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Basic Social Skills Guide

improveyoursocialskills.com

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Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#201

Post by npteljes »

rsaarelm wrote: post #31

Mask every day. Life goal: Be 100% artificial person. All openings and responses must be calculated and faked. Your inner self is faulty and not appropriate at any situation. Once you train and work hard enough to suppress it at all times forever, you may be accepted and allowed to participate.

Part of being truly social (and being emotionally mature) is to understand and apply the difference between manipulation and being mindful about behavior and speech. Same as honesty - honesty doesn't need to be brutal honesty. One can be authentic without being hurtful.

>Your inner self is faulty and not appropriate at any situation

Mostly true actually. If this was not so, the world would look like a daycare without supervision. Just a bunch of primal feelings and violence.

The actual meta-skill that is being developed by maturing emotionally and using soft skills appropriately (for the benefit of the situation and the participants, not for manipulation) is tact. Same as how people learn to apply just a little pressure when handling glassware, and a lot of pressure when lifting a heavy weight.

This is addressed by the author here:

https://www.improveyoursocialskills.com/foundations/social-m...

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#202

Post by 93po »

something these guides indirectly touch on but don't explain more explicitly: frequently issues with socializing are rooted in trauma, and working on that trauma is what's going to fundamentally improve socialization. and for those unfamiliar, trauma isn't always "this one bad thing happened this one time, or many times". trauma is sometimes a lifelong pattern of small interactions, or lack of small interactions. childhood emotional neglect is sometimes impossible to even see from the outside, but can have lifelong implications to attachment styles that then later massively impact one's social anxiety and ability to socialize

also autism

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#203

Post by npteljes »

rsaarelm wrote: post #197
const_cast wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All openings and responses must be calculated and faked Thinking about the things you say isn't faking it - it's just using your brain and being considerate. If you just blurt out anything with no filter, that doesn't make you authentic, it usually makes you an asshole. Not all thoughts are productive, many are bad and many are stupid. You should delete those or revise them. Not only when talking to other people, b…

> Thinking about the things you say isn't faking it - it's just using your brain and being considerate. I guess what gets me with this stuff is that there are multiple things going on that are getting conflated. Considering your words is pretty straightforwardly good, it's learning to not say things you yourself wouldn't have wanted to say. But then this stuff tends to show up in the context of work, or business, and…

You can solve this by reapplying attribution elsewhere.

Instead of blaming the methods / soft skills / whatever, which can be used for good and bad, blame the people who misuse these tools for personal gain: politicians, salespeople, conmen, pua, what have you.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#204

Post by GiorgioG »

zwnow wrote: post #184
GiorgioG wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in my mid-40s. When I randomly reconnect with friends from my 20s, they still ask about my parents and my parents still occasionally ask about them.

Yea so everyone should do that? Or are other platonic relationships allowed?

[flagged]

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#205

Post by npteljes »

agos wrote: post #13
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #9

I've worked with lots of folks on the spectrum and to be honest it's more fun dealing with them as team members rather than "normies". One guy particularly stands out, he joined the team and started off on a solo run with a couple of projects a few others were involved in. A few weeks later I asked him if he'd setup any meetings with the team to get context and, you know, say hello and his response was "why should I…

that surely might be a... diversion from boring work, but fun? fun is something else

Type 2 fun maybe.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#206

Post by rsaarelm »

npteljes wrote: post #201
rsaarelm wrote: post #31

Mask every day. Life goal: Be 100% artificial person. All openings and responses must be calculated and faked. Your inner self is faulty and not appropriate at any situation. Once you train and work hard enough to suppress it at all times forever, you may be accepted and allowed to participate.

Part of being truly social (and being emotionally mature) is to understand and apply the difference between manipulation and being mindful about behavior and speech. Same as honesty - honesty doesn't need to be brutal honesty. One can be authentic without being hurtful. >Your inner self is faulty and not appropriate at any situation Mostly true actually. If this was not so, the world would look like a daycare without…

> Mostly true actually. If this was not so, the world would look like a daycare without supervision. Just a bunch of primal feelings and violence.

The inner self isn't just an id, it's your goals, interests, values and ways of thinking too. And the social fitness script is that you should only have acceptable goals and interests and acceptable ways of talking about them. Talking about wanting to buy a nice house and a sports car, good. Talking about wanting to beat the speedrun record for Mario 64 and how you've figured out a CPU glitch to use for it, keep it to yourself. "Let's agree to disagree", good, "let's sketch a causal model graph of this and plug in our guesses for priors to see where we get different intuitions", no.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#207

Post by ryandrake »

aklemm wrote: post #144
GiorgioG wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not ok. Be an adult and deal with the emotional discomfort to pay your last respects.

Not a popular approach these days, but you’re absolutely right. This is an example where setting healthy boundaries has veered into hiding away from life and avoiding hard, messy human things.

It seems like, at least in online places like Reddit, "boundaries" has become this magical, get-out-of-jail-free word that justifies people to short-circuit norms and socialization and just do whatever they want in human relationships. "I want to do X, and I don't want to do Y, and I don't want my partner calling me out for doing Z. If you don't like it, that's your problem, and if you object, you're crossing my boundaries and are in the wrong!"

Before, it was just "being selfish and anti-social." Now, the same thing is called "setting healthy boundaries for myself."

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#208

Post by zwnow »

aklemm wrote: post #190
zwnow wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoidance can be self preservation. My friends are fine with me not attending, why aren't you? Because I dont wanna join some human made sadness gatherings with some religious idiot talking about how my atheist friend is with God now?

This conversation started as general advice, and as such, avoidance of human connection around death is poor advice. You sound like you have good reason for your avoidance, but you shouldn't extrapolate that it's a good general strategy.

It is a good general strategy. Place yourself before others. Ain't nobody is an altruist.

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#209

Post by zwnow »

GiorgioG wrote: post #204
zwnow wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea so everyone should do that? Or are other platonic relationships allowed?

[flagged]

You're clearly not capable of seeing that humans live differently which is completely fine. Some tribes eat people, some tribes bury them. Just because most people value ordinary people things doesn't mean you should be forced into their culture

Re: Basic Social Skills Guide

#210

Post by ryandrake »

GiorgioG wrote: post #153
sokoloff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely okay to prioritize the needs and comfort of the living. The guest of honor won’t notice, I promise. If the other (living) attendees have a problem with it, it’s at least 51% a them problem, IMO.

This take is sad. We have become a society of emotionally weak people. My wife and I make our kids do uncomfortable things because that’s what separates children from adults. An example, and not even the hardest one: Yesterday we were vacationing at the beach and we got a call from the dog boarding facility keeping our 8 year old dog, she was having seizures and had to be taken to an animal hospital. We drove 3 hours…

It's also selfish, narcissistic and kind of anti-social. Somehow, we've uplifted "taking care of yourself" over every other societal norm, obligation, and courtesy. Humans are not meant to be "on the comfortable/happy path" 100% of the time. Sometimes, we are expected to act altruistically. Sometimes we should make small sacrifices for others' benefits. Sometimes we should be go out of our comfort zone to comfort someone else. This doesn't mean torture yourself and ruin your mental health, but it does mean stepping out of your usual routine occasionally, for other people's sake.
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