*Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com
To explain why most general social skills training taught to autistic people is not helpful, I will show a simple example and give a critique. I will be referring this worksheet by Social Thinking which is public.
If after you read this post, you want more information about what you can do to help and understand autistic people, here are some ways to help.
An Example and Critique
This worksheet created by Social Thinking is titled “Social Behavior Mapping.”
There are two conditions in the worksheet. The top condition is titled Expected and the bottom row is Unexpected. Each condition has the same 4 columns listed from left to right:
1. Behavior(s) that are expected given the situation and people
2. How others might feel about the behavior(s)
3. How others act or react based on how they feel about the behavior(s)
4. How one might think or feel based on how they are treated by others
There’s also a tip box in the middle that says this but in small font:
Consider these when thinking how to list expected/unexpected behaviors:
1. What people say
2. People’s actions
3. What people do with their eyes or face
4. What people do with their body (hands/feet)
How to Spot Red Flags
- Does this center the neurotypical person’s actions and feelings?
yes = red flag - Does this center the autistic person’s feelings and needs?
no = red flag - Does this recognize and respect autistic people’s sensory sensitivities?
no = red flag - Does this center neurotypical body language as correct?
yes = red flag - Does the framework make an implicit assumption that autistic people can control other people’s feelings and behaviors?
yes = red flag
If no one ever asks what your needs are, it’s easy to think they are not important, especially as a child. Remember, most of these social skills programs are for children and teens, though adult versions do exist. If I saw this chart when I was 10 years old, it would give me the message that my needs and my natural body language aren’t important or okay – and I already received that message by that time, even as an undiagnosed autistic kid.
There’s nothing about understanding yourself as an autistic person on that worksheet. It seems to be a roadmap for how to make non-autistic people comfortable. It’s an instruction manual for how to consciously and subconsciously mask.
What’s Missing From Most Social Skills Training
- Interoception and Alexithymia – Do I feel uncomfortable? What am I feeling?
- Sensory Recognition – Do I need sensory supports?
- Taking Action Based on Feelings – Do I need to leave the situation because I’m uncomfortable?
- Consent – Are the people around me listening to what I need and respecting my boundaries?
- Acceptance – Am I allowed to be myself around these people? Do I feel safe?
And here’s the main reason why “social skills training” makes no sense to me: There is no neurotypical formula for social interaction.
What Autistic People Need to Know:
Social Interactions Aren’t Math Problems
It is so easy for us as autistic people to think “Well, if I word it this way, then maybe they’ll listen more..” or “If I fake eye contact more then maybe I’ll be better received” or “If I just change my tone of voice a bit more then X will work out.” We exhaust ourselves with these thoughts. Even as an autistic adult I still get wrapped up in this from time to time. If I just tried harder, maybe I could control other people’s feelings and reactions to my autistic self.
Something I wish I was told a long time ago: It’s not possible to control other people’s feelings and outcomes of things. And it’s certainly not possible to do this as an autistic person interacting with neurotypical people. Everytime an interaction went even slightly poorly in my life I assumed it had to be my fault. Everything was my fault because clearly I just didn’t try hard enough. And I never even had “social skills training.” I just knew that how I existed was wrong based on my negative interactions with others.
What Non-Autistic People Need to Know
Autistic people don’t need any more help to make us feel bad about negative social interactions. We don’t need any more reason to blame ourselves or tell ourselves we’re the ones who were wrong. We don’t need any more reason to doubt our ability to communicate with neurotypical people. We don’t need any more reason to “go the extra mile” to accommodate neurotypical people. We do it everyday, every hour, every minute. We don’t need any more reason to blame ourselves at earlier and earlier ages, to think there’s “something wrong” with us or that we could have more friends if only we “tried harder.” We don’t need it.
If you’re worried that the autistic person in your life isn’t hanging out with their peers, ask them if they’re okay. Ask them if they’re good (some autistic people are fine being alone or with only having a few friends!). Ask them if they want to make friends, and if they want to do it on their terms, try to find other neurodivergent people to interact with. Telling them to get out of the house more, or get off the computer, or “go make friends” isn’t going to solve any of this. If they want to make more friends, ask them what they’re interested in and find other people who are interested in that thing.
We’re already told and shown everyday that who we are is difficult, too much, uptight, unfun, boring, or pedantic. We don’t need to be told that who we are needs to be packaged in a prettier bow to make friends.
We need to be told that there is space for us, a place we can feel safe, and people we can trust. It’s up to you to help us find that, and not give us “training” that will subliminally blame us for living in an unaccommodating world.
Autistic Science Person 
i recently attended a youtube session on gaslighting where the lecturer says the usual and anticipated that the gaslightee does not need to know why the gaslighter gaslighted the gaslightee. i was reminded again how that statement does not work for autistic people although i see it works well for neurotypical people. so this article arrived at a serendipitously fortuitous time in my thought processes. thank you.
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Thanks for your observations
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I felt triggered just reading the first item on that list and couldn’t even read any more of it! But your list of the red flags felt so good to read. We didn’t get that social support growing up, but posts like this help us recognize where we were unsupported and maybe forgive ourselves a bit, and they remind us that we don’t have to follow much of the advice designed for neurotypicals.
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What’s Missing From Most Social Skills Training?
There are several other answers: But a big one is Real Settings. A lot of interaction does not happen in the speech room. Socialziation takes knowledge of real social settings. There is a large RECREATION, LEISURE, ARTS, CULTURE, and HOSPITALITY components to socialization and much of that knowledge is activity specific. For example, the skills one needs to play on the playground are different from a play date at someone’s house, from a party, from a high school dance, from going out on a date. Very few studies address the hands-on realms of socialization, Plus the etiquette of one social setting is different from other social settings. Many studies failed to address this as well (writing a literature review on this).
As an Autistic Individual myself, I was put over and over in speech therapy and realized that those word phrase games made no sense to learning how to socailize. I struggled with many of the hands-on realms as a child and later in life actually dissected the entire hidden curriculum from elementary school to graduate school one activity at a time. I also analysed the knowledge I didn’t know as a child in this realm.
This is why I think there is a difference between masking and being a beginner at a social activity and I don’t think that all social learning is making. Instead, I think that sometimes learning new social settings and social activities can be helpful if one doesn’t know what to do in them. However, it should up to the person to choose whether to be taught this or not, and that neurotyupical persons should adapt too. But there is no harm in learning something that they want to learn in this realm . For example, I didn’t go to high school dances before 12th grdade because o one taught me how to dance. After I learned I realized dances are fun!
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Reblogged this on Melissa Fields, Autist and commented:
For the love of God, all of this!!
If you really want to understand autistic people, meet us where we are at. Stop tryna change us. Listen to us. Believe our stories and lived experiences.
Being our neurodivergent selves Is. Perfectly. Okay.
We aren’t broken.
Tryna change who we are will just give us unneeded depression, trauma, and lead to us wanting to just give up.
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brilliant ! Spot on! I have really poor visual and audio processing and it is simply impossible to do the things that chart instructs in “real time”. My neurology simply can’t do it! I spent years punishing myself and getting punished for my poor performance. At age 68 I was diagnosed with autism and suddenly all those “whys” of my early life made sense. At least now I can understand why I continued to fail in any “real time” interactions. All the instruction and expectations in the world no matter how well meaning will not work if I am expected to do something my neurology is simply not capable of doing. I’d like this post a thousand times if the program would let me! ❤
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Reblogged this on On the Road Again.
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Thank you for taking the time to provide such a thorough example of this perspective. It is validating and very helpful; I plan on sharing a link to this with many people.
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To be honest, I haven’t seen any ‘social skills’ training that doesn’t preference the comfort of allistic individuals over the rights of autistic people, nor which doesn’t try to teach us to mask our natural behaviours.
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I’m glad you posted your thoughts on this and very glad the broader community is having these conversations around social skills in general. Social Behavior Mapping is not a social skills tool – or at least it was never meant to be used in that way. It is a way for people to look at their own expectations – from their lens. This map was co-developed by autistic students who had strong expectations for others and it was meant for them to understand the situation and how to define their expectations of others and how to understand why they were having emotions around others behaviors. It is supposed to be filled out from the lens of the observer (autistic or non-autistic) person – what are your expectations of others – not what do other people expect from you. Some people have used the examples of filled-out maps as “scripts” but that was never the purpose. People who just want to teach social skills are doing it wrong. Your red flags above are only if a NT person is filling it out. If an neurodivergent person is filling it out then it is only about their thoughts and feelings related to others actions or reactions. It is a thinking map – not a social skills map. It is also often used to show that behaviors can be situation dependent. For example, yelling is absolutely expected in some situations (sports, anger, getting attention from afar) and not in other situations (funeral, ICU, etc.). Pacing is expected in some situations (anxiety, excitement, exercise) and not in other situations (eye exam, dental work). Social Behavior maps are now being used in schools to teach NT kids and teachers that everyone (including neurodivergents) have expectations and emotions related to what others do and say. In other words, this is not about a NT standard, but rather about having honest conversations about how we all view the world though our own lens and we all have feelings that may or may not be the same, addressing the double empathy problem so many people are talking about today.
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so, you`re saying there`s another version of that social behaviour mapping form that makes sense to and for autistics ? because that one is very clearly written for people who are not autistic. if autistics could think about what people were doing nonverbally, they wouldn`t be autistic. sure, i can think back and try to remember if i noticed what the person was doing with their eyes, mouth, nose, cheeks, hands, arms, legs, feet and torso… and i might remember a few of them. more likely one or two. and it would be interesting to note that those things have some meaning. some of which i might be able to memorise. but that wouldn`t make me able to actually engage with those nonverbal actions while simultaneously trying to navigate a conversation with someone. and especially not if there was more than one someone. i`ve been able to deliberately observe multiple people engaging on one specific nonverbal behaviour, like say arm positioning. but only when not in conversation and only when focussing directly on it. and this is pretty common with autistics because we have a diagnosed inability to interact nonverbally.
i can see how this could be useful to people who are not autistic. who have very limited ways of interacting. however, it won`t be much use if you`re trying to teach people how to interact more compassionately with autistics. or teach autistics how to interact more effectively with anyone else.
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I remember saying, about past social skills training: “I did learn a lot about how to interact like a neurotypical person. I just wish they also taught me I didn’t have to.” This article reminds me of that, but also makes me realise the problems were likely deeper than that.
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The question for me is how can living in a neurotypical world work without masking or being very lucky with what work and coworkers you can get? I’ve always had “how do other people and society work?” as a special interest and became very good at masking and avoiding conflict by being the “shy girl” and never disagreeing with others basically. Now that I’ve gotten more aware of it I began to stand up for myself more at work, which resulted in a bunch of conflict because I am not very good at doing that in a way neurotypicals find acceptable. I tried to explain to them how autism and my brain works but to no avail. In the end I had to quit because the constant conflict got too stressful for me. As someone who is not used to and horrible at dealing with conflict it kind of seems to me like masking might be less stressful if you’re good at it? Do I have to learn how to deal with or just ignore conflict? Or should I just keep looking for an employer who is understanding?
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