Social skills are broadly made up of three things:
Observation (body language, how people look at you, each other)
Listening (what people are saying to you, the tone, speed, variability of pitch)
Speaking (how you say something, etc)
Body language can be hard, because no-one has really codified it in an accessible way. Yes there are books, but they tend to drift off into science noise, or babble.
The problem is that we are used to watching actors. The problem with actors is that they (like most people) can't control their body language entirely. So what you see as affection on TV, might not actually be Affection. (this is why its so startling to see real affection in the movies. the so called "chemistry")
solution: at a cafe, or a shopping mall, sit with a set of headphones on, and just watch people (no don't stare) look at the parent with their children, the young couple, the old grumpy farts. nearly divorced boomers. Try and guess what they are thinking through their actions.
Where are they looking when they speak?
are they hunched over?
where is thier body facing?
Are their arms crossed over, or wide open?
Listening, again at a busy place, a food place, cafe or somewhere where there are lots of people, listen in (again headphones are a great foil for this sort of thing). What are people saying to each other? what reaction does it have? when people are happy, what speed is their speech at? is it all one tone?
speaking: An excellent tool for when you are not sure is "mirroring". That is when someone makes a statement that you are not sure of, repeat the last few words back to them: "hi OP, how are you? can you come with me please?" you: "come with you?" (the tone of your voice is important here. you need to be light, fluffy. subtle rising intonation helps) They will normally give more information "Yeah, I have something to show you" etc etc etc.
A good rule of thumb is that the words people are speaking only contain something like 20% of the meaning of what they are saying. Think of the ways you can say "are you having fun?" The delivery can change the meaning from innocent, genuine question, menace, anger, sadness. Even though the words are exactly the same.
finally the last thing you need to work on is "empathy". No its not a wooly thing. Its the ability to predict how the person you are talking to is feeling. it doesn't involve crying. basically its all the information you've gathered, condensed into a model, and use that model to understand why they are acting the way they do. hint: people are never irrational to themselves.
TL;DR your life happens within a field of informed movement/perception/relation that determines which social capabilities you have and which not.
As we grow up as a baby, our first connections to the world are based on touch.
The skin is the interface between the world and ourself.
How the world touches us, informs in our motor system a picture of the world.
Over time the cutaneous interactions (movement qualities) modulate into mimics, later into speech (where we still find it as characteristics of our voice).
Now, assume there is a circular process (Gestaltkreis) of your motor system.
It constantly sparks a movement intention.
First it needs to be executed.
Then it needs to be perceived: Has it been executed?
For both phases, the body needs to convey signals.
As the motor system only sparks a movement intention until it receives the full perception of the executed movement, sparking of the movement intention means that the trains are not yet developed to the extent required.
"What fires together, wires together" / Neurobiotaxis may play a role here.
Movement essentially becomes perception. And your body is your compiler for that.
The motor system basically takes care for development of the trains in your body.
Now, there are two considerations:
1. You can relate to others to the degree your body is integrated internally (inner world connectivity ≈ inner to outer world connectivity)
2. The circular process undergoes biological phases: In different phases, different parts of your body grow; which brings your body out of balance (while you move). The motor's core intention is to develop your ability to maintain your balance with different movements. That is a process after you have attained the ability to run. Those different phases require different sensory inputs. Our parents (society) are usually not able to provide that (as they themselves did not receive it). So, you might end up with social capabilities of a disturbed child as an adult. The movement qualities show for example how you will act in group settings, in which kind of situations, etc.
There might be an approach [1] (with quite some history but ironically yet to be validated empirically) that makes that circular process visible:
It allows the movement intention to become visible to a trained facilitator.
The facilitator then verbalises the intention - which is not accessible to the subject - to the subject.
The verbalised intention is basically a new movement possibility / way to perceive the subject had not on his internal movement world map. While the subject tries out the movement possibility, this also happens in the circular process. That means, perception of the movement of the body is continuously transmitted to the motor system. And as mentioned earlier, once the perceived executed movement is equivalent to the forecast of the executed movement intention, the sent out movement intention changes. The Bewegungsgestalt has irreversibly evolved. And this evolution follows a biologically predetermined sequence (you know in advance what the next movement intention will be once the current has been fulfilled).
And with the changed Bewegungsgestalt, the attained way to move and to perceive, we are able to relate differently to the world - and the world is able to relate differently to us. That makes sense to me, as we evolve our internal connections, we evolve the connections to the outer world.
As this is related to fascia, you might be interested in the Roll Model by Jill Miller, also the coop of her with Thomas Myers Roll the Anatomy Trains online course.
Yes, I see the value of mental efforts of improving your social skills by applying communication technique A or trick B. However, if it holds true that any of this effort happens within the context of your movement/perception/relation field, it is naturally limited by the stage the Bewegungsgestalt has evolved into.
Observation (body language, how people look at you, each other)
Listening (what people are saying to you, the tone, speed, variability of pitch)
Speaking (how you say something, etc)
Body language can be hard, because no-one has really codified it in an accessible way. Yes there are books, but they tend to drift off into science noise, or babble.
The problem is that we are used to watching actors. The problem with actors is that they (like most people) can't control their body language entirely. So what you see as affection on TV, might not actually be Affection. (this is why its so startling to see real affection in the movies. the so called "chemistry")
solution: at a cafe, or a shopping mall, sit with a set of headphones on, and just watch people (no don't stare) look at the parent with their children, the young couple, the old grumpy farts. nearly divorced boomers. Try and guess what they are thinking through their actions.
Where are they looking when they speak?
are they hunched over?
where is thier body facing?
Are their arms crossed over, or wide open?
Listening, again at a busy place, a food place, cafe or somewhere where there are lots of people, listen in (again headphones are a great foil for this sort of thing). What are people saying to each other? what reaction does it have? when people are happy, what speed is their speech at? is it all one tone?
speaking: An excellent tool for when you are not sure is "mirroring". That is when someone makes a statement that you are not sure of, repeat the last few words back to them: "hi OP, how are you? can you come with me please?" you: "come with you?" (the tone of your voice is important here. you need to be light, fluffy. subtle rising intonation helps) They will normally give more information "Yeah, I have something to show you" etc etc etc.
A good rule of thumb is that the words people are speaking only contain something like 20% of the meaning of what they are saying. Think of the ways you can say "are you having fun?" The delivery can change the meaning from innocent, genuine question, menace, anger, sadness. Even though the words are exactly the same.
finally the last thing you need to work on is "empathy". No its not a wooly thing. Its the ability to predict how the person you are talking to is feeling. it doesn't involve crying. basically its all the information you've gathered, condensed into a model, and use that model to understand why they are acting the way they do. hint: people are never irrational to themselves.