For several decades now, many have sold the idea that autistic people need “social skills training” in order to “overcome” social “deficits”. While there is no denying that as autistic people, we have differences in social communication which often creates additional challenges in our daily lives, I don’t believe that social skills training is the solution and I’ll tell you why.
Firstly, social skills training often focuses on “fixing” autistic communication into neurotypical norms. It makes the assumption that if we just communicated normally, all would be well and there would be no more communication issues. However, several assumptions are made here, The most pressing one being that autistic communication is wrong and must be stopped. This narrative has dominated the discourse among professionals from when autism was first being talked about over 100 years ago now. Just because we’re different, it automatically led to outsiders seeing our way of being as us failing to be like everyone else. And this belief went unchecked for a long period of time.
However, Daminion Milton’s ‘Double Empathy Problem’ raises awareness that communication difficulties often work the other way too, with non-autistic people also struggling to understand how autistic people communicate (Milton, 2012). Communication difficulties are a two way street, but as autistic people are in the minority, we’re often seen as the ones communicating in the ‘wrong way’ compared to most other people around us.
(Crompton et al., 2021)
More recent studies have backed up what the double empathy problem tries to explain, where the communication challenges tend to go both ways, rather than just autistics communicating poorly (Crompton et al., 2020; Rachanska, 2025). In fact Crompton et al. (2020) found that communication among autistic people is highly effective, and communication issues arise when there is a mix of autistic and non-autistic people interacting with each other. So we have to ask ourselves the question, why are we telling autistic people (both directly and implied) that their way of communicating is wrong by default? And how is this relevant to social skills training?
Well social skills training does not take into account the double empathy problem. There is no focus on bridging the gap between autistic and non autistic communication. The burden is solely placed on the autistic person to adapt and fit into the ‘normal’ world. If social skills training was truly equitable, then it would also involve non-autistic people being pressured or forced into autistic social skills training, and telling them that their natural way of communicating is unacceptable. They would also be told that if they didn’t change their entire way of interacting with people, then they would not survive in the ‘real world’.
See the problem here?
Society holds autistic people to a double standard that is often at great cost to us personally. Something that social skills training often does is reinforce autistic camouflaging (also referred to as autistic masking). This is where we hide our autism and try to act more ‘normally’ to avoid discrimination and to be accepted socially by others. Many outsiders won’t see issues with this, and will often actively encourage us to mask and camouflage, as they think that will improve our quality of life. However, what this assumption fails to consider is that what makes a lot of autistic people happy and enhances our well-being is often different from non-autistic people.
Even if we try to mask ourselves into being ‘normal’ and truly believe this will be a source of happiness, sooner or later it will take its toll and catch up with us (Trust me I’ve been there!). It can actually contribute to serious mental health issues and distress in the long term. So ‘social skills training’ that focuses on us communicating more ‘normally’ can create a very dangerous path.
Social skills training at first may produce superficial results, especially if the training reinforces masking for the autistic person. Outsiders will see us communicate more like them and consider the job done. They either don’t realise or choose to ignore the price autistic people pay for that. So although at the end of the ‘training’ we may appear to tick all the neurotypical boxes, you may want to check in 10, 15 or even 20 years later down the line to see or understand the impact masking has on us in the long term.
I also believe that pressuring an autistic person to interact in a neurotypical way can make us feel we have to say yes to everyone and become chronic people pleasers. People pleasers to the point where we won’t say no to others, even if it leads us to being taken advantage of or puts us into an extremely vulnerable position. We’re told we must follow a script and that we can’t trust our own intuition when it comes to social interactions. It discourages us from developing the ability to advocate for ourselves. There are many ways which autistic people have this experience, but social skills training embedded in neurotypical norms will only amplify these issues for us in the actual real world.
So my final thoughts? Social skills training sets up autistic people to fail. Some of us will want to understand the differences with how non-autistic people communicate. But being pressured into communicating in a way that is not natural for us is not okay. Yes some autistic people will seek to act more neurotypical and may want social skills training (or similar). Often this motivation comes from a place of avoiding discrimination, seeking friendships or just trying to hold down a job. As often we learn that we can’t have these things unless we become something else. Stigma is still rife and ultimately plays a big role in the demand for social skills training. However, the most ableist form of social skills training is when it is forced on the autistic person when they do not want or seek it.
In an ideal world, social skills training in it’s most common form wouldn’t exist. However, the demand for social skills training will not disappear until autistic ways of being are more widely accepted in our society. If we try to force this type of change on autistic people, then harmful actions will more than likely occur!
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References:
Crompton, C.J., DeBrabander, K., Heasman, B., Milton, D. and Sasson, N.J. (2021). Double Empathy: Why Autistic People Are Often Misunderstood. Frontiers for Young Minds, 9. doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/frym.2021.554875.
Crompton, C.J., Ropar, D., Evans-Williams, C.V., Flynn, E.G. and Fletcher-Watson, S. (2020). Autistic peer-to-peer information transfer is highly effective. Autism, 24(7), pp.1704–1712. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320919286.
Milton, D. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), pp.883–887. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008.
Rachanska, P.E. (2025). The Double Empathy Problem: An Exploration of Trans-Neurotype Attitudes on Autistic–Non-Autistic Social Interactions and Communication. Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s41252-024-00435-9.
Further reading:
https://www.autisticslt.com/ableism-socialskills
