I’m very introverted and pretty socially awkward. Throughout my life, I’ve constantly been interrupted. There are times I’ve either talked louder, talked to another person, or just shut up entirely. Reading through reddit has made me realize that it’s not just me that this happens to, which does make me feel better (albeit a bit selfish, lol).
There’s loads of threads on here where people have answered how to deal with this. That’s not really the intention of my post. My post is concerned with *why* do people interrupt others? There are only small occasions where I will interrupt and it’s always for clarification from the person speaking (and only then, it’s very important if I’m interrupting). Others interrupt or even change the whole conversation so that when I finally am “allowed” to speak and begin talking about the subject we were discussing prior to my interruption, someone almost always says “we were talking about that ages ago”.
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Thoughts?
2 comments
During a lull, I will usually say, Hey I wanted to touch on this past topic but didn’t get a chance, and then say my piece, or ask my question. I have very rarely had someone get shitty about it, but when they do I usually fire back with some sarcasm.
“We already talked about that ages ago.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize if *you* had nothing else to say about it then there was nothing else to be said! How fantastic for you! So anyway back to coconuts, IDK about European swallows or whatever, but coconuts have hair and produce milk, thus making them a mammal. Anyone who is not Steve, who has clearly already said everything he knows about coconuts, care to discuss?”
Some people do it to feel self important, or think their story is more important, some are just thoughtless, some just really have to make sure the silence is being filled at all times. Maybe some hated the topic and just don’t want to go back to it. I don’t think there’s a singular reason why people interrupt each-other.
Most people aren’t listening and don’t care. They just want to express themselves, and even if they did stop to hear what you had to say, they’d likely very quickly dump it out of their memory to then talk about something else more interesting to them. They are the main character of their own story, everyone else are NPC’s.
Now the one that really gets me, is people answering what THEY decided you asked, and not what you asked. Or twist it in such a way to act like you were asking something stupid, etc. Especially in the workplace. God I love calling them out, I get goosebumps just thinking about making Ethan look like a moron because he couldn’t even comprehend my very simple question in the first place. Ooh tingles!
Basic counseling theory realizes that when children experience trauma, anything from a skinned knee up to the unimaginable, the way that they heal from it is from crying or laughing and being listened to them tell the story of what happened to them over and over until they don’t need to anymore.
Unfortunately, in our crazy world, this almost never happens. Partially because no one has ever listened to their parents, about their hurts and traumas.
So everyone is trying to get everyone else to just listen to them about how they were hurt.
This would work, if they would only take turns