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River: Social skills
2009-03-03 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mdlbearI'm beginning to wonder whether my (now-crumbling) assumption that I lack social skills is simply due to the fact that for most of my life I haven't been social with more than a very limited number of people.
And I think Colleen, who's one of the few people I do interact with socially and is in a position to give me valuable feedback, simply gave up long ago trying to reach me. (added 3/4) In any case, I don't get feedback or calibration from real people in a real social situation: I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, or what cues I'm missing.
I've always been shy, and afraid to interact much with people I don't know. I seem to have lost a lot of that fear in the last year or so, but not all of it, and the habits are still there.
My biggest problem may still be getting an interaction started. Starting a conversation with a stranger; making a phone call to anyone, joining a conversation in progress.
On the other hand I may just be too tired to make sense -- my brain is pretty seriously fried tonight.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 04:08 pm (UTC)And except with Colleen, I really don't even know how to ask for it. Guess I'll have to learn.
(I have gotten Colleen and the kids noticing certain patterns, by writing about them here. But it's not the same as general feedback, and it's not the same as inserting a request for feedback into an unrelated conversation.)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-06 04:36 pm (UTC)At a con one could, of course, use something like "I'm from another planet; how well am I fitting in?" It would still need a lot of explaining.
When you get down to it I'm not even all that sure what I need to ask for, let alone how to ask.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 03:33 am (UTC)And if you're not even sure what you need to ask for, you can ask people (those who are close to you, anyway), "What do I appear to need?" Meta-questions can be very useful sometimes.
New friend!
Date: 2009-03-05 08:36 pm (UTC)For social skills, observation and practice help. If you're good at spotting patterns, you can just memorize what other people expect to have said or done in certain common situations. Also reading about this stuff can be useful. I've got a "family skills" and a "community" tag in my blog that you might enjoy exploring. I also recommend the book The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin, a marvelous guide to civil and effective conversation.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-06 04:47 pm (UTC)I've had the Elgin book recommended by several people; there's apparently a new edition coming out soon, and I'm waiting for that.
I'm pretty good at spotting patterns in areas I'm familiar with; part of the problem is that this is way the heck out of my field. I can't even figure out what you think I should be memorizing: "what other people expect to have said or done"?? How does one observe an expectation?
In other words, observation only works if I know what to look for, and practice only works if I can overcome my shyness and get an interaction going.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-06 05:19 pm (UTC)There is, and she's doing advance promotion for it already. Suzette is on LJ as
>>I can't even figure out what you think I should be memorizing: "what other people expect to have said or done"?? How does one observe an expectation?<<
Well, there are discreet ways and straightforward ways. The discreet ways include reading etiquette books and watching children. Many etiquette books are stuffy and outdated but there are some good ones. I was impressed with _How to Be a Gentleman_ although the matching "Lady" book was disappointing:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Gentleman-Contemporary-Courtesy/dp/1558535969
"Gentleman" included things like "When your friend's fly is open, don't crack jokes or ignore it. Quietly say, 'Bob, your fly is open.' "
There are starting to be guidebooks in facial expressions and basic social interactions for people -- mostly children -- with impaired social skills. Most look clunky, but there are probably some good ones. You might try browsing a megabookstore.
Watch people with small children. Adults will hint or describe to children what should be done in many situations. "What do you say when someone gives you something?" and "When somebody has their hands full, you open the door for them."
A more challenging trick, best used after the others, is to observe popular people whom you admire. Try to figure out what they do that makes people respond positively. One example is to ask someone a safe question about their life or family, and listen to the answer, because most people like to talk about themselves. So if someone mentions their job or that they have two children, that could be picked up with "How interesting; what's that like?" or "How nice; what do they like to do?"
Oh, I thought of another type of book that might help: English as a Foreign Language. There really are a lot of "formula" conversations based on expectations, and foreign language books present them for learning. Things like, if someone says "How are you?" the expected response is "I'm fine." Even if you know some of those already, there may be more that you haven't spotted yet, and seeing them stacked together can help recognize the patterns.
>>In other words, observation only works if I know what to look for, and practice only works if I can overcome my shyness and get an interaction going.<<
The shyness will be a challenge, at least in mainstream American culture. There are other places where it's less of a barrier from other people's perspective; I don't know if that would affect how you feel or not. But I've read, and it seems to match my observations even in America, that Japanese culture tends to like shy people and consider them good friends.
Another thing to consider is how you respond when someone approaches you. If the shyness is only about breaking the ice, it can be gotten around by going to places where people are gregarious, like a Renaissance faire. But if you freeze up when someone approaches you, then a quieter low-key environment might be better.
Anyhow, I hope this helps a bit, and I wish you luck.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-07 09:51 pm (UTC)Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-08 02:13 am (UTC)Ayup, that's a big issue. Untrained empaths tend to become hermits for those and other reasons. So first, it would help to work on shielding yourself so you don't get overwhelmed by other people's emotions, which can make group space (more than 4-5 people) very uncomfortable. Second, try scannin a group for someone who else who is shy and kind of lonely and would enjoy being approached, or even just someone to sit with.
Interruption is trickier. There's a cadence to conversation. Trouble is, the rules for when to speak are different from one subculture or bunch of friends to another. Some expect people to wait for a little gap before speaking. Others expect people to jump in when they have something to say, and if you wait for a gap, you'll never get a word in edgewise. I prefer the waiting version, though it's not easy. I can do both. In the pouncing version, I trample most people flat, which is not verbal behavior that people expect from someone in a female body. (Women usually wait. Men usually treat a conversation like a football.) You pretty much have to analyze the style for each batch of people you're with, which is challenging.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-10 03:28 pm (UTC)I think that's what I'm doing, far too effectively. Or maybe not. I don't know. I have no idea how empathy works or how to control it.
"...try scanning a group for someone who else who is shy and kind of lonely and would enjoy being approached, or even just someone to sit with."
That would require learning to read body language, wouldn't it? Yet another skill I never acquired.
"...analyze the style..."
Um... There's also the problem that, when I'm interrupted, I tend to get completely derailed, especially when I'm paused struggling to find the next word. So the "active listening" style where people try to complete your sentences for you, or answer questions before you finish asking them is simply agonizing for me. Not fixable, as far as I can tell.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-11 06:17 am (UTC)>I think that's what I'm doing, far too effectively. Or maybe not. I don't >know. I have no idea how empathy works or how to control it.
Okay, I'll try to nutshell this. The magical version of empathy is a subtle sense that allows a person to perceive the emotions of other people, or emotional energy left in a space. It works kind of like physical senses, and can seem like "feeling" or "seeing" or "hearing" emotions. (The nonmagical version is sort of a mental extrapolation of emotion based on body language and voice cues.) Controlling it is like controlling your physical senses: you can look at or away from something, you can listen for particular sounds or tune them out. That part just takes practice. And you can actively shield out energy you don't want.
As for shielding: If you can sense people's emotions strongly enough for them to make you uncomfortable, you're not shielded or not shielded enough. If you can sense people's emotions enough to understand them, but not so much that it bothers you, then you're probably shielded at a moderate level and that's usually right. If you can't sense people's emotions at all, then you're shielded. That makes you pretty safe from outside energy, at the cost of losing some awareness of what people are feeling. Usually that tradeoff is worth it, occasionally not.
>>"...try scanning a group for someone who else who is shy and kind of lonely and would enjoy being approached, or even just someone to sit with."
>That would require learning to read body language, wouldn't it? Yet another skill I never acquired.
If you were trying to do it mundanely, it would require knowledge of voice tone and body language, which to some extent can be memorized. There are learning tools for that if you want to track them down.
Scanning with empathy is different. It can be done with eyes closed because it uses a different sense. It's hard to describe because empathy creates different subjective feelings for different people. Happiness might seem "warm" to one person and "bright" to another. Or you could imagine running your hand over a rumpled surface, and the higher "peaks" would be happier people.
>>"...analyze the style..."
>Um... There's also the problem that, when I'm interrupted, I tend to get completely derailed, especially when I'm paused struggling to find the next word. So the "active listening" style where people try to complete your sentences for you, or answer questions before you finish asking them is simply agonizing for me. Not fixable, as far as I can tell.
Okay, that's definitely a challenge. You might be more comfortable with people who are relatively quiet and don't dominate a conversation. I'm talkative; I'd drive you nuts in person, unless you reminded me not to walk all over you verbally (not fun for a shy person). I've had a few friends with speech impediments who just said, "Be patient and let me finish my own sentences. If you don't understand or thought I said something crazy, just ask me to repeat it." So that point isn't unfixable, but it's hard to fix and the solutions won't necessarily work with everyone.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-11 06:36 am (UTC)"Scanning with empathy" simply isn't something I believe I'm capable of. If I were even _remotely_ capable of reading minds or detecting emotions, a lot of things over the last year would have happened very differently. You're dealing with a total skeptic here.
Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-07 11:46 pm (UTC)Re: New friend!
Date: 2009-03-08 02:07 am (UTC)If you don't freeze, then two possible approaches would be: 1) Wear a button that says, "I'm just shy. You can say hello to me." (I know people who do this.) 2) Venture into situations full of gregarious people, who are more inclined than average to walk up and start conversations. Some places even assign someone the job of greeter.
>> There's also the fact that I don't know the non-verbal signals people are expecting -- no doubt I'm "saying" something like "don't get too close".<<
In mainstream American culture, people tend to expect moderate eye contact, a smile, and an open body posture (arms and legs not crossed). Avoiding eye contact, hiding in corners, or scrunching up your body can cause people to stay back.
Sometimes it helps to have some thing else to break the ice. The right kind of pet can do it, but so can a plate of chocolates or a handful of bookmarks. Anything that gets people's attention, causes them to approach you, and gives you both a safe topic of discussion is good.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 03:40 am (UTC)Having a "thing" is very useful. A T-shirt or button with a suitably abstruse saying or design on it is the easiest to do, probably, or some item of clothing that's equivalently attention-getting - elf shoes, deelie-bobbers, a Bajoran earring, a belt buckle the size of a dessert plate, a glow-in-the-dark tie... in my own case, it's the purple hair.
Yes!
Date: 2009-03-08 04:16 am (UTC)Which is another idea for you, Mandelbear: any kind of lapwork hobby like knitting, embroidery, sewing, etc. is a good way to get people talking to you, if you sit down with it at a bardic circle or a concert in the park or something like that. I do mine at home, but a lot of folks carry theirs around. It's funny, we had a couple other folks in our community doing lapwork of different kinds, and it's catching on so more people are.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 10:26 am (UTC)*giggles at the thought of
no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-10 11:49 am (UTC)(Conversely, my son has a legitimate chainmail shirt, acquired in his LARPing days, which happens to look and fit exactly like a very loosely knit t-shirt. He sometimes wears it to go clubbing.)
Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-08 06:08 pm (UTC)My hobbies are all things that take me away from people and into myself.
Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-08 08:34 pm (UTC)>>My hobbies are all things that take me away from people and into myself.<<
I can understand the appeal of that. If you're looking for a way to connect with people, though, a more sociable hobby might help. *ponder* Birdwatching is one good example; it works solo or in groups.
Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-10 03:52 am (UTC)Hmm...
Date: 2009-03-10 03:56 am (UTC)Re: Hmm...
Date: 2009-03-10 01:57 pm (UTC)Re: Hmm...
Date: 2009-03-10 04:37 pm (UTC)Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-10 03:38 pm (UTC)Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-11 06:01 am (UTC)Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-11 06:27 am (UTC)Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-11 06:31 am (UTC)Walking with one or two other people might be worth your while. The hiking I've done, most we ever had was four people, and usually it's only two or three of us. You don't have to talk all the time, you can listen to the world and just point out things to each other occasionally. (I have two woods-modes: quiet stalking, or name everything in sight like a nature program. Both are fun.) Are there any good places for walking near where you live?
Re: Yes!
Date: 2009-03-11 06:41 am (UTC)When I go out walking at lunchtime, it's almost always by myself. As in, I've found myself with someone to walk and talk with maybe a handful of times in the 17 years I've been working in the same place.