Organization

This site is written directly for you, the person with social communication challenges. We hope you find it useful. (If you are someone else, please see the notes intended for different audiences below.)

It’s not just people with autism or nonverbal learning disorder or social anxiety disorder who have social communication problems, but lots of intelligent people who have spent their lives with their noses in books or faces fixed firmly on the computer screen or doing other solitary activities.  Most of the people who get labeled “nerd” or “geek” have social communication challenges. So we’re not really interested in whether you have any sort of diagnosis, or if, like Sheldon, your mammas had you tested.The only assumption we tried to make about you is that you’re a competent speaker of English, reasonably intelligent, not a young child, probably somewhat frustrated by persistent miscommunications and therefore interested in learning more about how most Americans interpret social signals. (A lot of what is written here will be relevant for other English-speaking countries, but there will be some cultural differences.)

There’s probably a lot here you already know (as different people start at different levels of awareness and ability) — so feel free to jump around and skip what you like. As there is no linear path that needs to be taken through the material presented, topics (each containing basic information and examples, exercises, and references) are organized into clusters. The Attitudes and Emotions cluster is most crucial for establishing and maintaining relationships. Hidden Social Dimensions helps you understand the social repercussions of the inner workings of conversations. If you’ve been told that you sound “like an old person” (when you’re not) or “not feminine/masculine enough” or “like you’re from somewhere else” or just “you don’t sound like us,” the Identities cluster may help you understand why.

exercise_graphicExercises

Text-based exercises can be done alone, and are relatively stress-free. They have no real-time constraints (you can spend as long as you like thinking about them before you answer) and no politeness constraints (you’re not interacting with another person), so if you have difficulty with these, you may want to review the basic information and examples given before you attempt the more challenging exercises, and maybe seek help off-line.
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Different Audiences

 

The text throughout this website is addressed to your loved one, but feel free to read along! Really, who couldn’t improve their skills in these areas? You may think your loved one has “problems,” but you may be surprised how much you yourself may identify with and/or learn. (We all did.) We hope that this site will help you understand how you might better explain certain situations, behaviors, and reactions to behaviors in ways that your loved one will find nonjudgmental and helpful — and help you better understand your own unconscious patterns of behavior that may be making some situations more difficult. (We try not to assign fault, in general, but you have to consider that some of the miscommunication may actually be your fault. A conversation is a two-way street.)

No professional expertise or academic background is required for acting as a “confederate” for role playing and video modeling exercises — just “typical” interactional skills and willingness to put in some time, but for best results you should try to recruit others, not always playing the role of the confederate yourself. Your loved one may have so much information about you and so much experience interacting with you that s/he has become relatively good at reading your social signals — but that doesn’t necessarily generalize to interacting with others.  Ideally, you should try to recruit at least one person who has not had a chance to establish a relationship with your loved one yet. With any luck, you’ll be able to form a (small) group that can meet together — in which case, see the note we wrote for facilitators of support groups.