Which begs the question: Once treated, must you send your therapist a thank you letter?
That’s so funny.
I went on a date yesterday, and I was pretty nervous that I wouldn’t be entertaining enough for her. Well, not really nervous, but really hoping that I’d be good company. As it turns out, she was the shy one. She spent more time looking around than at me. She didn’t look at the menu. The music was too loud, she spoke in whispers, and she has a really thick accent. It turns out we work for the same company, and that was all we really had to talk about.
Very awkward.
I pretty much had to control and lead the conversation, and that is something I’m not very good at. Things got far better when we left lunch and went to a really great book store. There were shelves and shelves of conversation pieces, and that helped to open us up to each other.
This is worth remembering. Once you get away from dealing with your reactions and feelings and start concentrating on what the other person is doing, things often go better.
Some of us who can’t read body language figure out after a while that we’re missing something. For me, I think I realized that not everybody was like me when, when I was a kid, grownups would tell me to look at them when they were talking to me. I didn’t do that naturally, because I don’t get much if any additional information from it, so as long as I can hear them fine, why should it matter? Eventually I learned that things go more smoothly if you look at people, make eye contact, and all that other body-language stuff, even if I don’t really notice whether someone is doing those things when they’re talking to me.
Fortunately, most people will put up with my not reading body language and my body language being a bit off once they know me. The trick is to pretend to be normal when meeting people or interviewing for jobs, so that they aren’t put off by that first impression and can get to know me.
It is hard to do this stuff, though. It still doesn’t come naturally. I feel like I’m doing a dance routine when I go to an interview- “smile”, “make eye contact” and directions like that are going through my head while I’m doing those things, just like they did back when I took ballet and did dance routines.
I think I need this training. My thing is, I’m terrified of saying/doing the wrong thing and pushing people away. I’ve done it in the past, to the point that I spent a couple of summers with entire groups of people turned against me because of something I did that, ironically, I was under the impression that it was socially acceptable because others had done it and suffered no apparent social damage as a result. One time it was making sarcastic, cutting comments to what turned out were the wrong people; another time it was getting drunk and saying whatever popped into my head, again, to the wrong people. So now I err on the side of caution and try not to offend, even if it means acting like a wallflower. I still slip up sometimes, though - sorry to all the Dopers I insisted on showing a picture of my kid to last year when we met, I honestly thought it was OK.
Great analogy, it is very much like a social dance and wonderfully illustrated in the movie* The Fisher King* in the railway station scene where
everyone is gracefully walzting through the station and Parry moves easily with them until he becomes self conscious and suddenly he’s trapped in a confusing maze of people that he cannot navigate.
I love that movie. That’s exactly how I often feel.
Nava, It’s just the same old joke, though. Same very boring old joke for the four billionth time (slight exaggeration possible). This thread is much more interesting than that.
The high tech firm where I worked had enough of a demand at their large campus to stage a socials skills course (Interpersonal Effectiveness & Listening, it was called) every month for 15 people. At first, I thought that this was all phony BS, what they were teaching me: stand further away, face 45 deg away from the person you’re talking to, don’t peer over your glasses, etc. etc. When I voiced my annoyed skepticism about all these silly little gimmicks to my wife, she suggested that if the company had seen fit to fork over $2,000 for this course, the least I could do was try it.
So I did, and it did feel like a learned dance step or something like that. But, it was like the pod people had replaced all my co-workers. People actually listened and considered what I said instead of arguing with me right away, people smiled and were more relaxed, and a couple of individual I thought were just jerks suddenly became regular people.
My attitude went from “ya gotta be kidding me…” to one of gratitude and not a bit of bitter regret at not having been taught this earlier. That was a life changing course.
My female cousins went to charm school. They learned the social do’s and don’t’s and there were boys there, too. They learned dancing, when to take off the white gloves, how to choose the correct silverware, small talk, etc., the whole nine yards. it was all very EEEEEEWWWW! to a 12-year-old, but I’m sure it came in handy. I remember they had to wear the most sissy-ass dresses. This was the swingin’ '60s and they were wearing dork frocks.
Those psychologists were poopy-heads.
This all sounds WONDERFUL in theory, but the problem is how much do those instructors really know?
It’s a profound problem to create an actual theory/body of ideas regarding proper social interaction, to go beyond hippie feel-goodness. I think the only ones to achieve that are those who’ve spent years in introspection acquiring wisdom, and there aren’t many of em. I’d guess the instructors may be effective at teaching the very basics to the people who really need them, but I bet the benefits fall off quickly for people who aren’t suffering from outright Asperger’s (or are otherwise a plain flavor of obnoxious).
In any case, I think what society needs are fewer schools and more honesty. The next time somebody looks like they haven’t got a clue, swallow your pride, fear, and awkwardness… and give it to them. Be frank, be blunt if you have to, but be a mench.
I’m confused by your post. You think that Julie Schmoe, like me, should step in and help someone who’s clueless but that social skills trainers don’t have the know-how?
On second thought… maybe basics go a long way.
Yes, I was thinking about that dichotomy in my post too. I guess what I mean is that true, advanced social skills are very complex and nuanced, and are even harder to understand than they are to master. But I guess that’s an academic point. The aim is to at least get basic, practical proficiency, and maybe some of these courses really help.
But I really fault society for standing by and saying nothing when people act completely off and don’t even know it. What infuriates me is that many, especially the damn hippies who should know better, think it’s the “right thing to do” to be polite and ignore it: that you’re doing good by not “hurting the person’s feelings.” I want to encourage people to be honest with others, and to be frank. If the way to true learning is long and self-inspired, then receiving such signals from others is really the only way to do it.
Guilty. :o
I’d very much like to stop this as it causes numerous arguments because I don’t realize I’m doing it until SO flips his lid and ends the discussion prematurely. My dad does it, too.
We could both probably stand for some social counseling. 
[Nipick.] It raises the question. Raises. Not begs. [/Nitpick]
Oh, and yeah, I don’t necessarily see all social training classes as quackery. I could benefit from classes that helped me not be a nervous wreck when meeting new people. I stutter and stammer and look like a fool. Classes that were set up as repetition, desensitization type thing would help me immensely.
Maybe I can squeeze in a Drama class at the University. That’s about the same thing.
Hey man, I sense a lot of hostility. Don’t harsh my buzz, dude.
Is it really all that common that people don’t know that they are “off”? It seems it would be more common that people know there’s a problem, but don’t know how to fix it.
While I agree that it’s nice to help others, I don’t think that people would generally benefit from being told that they are odd.