The Causes of Poor Social Skills

Poor social skills can cause a problem, especially where we live in an environment where communication will always be there. We can call our loved ones a hundred miles away with a press of a button. You can even chat with your boss outside office hours. That’s why social skills is really necessary in our age. But what causes poor social skills?

The causes of poor social skills are lack of experience in social interactions, environmental factors that causes isolation, anxiety, depression, and past failures or trauma. These are the causes of poor social skills that need to be taken note of and improve with good habits.

Now, we have to address and expand in detail the causes of poor social skills Also, we have to know how to find out if you have bad social skills, and improve it. Also, why being an introvert is not the same as having a poor social skill.

What Causes Poor Social Skills?

Here are the causes of Poor Social Skills:

• The Lack of Experience in Social Interactions
• Environmental Factors that can lead to poor social skills
• Anxiety that can affect relationships
• Depression leading to staying away from social situations
• Past failures or trauma that affects the current social skills

We are going to discuss them one by one in detail so that you can understand them better.

1. The Lack of Experience in Social Interactions

The most common reason for poor social skills is the lack of experience itself. This can come from not being used to talking with other people.

This is common nowadays where we are just stuck in our homes without interacting with our neighbors and such.

People build their skills by using them. That’s why experience is very important for social situations. In fact, most people who are good with their social skills will always say that they just talked a lot with other people, and experience is what they using to be more social.

2. Environmental Factors that can affect social interactions

There are environment factors that can lead to poor social skills. Most of which is just the lack of place to talk with people. This can even recede the improvement of a child’s speaking skills.

Isolation means that you do not have any means to communicate with others.

Granted that you might be talking by using the internet to chat with people, it is completely different from talking to numerous people while outside. Emotions can be felt and not just by sending emojis.

3. Anxiety leading to poor social skills

Anxiety is a big problem. The feeling of uneasiness can affect conversations with people.

Even if you have good social skills, once you feel anxiety, it can lead to awkward situations simply because you can’t project confidence.

Another is people with anxiety mostly have a hard time sharing their thoughts, which makes interactions harder.

4. Depression leading to staying away from social situations

Depression can cause a person to completely get away from everything including people that support them.

This can lead to having poor social skills because some of them are avoiding people because they think their problems are really big and sharing might burden the other.

Some are even in denial of their depression which is a big issue nowadays.

It is best to check with a health professional because depression is not something to be taken likely, always seek professional advice and it will be worth it.

5. Past failures or trauma that affects the current social skills

How many times have I heard a happy person who likes to talk to people, and people like them lost all their social skills because of a trauma.

Such as when a teacher suddenly got angry at them, or a boss not appreciating their work.

Past failures or trauma can really affect a person’s life and it includes their social skills.

But let’s get to the next topic.

Now that you know the causes of poor social skills, it is time to assess yourself and to give tips on how to improve your social skills.

How do you know if you have bad social skills?

You can know if you have bad social skills if there are always awkward situations when you talk to others. Most people who you talk with will suddenly have something as an excuse to stay away from you. While others will be polite enough to not say it, some will be completely honest.

Some people who will be honest with you and care for you will definitely tell you if you need something to improve upon yourself.

They will tell you frankly and that is not to hurt you, but to tell you that you need improvement.

If you have people like that in your life, be thankful as they will be a good means for you to improve your relationship with others.

But if you are in another setting, you can know if you have bad social skills if people seem not interested or irritated in you. In some cases, it is because of the person.

But sometimes, especially if a lot of them share the same hate towards you, then you might be the problem.

Here are some common instances where you can show bad social skills

• Not letting the other person talk back
• You’ve always talking about yourself
• Does not show interest in their life
• Looking at your phone while in conversation

Here is an article showing the types of poor social skills. It is complete and tackles all of the examples of poor social skills. Here is the article: What are Bad Social Skills?

Remember that self-assessment and acceptance is necessary in fixing bad social skills, so it is recommended to view that article.

How do you improve your social skills?

The first thing to do to improve bad social skills is to properly accept that you might have a problem. This will make you more reasonable to accept it, and learn how to be better in social situations. By doing this, you can start building empathy which is the most important skill to build good social skills.

Empathy is getting yourself into what the others are feeling. It is to understand what they are feeling and putting yourself in their shoes.

You will not be very good in empathy when starting to improve your social skills, but it is a continuous improvement process.

Empathy is the key to solving poor social skills. It is not necessary to memorize a series of steps to follow just to fix social skills.

This is because in improving, we can only follow a certain amount of rules in our head.

Instead of a lot, if we can simplify everything, the better the outcome.

So here is the ultimate solution: be empathic by always asking yourself. What does the other person feel.

Why are they sharing these things with me, do they want me to comfort them? Why are they enthusiastic while telling these things, do they want me to support them?

Building empathy is important and that is the ultimate key so good social skills.

However, you might need some more pointers, so here is a video which will give you more insights on how to improve your social skills.

To unlock your capabilities in social skills, I recommend the article for “How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary.“

Why being an Introvert is not the same as having a Poor Social Skill

Before the end of this article, let me get this straight. Poor social skills is not the same as being an introvert. An introverted person has a lot of skills that can flourish.

While social skills are necessary, introvert does not mean that they have poor social skills.

Let me give you an example, YouTuber Pewdiepie is an introvert. But look how he communicates with other people while on video. He is good at being friendly to others. But he accepts that he is an introvert.

He is an introvert, but he is also good at social interactions. Granted that there are times that he is shy to others because he is an introvert, he really knows how to talk with people.

So do not blame being an introvert that you can’t be good socially, It is never the case. Introverts are actually very good in camera, like Pewdiepie, and in writing, that’s why you can see this article. I am an introvert by nature.

I also get shy when meeting someone the first time, but I learned how to deal with people.

Here are tips that I can give to you, one is to know what are your capabilities as an introvert. I recommend a video I made on my book review for Quiet.