Social Skills Success

I’ve walked five different clients to five different college disability offices just this past year!  It is one of the most important things I can do for college aged clients, especially for those with already documented disabilities.  Bring your diagnosis, find the disability office, and get registered.  What you get then is the accommodations you need.

College students – including my clients aged 18 – 49 – don’t like going to disability offices. And usually colleges don’t help by hiding those offices off in dark corners in basements.  I have worked with student after student who could not even find the disability office on campus.  And for the rare student who knows where to go, thinking about embarrassing things like accommodations is too scary.  No college student – whatever their age – wants to stand out.

So I walk my clients to the offices.  Since I have funky hair and pierced eyebrow, I look like a college art teacher.  So I don’t stand out too much on campus and that minimizes embarrassment somewhat!  I’m also an unknown entity.   Unlike mom or dad who may suggest visiting the disability office, I actually will insist on going – gently.  All of my clients argued with me about visiting, insisting they don’t need to register; I just say, “come on, let’s go.”  And we go.

Yup.  That is why I’m a coach!

Disability offices make accommodations happen.  You can get permission to tape lectures instead of write notes; you can get testing accommodations; you can get note takers or study help.  You can get ebooks, electric syllabuses, study and quiz app suggestions.  You can get dorm accommodations, help with cafeteria meals, and also just support.

Disability offices aren’t going to just give you things that will help you be successful in college.  You or your teen has to go there and ask.  That is why college is where students have to start using their self advocacy skills, and for those too shy or scared to do so in the beginning, it’s up to us as parents or partners or as coaches to help.

This could be my number one rule for college students – no matter your age.  Get thee to the disability office.  Getting registered there can set the stage for college success.  It is an easy step, and if you find it a struggle, just let me know.

I am happy to tell you, “Let’s go!”

Practice really is the key to rejection.

Practicing something as painful as rejection sounds crazy, but really it is deeply important.  Whether I’m helping an aspie teen find a first-ever date, or a college student with job applications, or a couple dealing with intimacy issues, rejection is part of the learning curve.

So how do we learn to ride rejection without pain?

One of the early developers of cognitive behavioral therapy told his clients to go out and in a week ask 100 potential people for dates – expecting that not one person will say yes.  When you expect it, it gets easier to hear no.  A sexuality therapist I know routinely asks his couples to ask one another for ten things a day – from housework to sexuality – and he instructs them to say no, too.  He wants them to get used to no as part of being in relationship.  And for all the job hunters out there, just remember that for the profession of telephone sales, hearing no is inherent to the job itself!  Getting no in a job hunt is part of finding the right job.

This is great advice for my clients in so many ways.  For my musicians, it is an example of how important it is to keep going with open mike nights, no matter how small the initial audience may be.  For my writers, I encourage them to submit their works to multiple publishers every week, because the more you submit, the more rejections you get and the closer you come to an acceptance.  For high school students looking for college money, the same applies again:  the more scholarships you enter the more likely you are to find money.

Ok, practicing rejection doesn’t sound fun.  But it can be.  Go out and ask 100 people on a date – if you have a partner, just ask 100 people out for coffee as friends.  I’ve had clients get creative and plain wacky with this exercise!  The same with couples dealing with rejection in their relationship;  practice asking your spouse/partner for 10 wacky things a day and the rule is the answer must be “no.”  Couples start finding crazy requests for their partner, and “no” indeed becomes fun.  And if you are job searching – go ahead and be wacky and send that resume to jobs you don’t expect to get.  I’ve had clients find themselves with opportunities they never expected.

So rejection can be fun.  The old saying is so true:  every no gets you closer to the right yes.

 Image courtesy of pakorn  http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Sometimes my clients are in meltdown, and have given up.

This was true for one teen client, sent home from college, and for a widower who was grieving his wife’s death.  In both cases, just getting out of bed every day was a struggle.

When clients have given up, I want to work quickly, which is why coaching can rock.  Good behavioral plans create change fast, so when clients have collapsed, I especially want them to get back up on their feet.  And I do so not with talk and feelings and worrying; I use behavioral interventions and make sure change does happen.

For the teen, the answer was simple.  Staying in bed, missing school and her friends, her mom reported she watched television all day.  Ok.  I encouraged mom to move that television out of her daughter’s bedroom, and then worked with daughter to find activities she wanted to do despite her feelings of failure about school.  And instead of talking, we got daughter working with animals at a local shelter, and suddenly she had some success in her life.  Staying in bed all day behaviors disappeared, and she returned to school with appropriate accommodations the next semester.  And she is doing well still.

For the widower, getting up was a reminder of eating breakfast for 54 years with his wife.  So staying in bed prevented his feelings of overwhelming grief (a great example of how much we sometimes do things to avoid other aversive stuff).  Since he complained of the many friends, colleagues and neighbors leaving food for him even months after his wife’s funeral, I suggested he contact them all and explain that he needed someone to go out for breakfast with him, since he missed his wife at that time so much.  Months on, now, and he is out of bed every day for different breakfast dates with people who really wanted to help.  Sure he still grieves, but he gets to talk about it every day with people who care.  A win-win for all.

That is how behavioral interventions work.  Behaviorism gets a bad rap in the autism community, thanks in part to its history of punishing people, but a good behavioral plan addresses the reasons people act as they do, and gives new incentives to change.  There is no good or bad here; I don’t help clients label “negative” thoughts, or feel guilty for their behavior.  Most of us do what makes the most sense most of the time, after all!

Instead, I encourage clients to figure out why their behavior makes sense, and I introduce some new ideas to change if that is what is needed.  And even for clients who appear severely depressed, or who are grieving, or who have “given up,” the right plan means new behaviors happen almost immediately.  If the plan doesn’t work, hey, we’ll try something else.  Maybe moving the television wouldn’t have been enough for a different teen, for example.

But mess around with behavioral plans, and you will find the right combination of incentive and structure, and then you get success.

And for people who have given up, a taste of success creates great new feelings – and more new behavioral skills – really fast.  Nothing helps more for people who don’t want to get out of bed than a good reason to get out of bed!

A lot of social skills programs are crap.

I hate to say it so crassly, but here in Pennsylvania with state-mandated services, literally hundreds of agencies now offer “free” social skills groups.  And most of them do nothing to document their efficacy, while a good many are run by well-meaning professionals with absolutely no training in      autism or special needs.

This is the result, quoted from an awesome and scathing post at extemporarysanity.wordpress.org, entitled “How to Be Socially Awkward, or What I learned in Social Skills Class:”

              There’s only one snag that I have run into so far, the fact that apart from other Autistic people, nobody else has had social skills training. Time and again I seem to encounter people who have not learned that when I approach them (with a smile and good eye contact, making sure that my body is facing them and I am standing at an appropriate distance), that they are supposed to turn toward me and pause their conversation so that I can use one of the “openings” that I diligently practiced. They also don’t know that they are supposed to warmly welcome me when I toss out (in a carefully slowed down and not overly-loud voice),  my “Hey guys” or “What are you guys doing?” Amazingly enough, some of them even seem to find this type of thing a little awkward, or even creepy, coming from a complete stranger.

Local Asperger’s activists Caitlin Freeman and Phillip Garrow (founders of the local Meet-Up Ask-an-Aspie) point out an important point:  put a group of people diagnosed with Asperger’s in a room together, and they tend to get very loud and talkative and outgoing!  Yes, I admit the conversations may tend towards the tech and science fiction, but not exclusively, and yes again, much of the foods served will be impacted by sensitivities, but the point is a group of Aspies happily and easily converse together.

The key to learning social skills, as all the empirical research is showing, is to get your kids with communication or social processing issues into the RIGHT group.  And that means an individualized social skills plan that is an tailored to you or your kid – not a cookie cutter program teaching “skills” in some kind of relationship vacuum.  Indeed, think about this:  how does a relationship vacuum teach relationship skills at all?

Instead, find the group that is self-reinforcing for you, your teen or young adult, or your partner.  I’ve written about the research on learning group and social skills before (read it again here), and the results matter.  When people on the spectrum or with other social processing issues meet with others who share their interests, no one cares about “learning social skills” because everyone is engaged in doing something of interest!  That can be a train club, a chess club, fencing, karate, anime club, dungeons and dragons, computer programming, or whatever!  When you are hanging with others who love model airplanes as much as you, you will learn the right skills for your tribe.

And that is a fast way to learn social skills, a quick way to find friends and relationships, and a wonderful way to avoid the hurt of the article from extemporarysanity.

Bottom line:  a good social skills program is FUN!  It is self-rewarding!  and it is easy.

Contact me if you want real change, real help, real fast.

image:  © Orangeline stockfreeimages.com

Marrying or partnering someone with Asperger’s presents its own challenges that parenting someone on the spectrum does not!  After all, we parents want to caregive our children, but not so much our partners (not really sexy, is it?).  I now work with several clients, men and women, who have partners with Asperger’s and find life challenges because of it.

So imagine being married to someone who won’t make eye contact?

Imagine partnering someone who will never hold your hand?

Imagine a relationship where traditional sexuality is often difficult?

That is what partnering with Asperger’s can feel like.

For my clients who are partners, my role as coach is to make suggestions to improve the relationship and get often unmet needs at least articulated.  One client, sick of never getting eye contact, started to prompt for it, and felt that small step transformed her relationship.  She also found one date night activity that her husband agreed to, and they now regularly find this one activity as a time to be together.  Two small changes transformed her relationship.

Another client had to talk very honestly with her partner.  She wanted a more traditional sex life, and by listening to the sensitivities that made some touching aversive for her partner, she was able to get him to agree to try some new ideas for intimacy and touch.  He still needed support for his tactile sensitivities  - but his partner got some of her touch needs finally met as well.

These are great examples of how quick changes can immensely add to relationships.  Living with a partner on the spectrum takes some negotiating – and sometimes the relationship can’t hold up – but often a few changes can make a world of difference.

The worst possible thing, however, is to suffer in silence in a relationship that doesn’t include communication and sharing!  Coaching can make a huge difference, and I am happy that my clients report huge changes.  Partnering with Asperger’s can be rough, but be willing to seek help and the transformation will be so worth it!

image:  © Zigf stockfreeimages.com

When I work with clients, I expect change to happen fast – or there is something wrong with my coaching!  After all, the whole purpose of hiring  a social skills coach is to see quick change – from better grades to more dates to a better relationship.  I’ve helped clients relieve pain, get jobs, switch colleges, graduate high school, find fun friends, and get that first date.  And all of my work is done within weeks.

Fast change is the key behind behavioral change.  If you want to sit and talk non-stop about your problems dating, then get a counselor or a friend; if you wanna go on a date, then I will give you exercises to get you out there and dating.  If you want to sit and bemoan your troubles with college, then go to the counseling office; if you want better grades right now, though, work with me and I will with you to have a study plan today.

Now the key to all behavior change is you.  I can help you set up a study schedule or an online dating profile or suggest Mindfulness meditation for pain – and if you don’t follow through, then no, fast change won’t happen.  Coaching won’t work if you don’t want to do something, and often you have to do something differently than ever before.  But the results of doing new things is the change you want.  Talking about feelings, identifying “negative” thoughts, and looking at your past won’t make one difference if you don’t commit to just doing something new.

That is why coaching, however, creates such a difference.  And yes, there are counselors out there who can help you change quickly, too.  The important thing is the commitment to change, to getting off your chair and doing something new.  Commit to a study time, ask a bunch of people out, fill in that college application, try an afterschool club, find a tutor, get out and exercise, take your meds, practice meditation, check out the disability office.  Those are all behaviors that can change your life.

I will help you get there.

image:  Sura Nuralpradid  freedigital photos.net

When it comes to dating and relationships, we all have special needs.

I just finished my first 8 week group coaching program, and it so rocked.  I worked with five GORGEOUS women, exploring sexuality and how we view ourselves as women.  Since more and more of my coaching practice involves dating, intimacy and relationships, I find that all of us – men and women – have too few ways to imagine ourselves and intimacy.  So for eight weeks, I met with a kickbutt group of women and we talked about how to envision ourselves in relationships and as sexual beings.

And back to each of us having special needs.    In a culture that still questions whether or not we should provide people in wheelchairs a ramp or not (one of my clients recently turned down a job because she couldn’t get to the bus that could take her to work), we see needs as bad.  Think of how we call someone “needy,” and that is a putdown.  Neediness is bad.

When I coach a client about dating, however, I’m gonna ask you what you want in a relationship.  I am going to ask you what you need.  Are you looking for marriage, or a fun-buddy to go see live music?  Are you planning to share a religious faith, or do you have to date someone who supports your favorite team?  Are you thinking about children some day, or are you done with child rearing and thinking of retirement.  Do you want to try on-line dating, or is knowing a shared friend really important?  All of those questions impact your dating life, and all of them reflect your own special needs.

Which is why all of us, women and men, special needs diagnosis or not, we need to start embracing our human neediness.  That is true for parenting, for being in high school or college, for dating and intimacy, for something as important as finding the right pet (one of my clients recently decided that no, she is not ready for a hedgehog!).  By finding ways to speak the language of neediness, we embrace all of unique ways of being special.

And we make it one step easier to find the right date – and to help our kids get a handicap-access bus to go to work.

image:  © Nataliesusu stockfreeimages.com

One more story is in today’s news about a young teen who killed herself after being sexually assaulted at a party with her peers.  Again, the young perpetrators laughingly shared pictures of the assault and the teen committed suicide.  And missing in the finger pointing about who is to blame is the bottom line truth:  young people need adults supervising them.

For the teens I meet, many with special needs, and hell, for the young adults I meet on college campuses, too – life has too many complications for adults to just abandon them.  Teens need adults to supervise their parties and social lives; college students need responsible residence assistants; your 23 or 24 year old still needs help with relationships, jobs, school, life.  Parents, teachers, religious leaders, youth leaders, coaches, scout leaders – all of us adults need to watch and help young people navigate everything from drugs and alcohol to sexual standards of right and wrong to dating and relationships to going to school or getting a first job.  We need to talk to teens and young adults about things like sexuality and rape, drinking and drugs, values and courage.

I can’t imagine the grief that any of the families of these young people must feel.  And my heart goes out to everyone.  I have worked in rape crisis for over 30 years as a volunteer, and I have seen lives devastated by sexual violence.  Then again, I wonder about the families of all the kids who stood by while their friends assaulted young girls – and then passed pictures of the assaults online and through texts.  Those families should feel devastated as well.  And I grieve for the families who knowingly or unknowingly brought up their sons to be rapists.

We live in a culture that says, “hey, kids are fine.”  I hear this from school districts fighting reasonable accommodation requests; I hear this from other parents and teachers who don’t want to respond to the needs of kids with different abilities; I hear this in the media and from “experts.”  Yet when we look at the statistics of what young people face today – special needs or not – the truth is stark.  Young people make less money, have less opportunity, spend less time with parents, have larger schools and classrooms, have fewer youth programs.  If we adults who do care take up the mantra of “they will be fine,” then we are leaving more young people to drown.

We adults need to speak up.  We need to quit being socially acceptable and instead fight for all teens, for all young adults.  No, kids without supervision are not fine.  No, young adults still need guidance, care, and support.  No, caring for children, or teens, or young adults, has not nor ever will mean not spending time with them.

I hope everyone reading this today will speak out just once.  Demand more adult supervision, more adult contact, more adult guidance for the young people in your lives.  When teens and young adults are left without support or care, too many of them are getting hurt.  And dead.

image © Toxawww stockfreeimages.com

When college students call me up interested in a social skills coach, their number one goal is simple:  dating.  Whether they have a diagnosis or just feel like misunderstood geeks, college aged clients are after dating relationships.  And for some of my clients, college is the age of getting a first date ever.

The cool thing is, dating is a pretty simple skill set to learn.  Some of my clients start farther behind than others (yes you have to wash your clothes and your hair), and some of my clients think that members of the opposite sex (or the same sex for gay and lesbian clients) are scary, and some of my clients have fairy tale ideas (nope, if you haven’t dated much finding your soul mate this month is a big leap).  But so far, all of my clients have successfully found themselves on dates after working with me.

And to my surprise, as a socialskillscoach, I have also become a dating and intimacy coach.  For so many college students with special needs, parents have been scared to address relationships, intimacy and sexuality, and thus college aged kids with special needs are sometimes lamentably misinformed.  My role as dating coach often involves dispelling stereotypes and misinformation.  (Yup, I will talk about birth control, STD’s, safer sex,  and consent if you are interested in a dating coach.)  The more parents address all these issues with their kids before college, the less expensive my work is going to be!

But the hassles of coaching dating skills are worth the rewards.  I help people who have otherwise felt unable to have relationships find peers, dating skills and the closeness and intimacy they choose.  It is a real gift to watch someone go from feeling unwanted and unlovable to secure and willing to meet new people in that crazy world of dating.

But since dating is central to so many of my clients, I will start blogging more hints here!

Social Skills Success is more than just good grades and finding friends.  As adults, success in the social world includes dating.  If you are struggling with finding dates, feeling confident, or worried about your intimate relationships, then Social Skills Success is for you, too!

image:  © Katseyephoto stockfreeimages.com

I wanna see my clients change – and fast.

That is what evidence-based practice means!  Change is what clients pay for, and what they deserve.  A good coach – whether I’m helping with dating, school and study skills, a mother’s stress, or finding friends – a good coach will create change quickly.

That is why I tell clients that my coaching should only last a matter of weeks.  Your teen should be changing habits quickly, or you find yourself de-stressed, or you find that first date – all these changes should happen and quickly.  I’m not gonna say it will be painless – I give my clients homework – but I do say change should be evident very soon.

After all, coaching is not counseling.  I am not here to talk about your childhood, or to hear your child complain about you, or to hear why dating is difficult.  I’m here because you pay me to make something better.  And more to the point, you pay me to show you how to get your goals – or your teen’s goals – with as few payments as you can.

The evidence should be clear.  Your teen does wash her hair.  He does study before using the computer.  You find time for a walk or yoga.  You get a profile on a dating site and start going to meet-up groups.  Your college age student starts passing class, or you find your pain and anxiety issues reduced.

And that is what evidence based coaching means.  The evidence is not some fancy math equation on paper, or a chart or anything but this:  my coaching should measurably make your life better.

Change you choose and change that helps you be healthy is good.  And that is what evidence based coaching is for.

image:  © Rb-studio stockfreeimages.com