Social skills coaching is a unique and valuable form of interpersonal training that is different from talk therapy.
There is an assumption in traditional therapy that the answers to social problems lie within the patient and that if you do enough therapizing, the person will eventually find the answer. People with developmental and social disabilities like autism, Asperger’s, ADHD, and social anxiety, however, frequently do not know the answers to social situations, and so therapy is often not an effective method of teaching them how to interrelate. I teach teens and adults with special needs how to navigate social situations so they can interact appropriately as they gain more social confidence.
I created a Non-Clinical Agreement that lets my clients know that I do social skills coaching, not therapy. Sometimes clients ask me, “While I’m here, can we talk about my relationship with my mom?” I can certainly refer you to someone who does do that, but my expertise is in teaching adults the social tools they need to understand how to have relationships with the many different people in their lives.
The work I do is practical and hands on; it is not theoretical. Everything I teach can be put into practice right away. My skill is in decoding the way that people act in typical social situations, and teaching my clients how to understand and emulate that behavior.