How good is your emotional intelligence and social skills?

[Vincent]

I feel a little foolish today.

Several months ago, I skimmed a new book on curing social anxiety.
One concept sprung out of that book and filled me with hope:

People with SA usually have undeveloped social skills and or social
intelligence.

These things can both be learned.

It make intuitive sense. Of course anyone would be nervous if you don't know what to expect. But how to learn social skills and acumen without going through the painful process of continued rejection, possibly without learning anything anyway?

Answer: Anyway you can think of.

Now, what I've written here doesn't strike me as being particularly profound. But, for me, actually it is. The reason is that it makes my problem something a bit more tangible and the solution a bit more clear. What remains to be developed is the method.

Also, I know too that developing social knowledge and later social skills won't solve social anxiety. These things provide knowledge and technique, that is, academic developments. How about how one feels? The feeling of fear that rises up, jams memory and cognitive functioning? Raises the heartbeat and prepares us for a fight or flight response to this situation that is so dangerous to us: people.

Well, those are tackled a different way. I'm not certain which is the best way, but I believe regular exercise, meditation and the development of spirituality will help. I plan to do a ten day Vipassana class next month. It is ten days without communication at all, although there are people all around. Each day is spent in guided and self-guided meditation. That is, kneeling down and focusing on letting thoughts blow through you like the wind. Learning how to make the mind still. Letting go of everything and finding inner peace. A friend of mine, who is quite introspective and internally strong recommended it to me. He knows of my anxiety issues and thinks that this will go a long way in curing me.

As for social knowledge, I think that social psychology is a very useful start. The book I have with me on the topic covers things like the social norms for eye contact, proximity, facial expressions, group dynamics, conformity, individuality, social identity etc.

I feel foolish because I learnt that social knowledge can be gained some time ago, and have only got around to reading this now. Actually I've lately found so many profound books that I just can't seem to find the time. But even today, I walked to town by myself and felt so much more confident. One reason was that I knew the distances which people usually engage people's eyes when they approach on the footpath. I knew where to look, for how long, what expression to use and so forth without making the other person uncomfortable, or make me uncomfortable by not knowing the identity of someone about to come into my personal space.

I study psychology now and social psychology is instrumental in teaching me the things I didn't automatically learn in childhood.

I recommend it to any and every one wanting to improve upon their social knowledge.

I will report back on the Vipassana course once I have completed it. I anticipate a great change in me after having been in silence for ten days, alone with my thoughts.



Vincent.

 

[Joey86]

It's kind of funny how many people who suffer from this condition want to do psychology. I'm sort of the same, but mine is a mix of cognitive psychology and IT. They should do a survey (they probably have lol) of how many psychologists have suffered some sort of mental illness during their lives.

I agree with much of what you've said. There probably is a relationship between emotional intelligence and social anxiety. After all, it is all about feeling the right emotions in the right satiations. For social anxiety, the severity of these emotions play a big part of it, because we tend to blow things way out of proportion.

Anyway, you know how in all those self-help books where they say that the most important thing in order to achieve success is repetition. Whether it might be exercises to help you think positively or stopping yourself from engaging in self-talk, for these things to work long term, you need to keep repeating their exercises. They say that because there's a difference between learned knowledge and skill.

Learned knowledge is what you've read in the book. The words on the page, put into your head. For example, when you are learning to drive a manual car for the first time, there are certain steps that are involved in shifting gear. You have to ease off on the gas, move the shift stick to the next gear, then step on the gas again. This is all while concentrating on moving the steering wheel so you don't crash into a wall. After a while, the whole shifting process becomes natural, a skill that you have learnt. Soon you don't even have to consciously think about it. Soon the whole driving process will become natural to you, and you won't even need to consciously think about that either, and you can concentrate on more important things, such as not getting lost.

It's the same with social knowledge. You can learn it, put those words, steps, guidelines, etc into your head, but they don't become social skills until you're proficient enough that you don't need to consciously think about it anymore. I reckon some social people have got this down so well that they can talk without thinking lol.

The problem lies in self-consciousness. Sufferers of social anxiety are extremely self conscious of themselves. With this mindset, it's not long before those learned social skills start to be questioned in their heads. Simple actions that you once may have found easy are hard again. "Oh am I making eye contact right? Does my smile look funny? Is my voice strange?" etc. Once this happens, you have to learn how to do things again, in a way that would suit your new mindset. It's kind of like reversing the gears on a car: You have to learn most of it again from the start, meaning you're concentrating on that, instead of concentrating on not getting lost. You're concentrating on how to make eye contact and how to smile properly, instead of more important things like actively engaging in conversation.

Anyway that’s just my theory on the whole thing. Other people may see it completly differently.

 

[flake__]

About the emotional intelligence thing...i've come to realise i have loads of it. It's what frustrated me alot before i knew about SP...why can't i talk to people when i can understand/relate so well. I did this test once and scored highest on 'interpersonal skills' haha.

So it's like you say, it is the fear that holds us back.

But like joey86 says there is also the negative thoughts that is an essential part of the phobia. Always knocking you down. So even if you know social skills you're mind will still not be confident you are good at socialising/you are worthy of friends etc.

BUT learning social skills can help, because you know rationally that you have social skills, especially if you read it from a book or something which our minds give authority to...allowing you to partially fight the critical voice in your head!

 

[Vincent]

Joey and Flake,

Thankyou for your feedback.

I'm very curious as to what anyone thinks about meditation as a way to overcome negative thoughts and feelings. In particular, Vipassana.

I was reading a book by Daniel Goleman (author of Emotional Intelligence) on destructive emotions. They scientifically tested Buddhist monks using CAT scans amongst other things. The scientists verified that they had above average levels of concentration, and responded automatically with empathy rather than repulsion to images of human suffering (think Clockwork Orange ).

In essence, meditation is reported to help develop peace of mind, and allow one better control over negativity. I speculate those things will be invaluable when it comes to socialising. When anxiety approaches, which is essentially, negative or critical thoughts about one's self, the technique will be in place to let those thoughts wash through you. Physically, the effects of anxiety should be lessened also.

Vince.