One of my favourite things to do while brainstorming is to scroll through the search terms that lead new readers to this blog. Someone recently ended up here by typing Can social skills be ruined? in a search engine, and I thought it would make a good topic for today’s post.
Social skills are like muscles.
If you exercise them regularly, they’ll make daily life a little easier.
Some people are born with conditions or into circumstances that make it more difficult for them to do certain things. This isn’t an excuse for bad behaviour when it comes to social skills, but it is an explanation for why certain things happen. (Perhaps one of these days I should blog about the difference between excuses and explanations? 🙂 )
It’s much easier to criticize how someone else is doing them than to improve your own weak spots. Every year I become less willing to tell other people what to do unless they seek out my advice. Figuring out the best choices for myself is challenging enough.
A muscle can atrophy if it’s injured severely enough, you’re bedridden, or if you have a degenerative disease.
I’d argue that the same can be said for social skills. Most people are capable of improving, but there are rare cases when this isn’t possible. Listing them would require much more space than I have for this post.
If you’re self-aware enough to ask this question, though, there’s always hope.