Social impairments

Social difficulties are a major trait of several developmental and psychological conditions. The exact type of difficulties can vary both between conditions and from person to person.

Causes

Causes for social difficulties can include (but are not limited to):

• Autism
• Brain damage
• Learning disabilities
• Nonverbal learning disability
• Personality disorders
• Reactive attachment disorder
• Schizophrenia

People may also have social difficulties due to environmental factors like social neglect.

Potential traits

Social difficulties are diverse. They vary between and within diagnoses. Some examples of what they can look like include:

Expression difficulties

• Difficulty putting feelings into words (especially if alexithymia is present)
• Frequently being misunderstood
• Accidental rudeness
• Egocentrism – or perceived egocentrism

Unsophisticated social abilities

Some people with social difficulties may appear "childish" or "immature." They may not know how to use more advanced social skills.

• Childishness (or “Peter Pan syndrome”)
• Lack of a "brain-to-mouth filter"
• Projection of one's inner world onto others
• Interpersonal preference towards younger or developmentally more immature peers
• Social developmental delays
• Difficulty with self-control
• Inability to deceive or manipulate, or being too manipulative
• Honesty, including difficulty with or inability to tell white lies (e.g. "Do you like my cooking?")

Confusion and cluelessness

• Obliviousness to social cues, such as body language, disapproval, flirting, dishonesty, and “signs”
• Difficulty reciprocating or understanding how to reciprocate
• Reduced social imagination
• Difficulty understanding the social context of words, such as what could be considered offensive or have a double meaning (e.g. swear words, slang)
• Failure to see “gray zones” (immature morality, seeing in black and white morals)
• General inattentiveness of social surroundings (especially in schizoid personality disorder and some autistic people)
• Poor self-awareness
• Linguistic confusion (e.g. confusing a word for a similarly sounding word or with a different meaning) on a frequent basis
• Lack of external social and/or moral awareness that is considered abnormal for one's chronological age (such as trends, common sense, morality, pop culture, sexual knowledge, basic social norms)
• Being oblivious to rejection or being ridiculed
• Difficulty understanding thing such as: the value of money, stereotypes, varied social concepts such as what is considered "cool", "hip", "ugly" or "edgy", the line between constructive criticism and harassment, financial and legal matters, social logic, wisdom, life lessons, etc, which leads to always making the same poor lifestyle choices and mistakes repeatedly
• Difficulty attributing mental states to others and understanding their perspectives, sometimes as well as understanding one’s own (impaired theory of mind)

Eccentricity

• Atypical facial expressions, such as a restricted, unpredictable or exaggerated affect that is ‘inappropriate’ to the context of a situation
• Atypical eye contact (significantly more or less than culturally expected)
• An “odd” sense of fashion or appearance
• Abusive, co-dependent or stormy relationships
• Differences in boundaries relative to what is culturally expected (e.g. "no boundaries" or aversion to being touched)
• Quirky and/or awkward body language and/or manners of speech
• Unusual friendliness or affection

Unfriendliness

While some people with social difficulties are friendly, others intentionally or unintentionally come across as unfriendly.

• Coldness
• Lack of social interest
• Lack of remorse, guilt or shame
• Mistrust of others
• Deep commitment issues
• Failure to accept responsibility

Poor outcomes

• Bullying victimization
• Difficulty with love, romance, and intimacy
• Constant rejection from peers
• Failure to 'bond' with humans
• Inability to form and/or maintain stable relationships or appropriately pass through stages of a relationship (e.g. revealing a deep secret shortly after meeting someone), no matter the context of the relationship (professional, casual, intimate, etc.)

Stress

Difficulty socializing can take a toll on a person's confidence and mental health.

• Low self-esteem
• Social avoidance and withdrawal
• Social inhibition
• Social anxiety
• Feelings of social inadequacy and deep dissatisfaction with one's own social success

Coping mechanisms

Social struggles do not mean social disinterest. Many people with social difficulties feel lonely. They may try various things to help.

• Tendency to withdraw or remain partially or fully into inner world
• Vivid and rich inner world
• Attachments to objects to meet emotional needs despite lack of social support (e.g. objects, body pillows, Reborn dolls, carrying plushies)
• Preference to bond with animals
• Being in “one’s own world”, or detached from society
• Tendency to form long-term attachments with fictional characters

Social differences

Not all social differences are disordered. Some traits, such as stimming and discomfort with eye contact, are increasingly recognized as different rather than deficient.

In autism

Research has uncovered a double empathy problem. Both autistics and non-autistics have difficulties empathizing with each other. Autistic people communicate more easily with each other than with non-autistics. This suggests that rather than autistic people being inherently deficient, many autistics simply communicate differently. Some have compared it to a language barrier.

In autism, research has shown that autistic masking (hiding one's autistic traits and attempting to blend in with non-autistics) is exhausting and can have devastating mental health consequences. While autistic people may need to learn how to survive in neurotypical society, they also need spaces where they can safely be themselves and "unmask."

Supports

Those social difficulties can cause important problems in some or all aspects of a person's life. There are several types of therapy that can improve social skills. as well as some medications (e.g. social skills therapy, CBT, ABA, CBD oil) although recovery is not always guaranteed and can take years to achieve, and certain types of treatment, such as ABA, are deemed controversial.

Making neurodivergent friends may also be helpful. For example, researchers have found that autistic people find it easier to befriend other autistic people. Friendships with people who have similar struggles can create opportunities to bond with less social pressure.

See also

• Comfort object
• Loneliness
• Neurodivergent masking