So I’m not going to phrase this perfectly, but to me the problem with social skills stuff is not that no one would ever want to change something about them that other people find odd or off-putting or that no one would ever want information about what things about them other people find off-putting or odd.
It’s that it’s presented as if people have to change. Or as if that’s the only good choice, and as if that’s necessarily a good choice. There is no acknowledgement that any particular weird thing about you might not be worth changing, or even that you might have good reasons not to want to change even if you have good reasons to want to change too. There is no acknowledgement that there are other ways to deal with “sometimes people don’t like you because you are weird” other than “be less weird”. There is no acknowledgement that sometimes people can like you for being weird, that you can make friends through shared weirdness. There is no acknowledgement that you can like and be proud of the weird parts of you. There is war on the idea that you can like and be proud of yourself even when others aren’t. There is no acknowledgement that being less weird might not always make you friends and always be something to be proud of, that it might hurt or it might feel like giving in. There is no acknowledgement that owning your weirdness is a social skill. Many different social skills, in fact. There is no acknowledgement that sometimes being less weird makes you less functional, not more and makes it harder to interact with others, not easier. There is no room in the ideology. And since there’s no room for someone to decide they just want to be weird, and for that choice to be okay and good, or to decide that they cannot work on being less weird right now, there is no room for someone to say “stop telling me everything that is wrong with me all the time (or asking leading questions to try to get me to tell you what is wrong with me), stop telling me all the bad things that other people think about me and all the bad things that are going to happen to me, I already know that I’m weird, shut up.”
Like, this is, “you had a fun interaction with your friend, now let’s discuss everything you did wrong and all the bad things your friend is probably thinking about you. Why do you have social anxiety?” therapy.
And also it confuses “that thing you’re doing is bothering me/bothering so-and-so” with “that thing you are doing is Bad Social Skills and I think I’m doing you a favor by trying to make you more normal in a sneaky way”.
And it teaches kids that people are a monolith and it doesn’t teach kids to work around and with and celebrate their own and other people’s weirdness.
And it is frankly ludicrous that people don’t seem to see why “The way you talk is wrong, the things you talk about are wrong, the way you move is wrong the way you sit is wrong your face is wrong your voice is wrong your hands are wrong your clothes are wrong the way you express that you like people is wrong the fact that you like some people better than other people is wrong your preferences are wrong the strengths of your preferences are wrong” could be like an unkind thing to say and not like a kind and helpful thing, or why someone might respond to that in a hostile way other than “they are hostile because of their problems and we need to fix it”.
“Oh we don’t tell kids that everything about them is wrong, we just tell kids that everything about them is Unexpected, and when you do Unexpected Behavior people don’t like you and everyone is unhappy and you are unhappy and feel bad about yourself, and when you do Expected Behavior you are happy and other people are happy and they like you and want to be around you and treat you well and you feel good about yourself.” lollerskates
This is a good post which applies directly to problems I’ve had, and that a lot of people I know have had.
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