10 Social Skills Activities to Do With Your Clients in Counseling

Social skills are a vital life skill that can significantly impair a client’s work performance, interpersonal relationships, and overall emotional well-being. Social Skills Training (SST) is an evidence-based treatment that can be used to treat schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses. SST can be used to enhance a client’s interpersonal skills and help them acclimate to their community. Treatment can include individual and group therapy sessions. Keep reading to learn 10 social skills activities you can do with your clients in counseling sessions.

Social skills activities should not be confused with SST. Social skills activities can be helpful for clients who are experiencing a range of mental health and interpersonal difficulties. This can include mental health disorders like generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, ADHD, and bipolar disorder. It can also be impactful for those who do not meet DSM-5 criteria for a mental health disorder, but still experience difficulties in social situations.

Depending on your clinical setting, you may incorporate social skills activities for kids or adults. There will be noticeable differences in the activities you use for children and adults due to differences in development, daily routines, and mental health histories. Children may experience difficulties with social skills in school or at home with their caregivers. Adults may notice the impact at work, within interpersonal relationships, and in social settings.

You can use a variety of assessments to explore your client’s social functioning. For children, these assessments may include the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS), the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS-2), and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Assessments that you can use for adults include the Social Functioning Questionnaire (SFQ), Social Adjustment Scale (SAS-SR), and the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). The information you receive from your evaluation can be used to create a personalized treatment plan incorporating social skills activities. 

How Social Skills Activities Can Help Your Clients 

Social skills activities can highlight various skills that can improve your clients’ social functioning. These activities can help your client learn and implement effective listening and communication skills, thereby improving their social functioning. You may introduce emotion regulation skills that can be used when clients are in challenging social situations.

You can use social skills activities in both individual and group settings. Group sessions that incorporate social skills can help improve collaboration skills, communication patterns, and reduce anxiety in social settings. Social skills activities can be either fluid or structured interventions. Therapeutic worksheets are an example of how you can incorporate social skills activities while promoting session engagement.

TherapyByPro is a professional resource that offers a variety of clinical assessments, documents, and worksheets. Examples of worksheets that mental health professionals use for social skills activities include:

• Social Skills Worksheet Bundle
• Social Skills Worksheet for Self-Esteem
• Setting Boundaries with Your Boss Script
• 100 Social Skills Questions Worksheet  

Social Skills Activities for Your Clients

As you read our list of social skills activities for adults and children, we encourage you to consider how you can customize these activities to suit your clients. Continue reading for examples of commonly used social skills activities.

1. Role-playing exercises can be used in individual and group settings, with children or adults. These activities can target specific symptoms or difficulties in social settings, like social anxiety and depression. With this social skill activity, you can provide your client with a prompt related to their problems and encourage them to practice greetings, small talk, assertive communication, and other appropriate skills. Role playing allows you to provide feedback about the language they use and their body language.
2. Clients who struggle with ADHD, interpersonal difficulties, and anxiety may benefit from active listening activities. This can be done in pairs in a group setting or in an individual session. With this activity, one person will talk for two minutes while the other listens. At the end of the two minutes, the person listening will summarize what was said without adding their opinion or advice. When you process this activity, you can provide feedback about the body language and other social cues that were observed.
3. Group storytelling is a group activity that can be used with clients who experience social withdrawal and discomfort speaking in group settings. To begin, you will provide the group with a prompt. The person next to you will add a sentence to the story, with the following person adding another, and so on. This activity promotes collaboration and the use of active listening skills, and can be lighthearted.
4. Clients who struggle with social anxiety and ADHD may experience difficulties maintaining eye contact. For these cases, you can use mirror practice to help your client practice maintaining eye contact while speaking. You can begin with a short duration, and gradually increase the length of time. You can have your client practice using social skills, such as assertiveness, while speaking to themselves in a mirror.
5. Journaling is a valuable intervention for many mental health difficulties. Clients who struggle with depression and isolation may benefit from writing down conversations or greetings during the day that went well and those that were difficult. This can then be reviewed in a session and explore what could be done differently.
6. Another option for role-playing exercises is to record the activity so that you can review your client’s body language and communication skills. Being able to see themselves in a role-playing activity can help your client gain a new perspective on their social skills. You can draw attention to their eye contact, leg and arm movements, and flow of speech. Together, you and your client can explore what could be done differently to improve their social skills.
7. “I” statements are an example of a specific communication pattern that can improve your clients’ ability to communicate their thoughts and emotions. This can be particularly helpful for clients who struggle with conflict resolution and anger management. For this social skill activity, you can encourage your client to reframe statements that are unclear or place blame in the wrong context. You can review situations in which this skill could be helpful.
8. Children who are living with autism or ADHD may have difficulties picking up on social cues that indicate how others feel. To help improve their recognition skills, you can use emotional flashcards that display common facial expressions associated with various emotions. This can help clients recognize body language cues and explore how they would respond to different emotions.
9. You can use coping skills flashcards to introduce coping skills that can be used with emotions like stress, worry, and panic. You can create cue cards related to your clients’ triggers and make notes of calming techniques that can be used when they feel these emotions, as well as after. This social anxiety activity can be used with children, adolescents, and adults.
10. Strengths-based activities can be helpful for clients who find that low self-esteem, anxiety, or depressive symptoms contribute to social challenges. For this activity, you can ask your client to write a list of strengths that they can bring to a conversation or interpersonal relationships. This can help them gain a new perspective on their experiences and begin to challenge unhealthy thoughts or beliefs about what they have to offer others. 

Final Thoughts On Choosing The Right Social Skills Activities for your Clients

Thanks or reading our resource on 10 social skills activities to do with your clients in therapy sessions. Social skills can be a key focus of therapy sessions, helping clients enhance their ability to connect with others and the world around them. Whether through role-playing, real-life simulations, or other activities, you can help your client build their confidence surrounding social situations.

By tailoring your social skill activities to your clients’ age, mental health concerns, and personal goals, you can create a supportive environment focused on their individual growth. Over time, this can increase their confidence and decrease the difficulties they experience in social situations. If you would like to learn more about incorporating social skills activities into your clinical work, review available training and continuing education opportunities within your niche.

View all of our social skills worksheets

Resources:

• VISN 5 MIRECC – VA Social Skills Training for Serious Mental Illness (SST) Training Program. U.S. Health Department of Veterans Affairs. (2009, November 16). https://www.mirecc.va.gov/visn5/training/social_skills.asp