referrals even when they are not appropriate as a way of asserting a boundary

This is how therapy referrals ought to work:

You assess that a person you’re working with might benefit from therapy
You make this suggestion to them, and you say why
You suggest specific therapists you think might work well with them
And you assume that they are the ones who should be making this decision
And therapy is one decision/referral among many; it might be the solution to finding space to work on emotions and relationships, but it doesn’t replace the need to find food stamps or medical insurance or housing or proper diagnosis of a medical condition

This is how therapy referrals often do work:

You assess that someone has problems that are much, much bigger than you can handle
You want to assert a boundary so the full brunt of their struggles do not become your problem
You don’t actually want to say flat-out to a person who is suffering that you’re not going to help them
So, you tell them that they should get therapy, and make that referral as a way to gracefully assert a boundary without having to say outright that you’re not going to help them even though you know they need help
Don’t do this. It isn’t good for anyone, including people who really need therapy.
Be honest about boundaries you’re asserting, and make sure that any referrals you are making are appropriate
Therapy referrals are for the client, not for you

It’s important that, when you make therapy referrals, you’re making them to meet the needs of the person you’re working with, not your own needs

You have to have boundaries in order to do your work. That means that you will be routinely faced with suffering people who you won’t be able to help
That’s awful, but it’s something you have to face and be honest about
There will be people you can’t help with most of what they need, and people who can benefit from therapy. These are overlapping, but not identical categories.
Recommending therapy to people who can’t benefit from it can sometimes just be a dishonestly comfortable way of saying “I’m not going to help you, and I’ want you to feel good about my refusal”
Whether or not someone should get therapy is a separate issue from whether or not you can or should try to help them yourself
Some people who you can’t help should go to therapy instead (eg: someone whose primary problem is probably treatable depression or learning certain classes of things about relationship dynamics)
Some people who you can help in some ways also ought to go to therapy (eg: someone who comes to you for prayer might need prayer, Bible study *and* a therapy referral)
Some people you can’t help should not go to therapy (eg: a gay person whose primary issues have to do with their coming out process who lives somewhere where all available therapists are homophobic probably should not go to therapy; that doesn’t mean that you are going to be able to help them through that in your role as a crisis center intake social worker)
Some people who ought to get therapy also need other help, and that might be the more pressing issue. Don’t imply that therapy is the solution to a broader range of things than it actually is. (eg: therapy might help a homeless person deal with their emotional issues, but it doesn’t provide housing; don’t use your therapy referral script as a way to avoid telling them that you aren’t offering help with housing)
Therapy is an important tool, but it’s not magic. Don’t treat it as universally important, or as the solution to all problems that you don’t know how to or can’t solve.

Short version: when you’re recommending therapy to someone, make sure that it is an appropriate referral and that it’s about meeting their need for care rather than your need for boundaries. To that end, make sure that making a therapy referral isn’t the only way you can assert a boundary; develop other ways to say no respectfully.

You can’t fix someone’s perspective

May 11, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Hey there. So, I’m wondering how I can help my sister with her self esteem. She’s very beautiful, and it’s been made clear to her by many that she is, but at the end of the day she thinks herself ugly.

I get really frustrated and angry with her sometimes when she does this– it’s so clear that she’s lovely, everyone knows, and it’s obvious she is. I just don’t know what to do. I want her to see how great she is, without hurting her.

realsocialskills said:

It’s hard for me to tell from your message how your sister sees herself. You’re saying that she sees herself as ugly, and you see her as beautiful. You also say that she has low self esteem, and you want her to see how great she is. I’m wondering if maybe you’re conflating issues that seem the same to you, but which seem very different to your sister.

Sometimes people who have tremendous respect for themselves as people feel ugly. Sometimes amazing, wonderful people really *are* very unattractive by conventional standards. And for some people, it’s really powerful to come to the conclusion that don’t need to be beautiful to be ok. I don’t know how the world looks to your sister, and I don’t know what she’s struggling with. But it may well be that trying to see herself as beautiful is not what’s right for your sister at this point. And really, she’s the only one who know that; you can’t tell from the outside; you can only guess.

Your sister may be struggling tremendously with her self esteem, she may be struggling to feel worthy. But it’s her struggle – you can’t do it for her, and you can’t make her do it faster. This is something she has to figure out for herself.

It’s hard to see someone you love struggle, particularly when you think you know what would solve things, if only they would listen to you. Taking over really doesn’t help though, particularly when someone’s main problem is that they don’t respect themself enough. You can’t give someone self-respect by trying to force them to override their own judgment in favor of yours, as tempting as it might seem.

You can’t take over or direct your sister’s path to self-acceptance and self-respect, but you can support her in powerful ways. The best thing you can do for your sister is to respect the way she feels about herself now and stop trying change her.

You can’t make your sister think that she’s great. You can’t make her think that she’s beautiful.

What you can do is acknowledge that she feels ugly, and show her respect and love as she feels this way. What you can do is be with her anyway, and show her that feeling ugly will not make you abandon her.

Don’t get angry or upset at her for not feeling good about herself. That is counterproductive. If you express exasperation with her over this, it ends up sounding like “I want you to like yourself NOW NOW NOW you’re beautiful”, which on the receiving end can be heard as “I hate you for not loving yourself more”. That is the opposite of the message you’re trying to send.

I think the best thing you can do for your sister right now is accept that, right now, she doesn’t feel great about herself. Your sister’s poor self image is not an inditement of you. It’s not your job to fix it – but you can be there for her while she figures things out, on her own timeline.

You can’t try to change your sister’s self-image without hurting her. What you can do is show her the love and respect that you wish she’d show herself.

Something my blog can’t do

April 12, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

stephani-d asked:

I have a sorta-friend who’s aspergers. My other friends and I try to be understanding about stuff (she wears earplugs so sometimes we have to remind her she’s getting loud) and has a few things she really likes, but she isn’t interested in talking about other stuff than what she likes, and interrupts a lot. I’ve been debating about showing her this blog for a while but I don’t know if that would offend her. I don’t know how to tell her she’s annoying because I’m bad at confrontation stuff.

realsocialskills said:

What would you be trying to do by showing your sorta-friend my blog?

I kind of get the sense that you’re thinking that, maybe if you showed it to her, she’d learn that the things that annoy you are bad and stop doing them. It doesn’t actually work that way, though. You can’t just point someone at instructions that will make them better. Friendship is something you work on together.

The point of friendship is that you figure out ways you like interacting, then do those things together. My blog posts can’t replace that.

If someone’s doing stuff you don’t like in a friendship, you have to work that out with them, either by talking it through or by redrawing the boundaries of the relationship so that it doesn’t cause you intolerable problems.

Some specific stuff: your friend is allowed to only want to talk about certain things. You’re allowed to want to limit how much you talk about those things. But this is a negotiating the boundaries of friendship thing, not a getting your friend to change so you’ll like her more.

Figure out what you like doing together, do that, and draw boundaries around the things you don’t want to do.

To the creepy guy who reblogged the post about creepy guys

April 5, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Someone commented on my post About Creepy Guys with a comment along the lines of:

“LOL. I guess there’s no safe place for men to flirt with women anymore, unless they’re attractive guys.”

Quote over.

That’s a creepy comment.

Here’s why it’s creepy. My post was about how it’s unsafe for women to reject unwanted attention, because men hit on them in ways that leave them no polite way to say no. Because men are allowed to implictly threaten women with impunity in public, and women who tell them off are seen as rude or otherwise bad.

If by safe, you mean places in which your attentions are guaranteed to be welcome, then no, there is no safe place and there should not be a safe place. Women are allowed to be uninterested.

Consensual flirtation is an offer. It isn’t a negotiation. It isn’t an attempt to pressure a woman into saying yes or convince her to do something.

If you’re continuing the conversation after someone has made it clear that you want them to stop, you’re being creepy.

If you’re flirting with someone in a place they can’t easily walk away from you, you’re being creepy. No one should ever be a captive audience for flirting.

If you take no as a humiliating personal insult, you’re being creepy. No is the default. Most people aren’t going to want to date you or sleep with you. They are not wronging you by being uninterested.

It’s true that hot guys tend to get away with a lot of things they shouldn’t. It’s harder to tell that someone has no regard for consent when you want the things they want you to want. It’s easier for people to tell that you’re being creepy if they aren’t attracted to you.

That doesn’t mean it’s ok to be creepy, or that women are wronging you by being creeped out. It means there’s a bad thing you need to stop doing even though some people get away with it.

On being triggered by infodumping

April 4, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

I have a really odd question, and this probably wouldn’t of help to anyone else (I am the only person I’ve EVER heard of this happening to) but do you have any advice for NT people about how to deal with autistic infodumps? I’m really really sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but you’re the only blog I’ve found that even remotely deals with this sort of thing. Trouble is, they trigger me sometimes.

I have an emotionally abusive father who I’m about 90% sure has aspergers and starting when I was really little, he would take me places in the car and just drive in circles for hours and talk at me. Sometimes about something he thought I’d did wrong, sometimes just about his interests. He’d never let me go home or let me join in the conversation; and I could never get him to quit. I literally could never get away and ended up feeling really trapped. Trouble is, I now have an autistic fiance who enjoys talking to me about his interests.

I know he’s doing it innocently and I don’t want to take away something he enjoys, but at times he can go on really long and I start panicking- and, I’m pretty sure; being triggered. How can I politely exit from a conversation like that without hurting his feelings? It isn’t my fiance’s fault, and I’m probably making too big a deal out of this, but IDK I thought you might have some useful suggestions.

realsocialskills said:

First of all, your needs matter. You are not making too big a deal about this. (And I actually think this is probably more common than you realize).

He might not be doing anything inherently wrong, but the situation is not ok for you, and you’re going to have to figure out together how to make it better. I don’t think there’s a pre-existing way to politely exit from a conversation with him; I think that this is a problem that you and your partner will have to work out a solution to together.

You’re probably going to have to hurt his feelings, at least in the short term. Not because he is doing anything wrong, but because this is a touchy subject for autistic people. Most of us have been treated horribly for having focused interests and infodumping about them. Having other people express boundaries about infodumping can hurt a lot; it can even be triggering.

But people are still allowed to have boundaries about how much they are willing to listen to us go on about our interests, and we have to be able to negotiate that in close relationships. Even when it hurts to think about. Even though it’s triggering sometimes.

Telling your partner that his infodumping hurts you sometimes will probably be a very difficult conversation for both of you. It will probably be complicated figuring out how to negotiate boundaries that work for both of you.

But it’s an important conversation to have, and it probably won’t be the last issue in which you need to have a difficult conversation about something that is loaded for both of you. That’s part of the work of an intimate relationship, particularly when both partners have triggers.

Some things that I think might help:

Make it clear that you don’t see his interests as the problem:

A lot of autistic people have been subjected to a lot of pressure to give up our interests, or stop being so focused on them
If you’re asking to negotiate boundaries about discussing the interests, it’s really easy for that to feel like rejection or like you are disgusted by him liking things
So, if you don’t see it that way, *say so*
(If you do see his interests as the problem, that’s a different problem and I’m not sure what to suggest)

Think through what your needs are:

What do you need once you get triggered? A subject change? Being by yourself for awhile? Reassurance? Being explicitly reminded that your partner doesn’t see you as an infodump-recieving object? Food? Something else?
What would help you to avoid getting triggered? Being able to change the subject easily? Avoiding certain topics when you’re in the car? Something else?

Agree on a way to signal that you need to change the subject:

If you’re getting triggered, particularly if you have a compliance trigger, it’s important to figure out a way to communicate that you’re not ok
It might be good to have a rule about him checking in periodically about how you’re doing in a long conversation about something he’s really into
Or to try to identify explicitly what the signs are that you are being triggered (eg: when you’re not ok, do you go quiet? Do you start agreeing to everything? Does your body language change? Something else), and ask him to pay attention to whether you’re doing those things and check in with you if he sees them
It also might be good to agree on a specific thing you will say or a specific gesture you need to make if you need to change the subject.

Listen to what he has to say about this and what his needs are:

He’s going to have thoughts about this
Some of them might hurt to hear, or might be scary or triggering given your history
And this isn’t going to have a simple solution where you mentioning the problem makes it go away
It’s important to listen to his perspective and think through together what’s going to work for both of you

I think this is probably something you can work out if you both act in good faith. (Not guaranteed; some people aren’t compatible in this area through no fault of their own. But from what you’ve said it sounds possible to work out).

Clueless creepiness vs skillful creepiness

March 15, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

There are two kinds of problems that get conflated a lot but aren’t actually that similar:

People who do creepy things because they have trouble understanding boundaries
People who do creepy things because they understand boundaries well and have highly developed skills at violating them with impunity

People who are good at violating boundaries and getting away with being creepy sometimes seem socially awkward, and sometimes don’t. Sometimes they get away with it by getting people to think things like “Oh, that’s Bill. He’s just awkward like that. He doesn’t mean anything by it,” and sometimes it’s more like, “I can’t believe James would do that! He’s like the nicest guy ever, and he does so much for this community. Don’t you remember the awesome party last month?”, and sometimes it’s more like, “Steve is really sensitive right now. Did you really have to turn him down like that? Couldn’t you have given him a chance? Don’t you understand how much courage it takes to approach a girl? What harm could giving him your number have done?”.

People who are inadvertently creepy *care* when they’ve violated boundaries, and try to fix it. Saying, “oh, they’re just awkward” isn’t doing them any favors, because people who are inadvertently creepy don’t *want* to trample all over other people’s boundaries. They want to know, so that they can stop doing it. This doesn’t mean it’s the job of victims of their creepy actions to explain it to them – it isn’t, particularly since most creepy people are doing it on purpose, and calling skillfully creepy people on things tends to go badly. I am mentioning this because skillfully creepy people often convince others that being “just awkward” means that everyone else is obligated to refrain from objecting to their creepy actions.

Skillfully creepy people who boundaries boundaries on purpose come up with excuses about why it was ok, and try to make you feel horrible for objecting. (Eg: “I was just being friendly! Learn to take a compliment!”, or “I know that if you were in your right mind, you wouldn’t have said that you didn’t want to spend time with me. I forgive you. We can still spend time together.”, or “Wow. Harsh. I guess girls really don’t go for nice guys. Have fun dating assholes.” or just getting a lot of people to laugh at you, or any number of other things.)

As a culture, we shouldn’t tolerate creepy behavior from anyone. Part of not tolerating it means assessing when people are being cluelessly creepy, and when people are being skillfully creepy.

If you are a supervisor/teacher/community leader, or otherwise someone responsible for intervening and keeping things safe, it’s important to respond appropriately. Communities need to help cluelessly creepy people understand how to act, and to expel skillfully creepy people so that they can’t keep preventing the people they hurt from being part of the community.

Don’t trick people into talking to you

February 23, 2014June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

If you say hurtful things to someone on the Internet and hurt them enough that they block you, try and fail to gain their forgiveness because they barely know you and have problems with toxic people, and then adopt a new username, start following them again and interact with them again without hurting them, are you being dishonest and a bad person?

realsocialskills said:

I think it’s better not to frame this as a way of deciding what kind of person you are. The point isn’t to figure out whether this makes you a bad/dishonest person. The point is to figure out whether it’s a bad thing to do.

In this case, I do think it’s bad to make a new persona to interact with someone who has blocked you. It’s not ok to trick someone into interacting with you against their will.

It’s also not ok to decide that someone you hurt isn’t forgiving you because “they barely know you and have problems with toxic people” and that this means that it’s somehow ok for you to ignore their decision not to forgive you. That’s not your decision to make.

Neither being sorry, nor meaning well, nor apologizing, nor being a good person mean that you are entitled to have someone forgive you and agree to continue a relationship.

People have the right say no to forms of interaction that you want with them, even if their reasons are bad or based on misconceptions about you.

You also don’t know if you’re hurting them in your new persona. The fact that they haven’t blocked you in the new persona doesn’t mean that everything is ok. It just means that they haven’t blocked you. The one thing you do know is that they’re not interacting with you willingly and that you’re tricking them into doing something they don’t want to do.

The internet is full of people willing to interact with you. Leave the people who aren’t willing alone.