social skills – Page 59 – Real Social Skills

Keeping your touchy-feely off others.

November 21, 2012June 21, 2021 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

November 16, 2012June 21, 2021 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

November 12, 2012June 21, 2021 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

November 3, 2012June 21, 2021 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.

Some things to think about after a bad interaction

October 28, 2012June 21, 2021 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?

Interacting with marginalized people who do valuable things

October 21, 2012June 21, 2021 Real Social Skills

Sometimes people do unusual things, things that people like them are not expected to do, things that might even be taboo.

This happens to autistic folks, men who do childcare or raise their kids or otherwise “women’s work”, women who do many things, people with other disabilities, children and teenagers who accomplish things, basically any group of people who are often not expected to do things.

And sometimes people who want to support them end up making things worse. This is too abstract, so I’m going to give an example. This is not specifically a women’s issue; I’m using that as an example because it’s one I’ve seen a lot:

Say, a woman is the first female research scientist. And that she’s overcome a lot of opposition to get to this point.

And now that she’s finally gotten to the point of being allowed to do research that other people take seriously; 90% of the time what people want to talk about is her gender. About what it’s like to be a female whatever or the first female whatever.

Even when she’s come to give a presentation on her research – people who ask questions at the end all ask about what it’s like to be a female scientist and not what she’s actually presenting on.

And it’s hard to assert boundaries about this without just being seen as an uncaring bitch.

Many of the people are just curious, sometimes in a creepy way. Some people asking about it are hostile, and want to show that they really don’t think women should be allowed.

But sometimes, the hardest thing to take is people who want to tell you how great it is that you’re a female scientist, who mean to be supportive, but who are still really intensely focused on the freaky female part rather than the scientist part. Because, then, even the people who like you aren’t really taking you seriously, it’s *always* about the thing, the freakness.

And even then, it can seem like people are assuring you that you have their permission to be a freaky female – and being treated like you need permission by supporters

And it’s so much better to be taken seriously on the terms you care about, on what you’re actually doing.

So, be careful about that. The best way to support someone who is doing something important and stigmatized is to value the thing they’re doing, and take them seriously as someone who does it.