I wonder how my life would have been if I stayed friends with people from 6th grade than the people I befriended in 7th grade

[Journeytoletgo]

I just feel my social skills were ruined since middle school and high school by staying around the wrong people.

 

[WhatPowerIs]

I feel this way too. I made a new group of friends starting 6th grade and I stuck with them throughout the rest of my school years, I do wonder what it would have been like had I chosen to befriend another group instead.
I'm told you can just make friends with anybody now, going to Facebook group meet-ups, but is it really the same? Has anybody here tried it?

 

[QuietEnd]

I don't know your context so I can only share my story and understanding if it helps.

I've spent most of my working life trying to improve my emotional intelligence which includes social skills. It's a super hard and exhausting journey for me. As a result I've learnt this about myself and my own development:

• A huge part of emotional intelligence learning comes from your family unit. You learn from your family key skills that enable you to develop resilience and create patterns on how you'll respond. In my case this was severe lacking and actually caused me to develop BPD
• The friendships we make in childhood are a test bed and designed to be safe experiments for us to learn to build friendships. In my case I'm autistic - wasn't diagnosed until last year which is super common for a girl/woman with other mental health issues - and so I'd understand relationships and didn't understand why they failed
• We can develop our emotional intelligence skills as an adult. It's hard work involves developing a lot of internal awareness, self - reflection and learning about emotions and reading body language.
• I haven't worked out how to learn the social skills I missed as a result of being an abused autistic child. I don't know how to do this, or how to approach this, I've not been able to find an option in my research to date.
• Depending upon your emotional intelligence and social patterns - you've effectiveness - it's puts you at huge risk as an adult for the exploitation and manipulation of others. I've watched others successfully break this pattern as they learn and create better patterns. I'm not one of those people sadly.

 

[Journeytoletgo]

I don't know your context so I can only share my story and understanding if it helps.

I've spent most of my working life trying to improve my emotional intelligence which includes social skills. It's a super hard and exhausting journey for me. As a result I've learnt this about myself and my own development:

• A huge part of emotional intelligence learning comes from your family unit. You learn from your family key skills that enable you to develop resilience and create patterns on how you'll respond. In my case this was severe lacking and actually caused me to develop BPD
• The friendships we make in childhood are a test bed and designed to be safe experiments for us to learn to build friendships. In my case I'm autistic - wasn't diagnosed until last year which is super common for a girl/woman with other mental health issues - and so I'd understand relationships and didn't understand why they failed
• We can develop our emotional intelligence skills as an adult. It's hard work involves developing a lot of internal awareness, self - reflection and learning about emotions and reading body language.
• I haven't worked out how to learn the social skills I missed as a result of being an abused autistic child. I don't know how to do this, or how to approach this, I've not been able to find an option in my research to date.
• Depending upon your emotional intelligence and social patterns - you've effectiveness - it's puts you at huge risk as an adult for the exploitation and manipulation of others. I've watched others successfully break this pattern as they learn and create better patterns. I'm not one of those people sadly.

It's interesting you say this. Somewhere along the line I lost my social skills and emotional intelligence. I think I may be on the spectrum socially. However in my teens I had severe acne causing me to isolate and stay away from people.

In what ways can internal self awareness help? Any skills I can work on?

I also have high stress and social depression

I agree I been exploited in high school, abusive relationship, toxic fwb, and alcoholism led me to be used by a guy 4 times

 

[QuietEnd]

It's interesting you say this. Somewhere along the line I lost my social skills and emotional intelligence. I think I may be on the spectrum socially. However in my teens I had severe acne causing me to isolate and stay away from people.

In what ways can internal self awareness help? Any skills I can work on?

I also have high stress and social depression

I agree I been exploited in high school, abusive relationship, toxic fwb, and alcoholism led me to be used by a guy 4 times

With internal self awareness we can become more conscious of the patterns we have and the choices we make.

Let me try and shortcut what I've learnt into a better order... I've never tried this before so I hope I can communicate it clearly.

1. Our pattern of thinking - our perspectives and biased influence how our brain feels and how we usually decide how to respond.
2. From my research I've divided this pattern of thinking into six areas: 1. What I've learnt/taught/experienced 2. My genetics 3. Illnesses that constrain the ability to act 4. External stimuli or environment that encourage or discourage us to act 5. Emotions 6. External stimuli
3. You can work through all four of those areas separately and in parallel
4. Learning... this is a significant impact on how we act and think everyday. If it's learned it means that we can reteach ourselves to do something differently. It's hugely difficult and hard work. Learning something can be tough, unlearning to relearn is really really tough - but it's possible. (I personally found the rewire your brain book a helpful door opener for me in this area). For example I was taught compliance....I was taught I should always comply. This has made super vulnerable and how I ended up with one sexual assault, one rape and one attempted rape - plus several other non-consentual situations. From my learning I have taught myself a different pattern, new awareness of what happens, what others do, and taught myself how I can respond differently.
5. Genetics... Understanding the brain you were born with is important. You can't fight with how your brain was created. You can wish it differently, but this is part of accepting your reality. The more you learn about those aspects of yourself you can reduce the stress you place yourself under by accepting yourself, you can learn what helps or hinders you. For example, I'm autistic, I find looking at people hard, I didn't realise I never looked at people's face even when I'm looking at them I don't really see them, so I never learnt the body language of reading people's faces what they say - so I've taught myself both body language (general books on the subjects) and expressions (Paul elkman is amazing on this). The more I understand of autism the more I can leverage my strengths and reduce the overwhelm by trying to set expectations for what I'm not or missing my own needs (e.g. overwhelming my senses).
6. Illnesses... These can be similar to the genetics but rather than being born with them instead you acquire them. Some illnesses are permanent - they will always be with you. Some are temporary - they are just short term guests. Some are fluctuating they come and go. For all of them we have a level of influence, not all can be fully controlled. Understanding what the illness is and how it encourages or discourages you to act, how you see the world is important. For example I have BPD, it's hugely complex and mainly affects the brain. It's affected how my brain has developed so I don't think it will ever leave me, but I can change and significantly influence it. For example, I've learnt the thinking pattern my brain is triggered to do - vulnerability, defense, anger. I can teach myself new ways to respond to those - I can develop self-awareness. I can also understand what influences those e.g. temperature, environment etc.
7. External stimuli... What happens around us influences us consciously or unconsciously. What in that environment is positive for us, or negative for us? What's important about those items? What can we influence about it? What do we have to accept? How can we strength the positive influences and find more of them?
8. Emotions... If we don't understand how our brain influences how we react we are missing a key thing that influences almost everything. Understanding the emotions you have, what they are, how they work, how can we understand something we can't touch gives us more ability to choose responses. We can separate the difference between feeling an emotion, and choosing to respond to it. The works by Daniel Coleman, brene brown and Susan Davids I've found to be hugely helpful.
9. Self-awareness... We need to create a space so that we have a difference from reacting to responding. This is where self-awareness comes in. Being aware of when an emotion is triggered - what is it, what information is it giving us, what's it encouraging us to do or not do, how to we want to handle it, how do we want to respond?

 

[freevoid]

This hits too close. I floated between 2 friend groups for a couple of years, then migrated to one fully my first year of high school. SO much regret, I did not have a good time. I too wonder...

 

[FuneralCry]

I'm sorry to hear that. I know that it can be dreadful experiencing regret and wishing that things were different. Others really can make things worse for us and the cruelty of people just makes me want to leave this world even more.

 

[Journeytoletgo]

With internal self awareness we can become more conscious of the patterns we have and the choices we make.

Let me try and shortcut what I've learnt into a better order... I've never tried this before so I hope I can communicate it clearly.

1. Our pattern of thinking - our perspectives and biased influence how our brain feels and how we usually decide how to respond.
2. From my research I've divided this pattern of thinking into six areas: 1. What I've learnt/taught/experienced 2. My genetics 3. Illnesses that constrain the ability to act 4. External stimuli or environment that encourage or discourage us to act 5. Emotions 6. External stimuli
3. You can work through all four of those areas separately and in parallel
4. Learning... this is a significant impact on how we act and think everyday. If it's learned it means that we can reteach ourselves to do something differently. It's hugely difficult and hard work. Learning something can be tough, unlearning to relearn is really really tough - but it's possible. (I personally found the rewire your brain book a helpful door opener for me in this area). For example I was taught compliance....I was taught I should always comply. This has made super vulnerable and how I ended up with one sexual assault, one rape and one attempted rape - plus several other non-consentual situations. From my learning I have taught myself a different pattern, new awareness of what happens, what others do, and taught myself how I can respond differently.
5. Genetics... Understanding the brain you were born with is important. You can't fight with how your brain was created. You can wish it differently, but this is part of accepting your reality. The more you learn about those aspects of yourself you can reduce the stress you place yourself under by accepting yourself, you can learn what helps or hinders you. For example, I'm autistic, I find looking at people hard, I didn't realise I never looked at people's face even when I'm looking at them I don't really see them, so I never learnt the body language of reading people's faces what they say - so I've taught myself both body language (general books on the subjects) and expressions (Paul elkman is amazing on this). The more I understand of autism the more I can leverage my strengths and reduce the overwhelm by trying to set expectations for what I'm not or missing my own needs (e.g. overwhelming my senses).
6. Illnesses... These can be similar to the genetics but rather than being born with them instead you acquire them. Some illnesses are permanent - they will always be with you. Some are temporary - they are just short term guests. Some are fluctuating they come and go. For all of them we have a level of influence, not all can be fully controlled. Understanding what the illness is and how it encourages or discourages you to act, how you see the world is important. For example I have BPD, it's hugely complex and mainly affects the brain. It's affected how my brain has developed so I don't think it will ever leave me, but I can change and significantly influence it. For example, I've learnt the thinking pattern my brain is triggered to do - vulnerability, defense, anger. I can teach myself new ways to respond to those - I can develop self-awareness. I can also understand what influences those e.g. temperature, environment etc.
7. External stimuli... What happens around us influences us consciously or unconsciously. What in that environment is positive for us, or negative for us? What's important about those items? What can we influence about it? What do we have to accept? How can we strength the positive influences and find more of them?
8. Emotions... If we don't understand how our brain influences how we react we are missing a key thing that influences almost everything. Understanding the emotions you have, what they are, how they work, how can we understand something we can't touch gives us more ability to choose responses. We can separate the difference between feeling an emotion, and choosing to respond to it. The works by Daniel Coleman, brene brown and Susan Davids I've found to be hugely helpful.
9. Self-awareness... We need to create a space so that we have a difference from reacting to responding. This is where self-awareness comes in. Being aware of when an emotion is triggered - what is it, what information is it giving us, what's it encouraging us to do or not do, how to we want to handle it, how do we want to respond?

So In what ways were you able unlearn ? The rewiring your brain book?

 

[QuietEnd]

So In what ways were you able unlearn ? The rewiring your brain book?

By becoming aware of my current pattern developing self-awareness through both reflection and feedback from others I work with. Deciding what I'd like to have happen as an outcome and then working and experimenting on what I need to do to make that happen. This book really helped getting me going https://amzn.eu/d/1cpB741

I have BPD so I've also have DBT Therapy (self-done at home), this really really helped. Amazon product ASIN 1684034582 this is also used for recovery addicts.