adhd - ADHD treatment is a systems, multi-faceted process for the whole family

For many children and adults, social behavior problems are not due to an actual lack of social skills, but to social anxiety. We are all a bit anxious in social situations. That is why food and alcohol are so often part of social gatherings. They reduce anxiety.

If you look across the lives of people who struggle in social situations, there are often places where they demonstrate very good social skills. However, there are also places where they do poorly.

Many children will interact very appropriately with adults, but do poorly with their peers. Adults will often be very social and articulate with same-sex friends or at work. However, when they come home they become withdrawn and socially inappropriate.

The point is that if people demonstrate appropriate social skills in one place in their life, but not in another, they clearly have the skills, but these skills are being emotionally inhibited in some situations. In such cases, there is little point in teaching social skills and communication skills that they already have. It is efficient and effective is to erase the emotional blocks that inhibit access to the social skills in particular situations. WebCAER is designed to do just that.

It is often useful to use a digital camera to take pictures of people, places and things that are characteristic of the situations where there are difficulties with social skills. This might be a picture of a boss, a party or giving a speech.

Put these images on the screen between the lights. Use them to help conjure the negative feelings from the situation they represent. Follow those feelings back across your life to all the prior times you've had similar feelings. Spend a few moments at each point to soak into those feelings so that WebCAER can wash them out.

You can use a similar procedure with digital audio recordings. You might make recordings of the upsetting things teachers, parents, bosses, coworkers, spouses etc. say. Playing these while you watch the lights will help you conjure the feelings that you need to extinguish to be more effective socially. (How create these pictures and recordings are described in the "WebCAER Creating Sound and Image files" article.)

Once the negative feelings are washed away from the socially difficult situations, social performance usually improves dramatically, without any social skills training.