The are a set of habits that allow us communicate and relate with other people in a healthy and satisfactory way, they help us make our interpersonal relationships fruitful and make us feel good. The lack of social skills leads us to conflicts and to maintaining relationships that present many deficiencies with other people as well as discomfort with ourselves.
These habits that encompass social skills are attitudes that we adopt around interpersonal relationships based on our beliefs, thoughts, emotions and way of acting in different situations. It is worth mentioning that the HHSS includes components such as verbal communication (tone of voice, etc.) and non-verbal communication (our body posture, gaze, smile, etc.).
To have good social skills it is also necessary to show:
Social skills are essential to relate to other people, establish links and be able to maintain them. They are the driving force of human relationships and our daily lives, since we are social beings by nature, that means that we need to interact to live. Being a person with social skills not only increases the quality of life and good development and maintenance of self-esteem but at the same time protects us from suffering from certain psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression. The lack of social skills makes the person more likely to have reactions of rage, anger and frustration, generates feelings of rejection and undervaluation that impact self-esteem and mood.
Do you know how good your social skills are? With this you can know the level of your social skills.
As mentioned above, social skills (HHSS) also involve empathy, assertiveness, self-esteem, beliefs, emotional intelligence, self-concept and self-esteem, so if we want to work on the HHSS we must also work on everything previous, for this we are going to propose a series of exercises that allow us to know ourselves better and at the same time reinforce social skills through self-knowledge of oneself.
1. Make relationships more flexible
This social skills exercise for adults consists of drawing a pyramid, dividing it by two and on one side putting “I” and on the other putting “others”. Once this is done, you must reflect on your relationships and in the part where it says others you must reflect on the level of commitment that your relationships have with you and mark it on the pyramid. In the section where it says “I” you must reflect on the level of commitment that you have acquired towards others.
This activity will allow you make your relationships more flexible, can be useful for all those people who have very strong beliefs about certain values such as friendship, etc., and are very rigid in the face of all their relationships or in the face of a relational situation that is blocked. Being graphic, it allows you to make a much more visual analysis. This part of the task has reference to positive psychology and was designed by Hervás (2008).
2. Heal blocked relationships
Perhaps a fact that is damaging our HHSS is a blocked relationship, something that hurt us and we have not yet known how to recover. For this, this task presented from the narrative approach can be very useful. Is about write the feelings it generates in you that relationship that you want to heal.
- First, you will write down everything negative that it causes until you feel that everything about it has already been expressed.
- That is when you can move on to the next point, writing down everything positive about the relationship.
Performing this exercise to work on social skills in adults helps regulate negative emotions towards other people. In this article you can see. It is worth mentioning that this activity is indicated in cases where you want to continue or resume the relationship with a person or in the event that the loss of that person affects your daily life and affects your mood with rage or anger.
3. Address problems based on needs
One of the most useful things so that people can understand a problem and these do not represent a source of conflict is to approach it from the needs. In general, depriving someone of what they need is not very common, so the proposal of this activity is to raise and address problems and conflicts based on needs. In addition, this exercise also allows us to explore our interior and get to know ourselves better. Before starting this activity it is important to keep in mind that There are 6 needs for psychological well-being:
- Control of the environment (knowing that not everything is under our control and referring to what the person can be proactive about)
- Personal growth
- Autonomy
- Self-acceptance
- Positive relationships
When the needs become stronger, the problem stops having so much weight. From here, when faced with a problem, the person should reflect on the following questions:
- What things make me feel good?
- What are my needs?
- How do I see the problem in relation to my needs?
- What can I do to meet my needs?
When expressing everything you find to another person, remember to do it assertively: “I understand what you’re telling me, when you do this I feel…”
4. I am the other person
Another element that we cannot forget when we talk about social skills is empathy, which is why I propose this dynamic to work on social skills. The objective of this dynamic is appreciate the feelings and emotions of another person. At the same time, look for common points in the face of conflict and reinforce coexistence, respect and tolerance.
To make it easier to blend into the other person’s skin, it is necessary to choose an accessory or piece of clothing belonging to the other person (necklace, scarf, hat, sweater, jacket, handkerchief, tie, etc.), with the garment worn, the person will be asked to describe what they feel and the sensations they have being the other person.
5. Active listening
One of the activities to work on social skills in adults is to be aware and practice. Active listening is one of the most basic and important HHSS present in any social skills workshop or social skills training. Spend some time with your closest environment, this will allow you to get to know your environment better as well as show you a person closest to you.
6. Self-recording of social skills
Another activity to work on social skills in adults is to keep a record of the HHSS that are used or would like to be used. In this way we will be able to graphically detect which behaviors may have caused a conflict, why, and seek a solution. When beginning self-registration, it is important to first remember one situation that created discomfort or that it didn’t make you feel good. It is important that once it is remembered, the day and when it happened and the context are noted. Once you have all this information, it is important remember how it was resolved this or how one acts in response to it (assertively, evasive, aggressive, etc.).
When you have seen the coping style that was used in that interaction, if it was not assertive it would be good to propose how you could have acted so that the conflict was less, generate alternatives to .