[tj-teej]

I would encourage you to find a mentor who understands you. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how many engineers identify with the story you told.

I think it's harder to "pick-up" the skills by reading generic, broad advice in the form of blogs, books, and more effective to find a person you can trust, who can give you advice on how to handle real situations you're going through.

You'll be happier/more effective in the short term (as the mentor will guide you through these interactions), and you'll see the patterns of how to deal with these situations over the long term (picking up the skills).

You'll pick up the skills faster than you think! Good luck! :)

[meesterdude]

To that, this is a service I offer: improving the socialbility and softskills of developers and teams.

There's some decent advice in this thread. And no matter what you do it'll take work and change. But if anyone wants to improve on their softskills, i'd be happy to work with you! [e-mail]