Tag: social skills

Another thing about Facebook

Real Social Skills

Facebook is an environment with confusing boundaries. It’s easy to inadvertently cross lines on Facebook. Almost everyone ends up inadvertently violating boundaries on Facebook that they would never violate in person.

But not all boundary violation on Facebook are like that. Facebook can also be used for stalking. Serious stalking. Not semi-cute awkwardness like commenting on too many things.

Facebook can be used to harass people. It can be used to try to force contact. It can be used to track someone’s movements. It can be used to find out who the victim associates with, and then to try to use those people to get to them.

If you are Facebook friends with both an abuser and their victim, this can hurt the victim. It can, and often does, result in you accidentally giving information to the abuser that it is dangerous to the victim to have. This is the case even if the victim has blocked the abuser.

(For instance, photos of the victim that you post or comment on can show up in the abuser’s news feed.)

If you’re close to someone who is extracting themself from an abusive relationship, and they ask you to unfriend their abuser, it’s important to take that request seriously.

Making the point about therapy more sharply

Real Social Skills

Three year old children in preschool are some of the least socially powerful people in our culture. But, they are routinely given a lot of choices about what they do and how they do it.

They’re not usually required to do painful and boring things over and over with no regard to their feelings or their experiences. And, from time to time, they can say no to something an adult had planned for them and have it stick.

Preschool teachers know that their work depends in large part on getting the willing cooperation of most of their students. That doing things to them over their miserable protests over and over is probably going to end poorly.

All too often, therapy for people with disabilities is less respectful, consensual, and individualized than the average preschool class.

If you’re exercising more control over a ten year old kid with a disability than you’d feel comfortable exercising over a nondisabled three year old child, you’re doing it wrong. All the more so if you’re doing it to an older child or an adult.

“Take a rain check”

Real Social Skills

p-3a answered your question: Idioms?

“Take a rain check”?

“Take a rain check?” means:

  • In principle I would like to do the thing you are suggesting
  • For some practical reason, I can’t do the thing now
  • I want you to know that I do actually want to do the thing
  • Can we do it at some yet-to-be-determined point in the future?

I think it’s a reference to a practice some stores have with sales:

  • Sometimes they will advertise a sale
  • And then run out of the thing that’s on sale
  • And give people who want to buy it rain check, which is a piece of paper entitling them to buy the product at the sale price once it comes back in stock
  • Most stores don’t do this anymore, but some do

When you don’t want to reconnect

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
What do you do when you hurt someone to the point that they end a relationship with you, but then later on, they’re the one who wants to be friends with you again (or get back together, or otherwise start being part of each other’s lives again), but facing up to what you did makes you feel really bad and you just want to move on without being in each other’s lives?
Is there any way to say, “I think we’re better off not in each other’s lives” without hurting them even more?
First and foremost, it’s ok to decide not to resume the relationship. You don’t have to have a relationship you don’t want to have, even if the reason it initially ended is that you hurt the other person.
It’s probably not possible to completely avoid hurting them, because rejection always hurts. It’s painful to want to have a relationship that someone else doesn’t want, especially if there’s a loaded emotional history. You probably can’t prevent that hurt entirely.
But, saying no to a relationship you don’t want is not the same kind of hurt that you caused by whatever you did before. (Even if it’s triggering because of what you did before, which happens sometimes.)
What you can do is avoid being cruel about it, and avoid sending mixed messages. You could maybe say something like, “I’m sorry that I hurt you, and I hope you’re doing well. At this point, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be interacting.”

When people won’t stop asking for reasons

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
When you don’t want to give the reason for saying no, and the other person is pressuring you, what is a polite way to get them to stop?
Unfortunately, there often isn’t a completely polite way to get them to stop. People who do this are often very good at manipulating the rules of polite conversation in ways that make it impossible to assert a boundary without being rude.
And even if you are being entirely polite, you’re still likely to offend them. Someone who feels entitled to an answer is probably going to feel wronged if they don’t get one.
That said, these are phrases that sometimes end that kind of conversation without making you appear too rude:
  • “Thank you for your suggestion. I’ll think about it”.
  • “Maybe; let me get back to you.”
  • “I’ll have to think about that.”
  • “I have to leave now. Nice talking to you.”
  • “Thank you, but I’m not interested, and I don’t want to talk about this further.”

Sometimes you can also just change the subject and ignore anything they say about the thing they’re demanding reasons about. This can be especially effective if there’s something they will usually take any opportunity to discuss. That doesn’t work in all situations, but it does work sometimes.

Basically, though, it’s not always possible to defend boundaries politely. It’s ok to be rude when you need to be in order to protect your boundaries. No one has to be polite all the time at all costs.

Being aware of privilege only helps if you do something

Real Social Skills

Talking about how privileged you are and how much you acknowledge your privilege doesn’t do much, on its own.

It has to actually change what you do.

It can actually make things worse, if all you do is mention it.

Because then the implication is “yeah, I know I’m privileged and have all kinds of unwarranted power over others, but I don’t really care and it’s not going to change what I do. Please to be praising me for noticing this. I’m pretty great.”

And people you have power over can come under a lot of pressure to give you the praise you want, and to help you feel ok about the discrimination you participate in. Don’t do this to people.

When you have privilege, you have obligations that go along with it. You have unwarranted power that you can’t renounce, and the obligation to learn what to do with it. If you’re not willing to think about your power and examine what you do with it, you’re not going to be able to avoid abusing it.

There are any number of other implications too. And there are things it’s not ok to participate in even if it would benefit you, and even if it’s hard-to-impossible to get those things otherwise.

Don’t expect noticing and naming your privilege categories to be enough.

Rude question from someone who doesn’t understand disability

Real Social Skills

bryedeadned said (about this post):

how the fuck do you forget that food exists?

Most people without disabilities never have this problem. But for people with certain disabilities, it’s very very common.

It’s particularly common for autistic people, especially autistic people who have trouble processing visual information. It’s also common for people with ADHD and other disabilities that impair executive functioning or body awareness.

This blog is for everyone, not just normal people.

So, if you follow it, from time to time you’re going to see things that don’t apply to you. And you’re going to see them presented in a matter-of-fact way, as problems that some people have and want help with.

Because that’s the kind of blog this is.

More on good therapy

Real Social Skills

A good therapist will be honest about their qualifications, and respect your expertise.

For instance:

  • A good therapist will not claim to be an expert in gay issues just because they are a good person and don’t hate same sex couples
  • A good therapist will believe you about religious conflicts, and won’t attempt to dictate to you how to resolve them (eg: If you can’t eat certain things, or need to wear certain clothing around members of the opposite sex, or can’t do certain things on certain days).
  • A good therapist will be honest about which conditions they do and don’t have experience treating

Remembering that food exists

Real Social Skills

It can be hard to remember that food exists, or notice it while it’s there.

I know a few things that work for some people to mitigate this problem:

For some people, cooking for other people regularly makes it easier to notice that food exists:

  • Sometimes remembering to cook for other people works as a reminder that you need to cook and eat
  • Sometimes the motor/sensory/tactile experience can make it easier to remember that you have food
  • Because for some people, motor memory works better than visual memory

For some people, asking other people for direct help is useful:

  • If you feel like you need to eat, asking a friend to tell you to eat might help
  • Or asking them what you should eat
  • Or how to find the food
  • Some people who can’t figure out food for themselves, *can* tell other people how to find food
  • So if you and a friend both have this problem, you might still be able to help one another

Stashing food in places where you’ll see it can also help:

  • Keeping a box of cheerios or granola bars or something else that lasts a while by your computer might work as a reminder that food exists

These are strategies I know about. Do any of y’all know about others?

Making text more readable

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
Having aspergers and and ADD has made communicating with people very difficult, especially in relationships. I’ve found that writing helps but reading is hard because I get lost in blocks of words and unable to focus. Are there things that can be done to help with communication and reading replies etc?
Sometimes it helps to paste the text into a document and then use either white space or color coding to help you keep track.
Here’s how I do color coding:
  • I paste the text I want to read into Word
  • I turn all the text blue
  • As I read the text, I turn it black again
  • That enables me to keep track of which parts I have and haven’t read

Formatting the text can also help. This is how I do it with emails:

  • I hit the reply button so that I can edit the text
  • Then I put in paragraph breaks where I think there are conceptual breaks
  • This means I can move around on the page more easily when I want to re-read a particular part