12 November, 2010

Social Skills Don't Exist

An exploration of the concept of social skills, particularly (but not exclusively) as it relates to people with autism, victim-blaming, and the Power of Love:

1. What are social skills?
2. What this is not

Showing likability and connection, and skill and work, that is unrelated to being normal:

3. About Stephen
4. Social skills and intent
5. Is going to a hospital normal?
6. Mindfulness and modulation (a general look)

7. Break for love

Some more on skill/work/compassion:

8. Mindfulness and modulation (cashiering)
9. Mindfulness and modulation (being practiced, and not practiced, by professionals)

Other things on various subjects:

10. a note on a
10a. input vs. output
11. My year of flops
12. Bird brains

13. Social model of social failure

9 comments:

  1. I love that you made a table of contents. It was rather necessary.

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  2. I also love that there's a table of contents. So handy!

    (Also, your illustration is reminding me that I still haven't seen "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" and would like to).

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  3. Yeah, so the best thing that happened this summer: me having a really long conversation with a homeless guy which started with him saying, "I love your blue hair. I saw that movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. That girl had hair like yours and she was kick-ass."

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  4. (the books are a lot better though because as much as I love Michael Cera he was the worst casting choice imaginable.)

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  5. I have one big question: if social skills don't exist, then what's really difference between ASD people and NTs, in your opinion?

    I'm really curious.

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  6. this is something I think is interesting: Existence is Wonderful--Conceptualizing Autism

    not necessarily saying I agree with everything (I haven't read it in a while) but it sort of ties into how I think of some stuff, IIRC--like, the idea of a deeper/more interior thing that is sometimes read as "social" or "behavioral" when people just look at the surface. like, the graphic towards the end of the post.

    some frames of autism I think are interesting:

    cognitive/thinking disabilities that are uneven. we both have this experience with our IQs, of course. not being able to express things, or understand how to do things, or simply take the action of doing something, even though some pure, separate abilities may be at the same level as they are for someone without a disability. like for me, I would say something like: I can get from point A to point B the same as anyone else, but getting from point A to anywhere else is almost impossible.

    then another idea is "intense world syndrome" which I understand as being the idea that people with ASD experience a lot of things more intensely (I guess you could tell from the name) and have more fear reactions. This would cover a lot of stuff like not making eye contact, sensory issues, etc. And I think it could also be related to cognitive problems because it's like a ton of stuff comes at you at once and doesn't make sense.

    whatever it is, ASD creates a person who sometimes reacts to things, thinks about things, and expresses stuff pretty differently from the standard person. which can obviously lead to difficulty relating to the standard person.

    am I making sense at all, or just gibbering?

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  7. No, I like the "intense world syndrome" theory a lot, actually.

    When I was younger I used to doubt other people really had feelings. And I got much more scared by things that didn't bother other people. And of course the whole uneven abilities thing, which I have in spades. Which always comes out with me having to fake my way through things, because no one can ever believe some things are as hard for me as they actually are, because I seem "smart". Oy.

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  8. Okay, I read some of that link above. One of the reasons I think I have NLD but not necessarily ASD is because I was terrible at the block design test.

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