I have the same problem with interrupting due to social anxiety - glad I'm not the only one. Like when I start talking at the same time as someone else I often just keep talking cos I feel awkward and I'm not sure what to do. Or I have a thought and feel I have to get it out there or I'll miss my chance and I don't often have thoughts I feel confident enough actually mentioning so I don't want to miss my chance. But with academic stuff I'm always quiet and it frustrates the hell out of me that I don't have the confidence to speak up in meetings or at conferences. I'm working on both. Good luck with yours :)
I put myself in Entertainment Mode, so I'm sort of doing the equivalent of jazz hands and a soft shoe. If other people are my audience, then what they're saying is incidental! I should work harder to entertain! It's hard for me to become comfortable enough with people that I don't have that feeling around them.
Academic situations are mostly me looking for validation, so I blurt my ideas out. Basically my life is one long blurt, heh. I'm sort of hashing the thing out in these comments, which has actually proven really helpful. Good luck with yours, as well. :D
If other people are my audience, then what they're saying is incidental! I should work harder to entertain!
My best friend does exactly that! Goodness, I've never put my finger on it before but it's exactly that. It's fine when it's one-on-one, but when there are more people around I can see her sort of manically going, "Must be entertaining! Is job to be entertaining! People only tolerate me if am entertaining!" I sort of want to shake her and go, "Stop telling funny stories! We came to see you, not The Deb Show!" And I know that it leaves her feeling a bit shit afterwards too, but I don't know how to gently suggest that she doesn't do it without making it sound like a big, "you talk too much" thing. Hmm.
I do it a bit too - which is how I recognise it - but usually only with people I genuinely don't care about. So it's more to entertain myself because they're boring me, which is ever-so-much-more-awful-sounding now I think about it.
"Must be entertaining! Is job to be entertaining! People only tolerate me if am entertaining!" OH GOD. It does sound like we're very similar in that respect. Maybe get her into a conversation about social anxiety? If I told someone that I get very nervous and scared by social events, and the person remarked that "I noticed that, sometimes it's a little sad, because we like you, not Performance You," I think I would be able to take it in without feeling like I'd been chastised. One of those properly-dealt corrective compliments would work for me, I mean.
Oh, but occasionally there are inherently rather boring people (or at least inherently boring to you, as it were), and the only thing to do is tell rather wicked stories. Otherwise you'll want to drown yourself in your coffee mug.
I have the same problem too - I can never calibrate myself properly, so my natural state is either deadly-silent or talking-over-people. I think I've become better at arriving at a middle ground over the last year or so, but I frequently lapse into one or the other. Meh. Other humans and their expectations are difficult.
Human interaction: so hard! I'm kind of weirdly pleased that there's someone else out there with the same problem, in re: too much or too little. It makes me feel an odd duck a lot of the time. I'm either jazz-hands entertaining the crowd or the dull girl in the corner with her novel. Fiddlesticks.
I think I tend to talk over people because if I don't say what I'm thinking when I think it, I will probably forget what it was I was going to say. That and I come from a long line of loud women.
I am just really a high-speed full-impact person, particularly because it keeps me from getting nervous and sullen at social engagements. (That is, that's why I developed the strategy of full-frontal blithering in the first place.) I mean, there's lots of good reasons for me to do it -- or they're good reasons in my head -- and it's not like I want to silence myself completely, but. Well, but I don't like the idea that I'm yelping over other people and their contributions. Not so good a thing!
Loud women are my favorite, though. I like you and your line. :D
God, I get that "are you feeling well?" bullshit ALL THE TIME when I try to quiet down a bit. NO, ASSWIPE, I JUST MANAGED TO SHUT MY FUCKING TRAP FOR 30 SECONDS. I KNOW IT IS UNUSUAL. IT DOES NOT MEAN I AM SICK. STOP FREAKING OUT. FUCK.
I interrupt people a lot too, but I've gotten into the habit of noticing when I do it and inviting the speaker to continue, either with a simple "You were saying?", or adding a self-deprecating bit à la "oh, my, how I do go on." It's much easier than training myself not to interrupt people at all, and I think it generally restores whatever goodwill I lost with the original interruption. If I am wrong about this please do not correct me.
You probably know this, but there are lots of studies of the gendered nature of interruptions in conversation. Here is an overview on Google Books! You probably interrupt people WAY WAY WAY less than most men do, but of course you're socialized to feel all kinds of anxiety about it. PATRIARCHY SUCKS AMIRITE.
OH MY GOD I'M JUST TRYING TO BE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING IT DOES NOT MEAN I HAVE THE CANCER. AUGH. I THOUGHT YOU WANTED ME TO BE A GOOD LITTLE MONKEY. STOP SQUINTING AT ME.
I try to do what you do, but I'm terrible at it, because quite frequently I don't even noticed that I've interrupted! I'm just blithering on, and the quiet person (inevitably a lady whom I have just trampled on so very patriarchally I IS BECOME WHAT I DESPISES) is sitting there going "fuck do I just not matter woe fuck misery" and I am all "TRA LA LA MY THOUGHTS I WILL SHARE THEM IN ORDER TO FEEL LIKE LESS OF A SOCIAL OUTCAST." My defense against being a creepy loner loser: backfires!
That is a good point about the gendered nature of interruption, though, especially as regards T, who tends to get especially huffy when I interrupt his Very Important Proclamations. (PS Hey did you know dating men as a ladyperson with ladybits has its own very special realm of weird issues? GOSH.)
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Academic situations are mostly me looking for validation, so I blurt my ideas out. Basically my life is one long blurt, heh. I'm sort of hashing the thing out in these comments, which has actually proven really helpful. Good luck with yours, as well. :D
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My best friend does exactly that! Goodness, I've never put my finger on it before but it's exactly that. It's fine when it's one-on-one, but when there are more people around I can see her sort of manically going, "Must be entertaining! Is job to be entertaining! People only tolerate me if am entertaining!" I sort of want to shake her and go, "Stop telling funny stories! We came to see you, not The Deb Show!" And I know that it leaves her feeling a bit shit afterwards too, but I don't know how to gently suggest that she doesn't do it without making it sound like a big, "you talk too much" thing. Hmm.
I do it a bit too - which is how I recognise it - but usually only with people I genuinely don't care about. So it's more to entertain myself because they're boring me, which is ever-so-much-more-awful-sounding now I think about it.
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OH GOD. It does sound like we're very similar in that respect. Maybe get her into a conversation about social anxiety? If I told someone that I get very nervous and scared by social events, and the person remarked that "I noticed that, sometimes it's a little sad, because we like you, not Performance You," I think I would be able to take it in without feeling like I'd been chastised. One of those properly-dealt corrective compliments would work for me, I mean.
Oh, but occasionally there are inherently rather boring people (or at least inherently boring to you, as it were), and the only thing to do is tell rather wicked stories. Otherwise you'll want to drown yourself in your coffee mug.
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Loud women are my favorite, though. I like you and your line. :D
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I interrupt people a lot too, but I've gotten into the habit of noticing when I do it and inviting the speaker to continue, either with a simple "You were saying?", or adding a self-deprecating bit à la "oh, my, how I do go on." It's much easier than training myself not to interrupt people at all, and I think it generally restores whatever goodwill I lost with the original interruption. If I am wrong about this please do not correct me.
You probably know this, but there are lots of studies of the gendered nature of interruptions in conversation. Here is an overview on Google Books! You probably interrupt people WAY WAY WAY less than most men do, but of course you're socialized to feel all kinds of anxiety about it. PATRIARCHY SUCKS AMIRITE.
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I try to do what you do, but I'm terrible at it, because quite frequently I don't even noticed that I've interrupted! I'm just blithering on, and the quiet person (inevitably a lady whom I have just trampled on so very patriarchally I IS BECOME WHAT I DESPISES) is sitting there going "fuck do I just not matter woe fuck misery" and I am all "TRA LA LA MY THOUGHTS I WILL SHARE THEM IN ORDER TO FEEL LIKE LESS OF A SOCIAL OUTCAST." My defense against being a creepy loner loser: backfires!
That is a good point about the gendered nature of interruption, though, especially as regards T, who tends to get especially huffy when I interrupt his Very Important Proclamations. (PS Hey did you know dating men as a ladyperson with ladybits has its own very special realm of weird issues? GOSH.)
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