How Autistic Adults Can Practice Social Skills Without Masking
Laura Lamantia, BCBA, Founder of Chatterfly Social Skills App
Building skills without losing yourself
Learning social skills does not mean giving up your natural communication style, interests, or identity. The goal is not to become someone else. The goal is to feel more comfortable navigating everyday interactions in a way that works for you.
When practice is flexible and supportive, social skills stop feeling like a performance and start feeling like a practical tool you can rely on.
If you are looking for a way to practice conversations that is private, repeatable, and judgment-free, the Chatterfly Social Skills App was designed with this exact need in mind.
It offers a supportive space to build real conversational confidence without pressure to mask.
Why traditional social skills practice often leads to masking
Social skills for autistic adults have historically been taught in ways that feel uncomfortable, exhausting, or inauthentic.
Outdated approaches include memorizing exact phrases or forcing facial expressions or tone that feel untrue to oneself. While these strategies may help someone get through a conversation, they often increase anxiety and exhaustion over time and don’t lead to the formation of authentic social connections.
What social skills actually are
Social skills are not about performing or acting. At their core, they involve understanding how conversations tend to flow, feeling prepared to navigate common social situations, and knowing how to respond when things do not go as planned.
These are learnable skills. They are not personality traits, and they do not require masking. With the right kind of practice, it is possible to build confidence and flexibility while staying true to yourself.
What practice looks like without masking
Supportive practice feels different from performance. It tends to include low pressure, repetition, realistic variation, and a sense of control. This is the kind of practice that supports learning without asking someone to suppress or override how they naturally communicate.
Breaking skills down into specific steps can help you stay focused and gradually build a range of strategies you can use in different situations. This might include practicing how to start conversations, how to share information about oneself, ways to express interest in others, or how to suggest plans or a date. Such skills can be generalized to a variety of situations and — the best part — you can put them to use with your own personal style instead of within the confines of rigid “social rules”.
This approach is the reason tools like the Chatterfly Social Skills App exist. Practicing socially can feel overwhelming when confidence is low. Instead of putting people on the spot, Chatterfly allows conversations to be practiced privately, with flexibility and repetition built in, so skills can develop without pressure to perform.
