Everyone should try to improve their social skills but not just because they need to meet their unmet childhood needs. A lot of people struggle with social skills but I feel like their questions are usually more focused on trying to get other people to like them even if they don’t really like the other person much. I see so many people trying to negotiate with toxic people and try to force a healthy relationship when it was never going to work.
People will give advice on how to appear more friendly like smile more or try to approach more people but a lot of the advice assumes the other person isn’t just trying to cope with childhood trauma in an unhealthy way. It’s important to understand why you want to improve your social skills. If you don’t understand yourself well enough, you will be repeatedly traumatized by other people until you realize the problem.
I had childhood trauma and I had a lot of unmet needs like not being loved or heard by my parents. I wanted to improve my social skills because my life was empty and I thought it’s empty because I don’t have any friends like others. But my problem was my true motivation for improving my social skills was to get other people to like me so that I could use them to meet my unmet childhood needs. I wanted friends who would be able to listen to me when I was struggling with life and understand the trauma I went through and I would be willing to do anything for them because I knew how hard it was being lonely.
When I researched how to improve my social skills, I would get advice on how to be more funny and how to be more outgoing. I would apply these skills and it seemed like I was able to make more friends. My life seemed to be improving because I was finally in a friend group and people seemed interested in me for once. If I posted a success story back then everyone would think I was successful without realizing that I was actually setting myself up for failure.
I ended up failing because I would always end up in one sided relationships where people were using me or treating me poorly. I felt like this was my problem to fix but I failed to identify the right problem. I thought the problem was people didn’t like me because I wasn’t good enough like my parents said so I needed to improve my social skills and become more likeable by people pleasing even more. The true problem was other people didn’t respect me or care about me because I was attracting narcissistic or emotionally distant people like my parents and I was applying my new social skills knowledge on the wrong people. I was learning about healthy relationships and I thought I could force a connection by giving more and being more high value.
What I was really looking for was a therapist instead of a friend to listen to me and validate me. I didn’t enjoy the process of socializing because I really just wanted someone to give me love and I was only improving my social skills to get someone to love me. If you have unmet needs, you should understand why you want to have more friends instead of blindly following advice on the internet like be more outgoing or smile more.