biting my tongue when I want to interject a comment…waiting patiently for the other person to finish their thoughts…saying “remind me to tell you about…when your finished”. 2 years ago

2010…the year i become a better listener…the year i wait for the other person to stop talking before i talk. i want to be a respectful and interested listener. 3 years ago

I have a terrible habit of interrupting in a conversation, whether it be a one to one or a group..I have been made aware of this and I now make an effort NOT to interrupt and when I open my mouth now when someone else is talking, then I shut up and wait…the problem is.. by the time a gap in the conversation arises for me to speak, the conversational subject has moved on , and what I originally wanted to say has no longer got any relevance , so…I don’t bother! so I have got to a stage where I just can’t seem to join in a conversation!...i really need help with this because it’s obviously a skill that I don’t have…may I just say that i AM a sociable person and people DO seem to like me and I am fairly popular with everyone in my social circles ! 3 years ago

This habit is very difficult to break and since challenges are either done or failed on here, I’m going with done. I have been interrupting less, so some progress has been made. I need to keep working to reduce it even more, but at least I’m moving in the right direction. 4 years ago

I dominate conversation. All the time. Someone gets mad at me for doing it, then I stop for about a week or 2. Then I do it again. I interrupt. I dominate. I talk too fast. Too much. I cannot have gaps. I do not know why. I do not know if I need to know why. I just have to stop doing it. It is causing me relationship problems.

I need to stop it. But I also need my family to understand that it is not directed AT them. It’s the way I am, I am trying to change it, but it is not because I do not care about them or their thoughts or feelings. 5 years ago

i think kiska79 hit the nail on the head…fear of losing my thought. maybe it’s just me, but i seem to have a very short memory spane, so if i don’t say it as it comes to me, i’m afraid i will forget. worse part is, sometimes it’s not anything related to what the other person is saying, it could be a random thought. my boyfriend is really starting to see this as a problem, as he feels that i’m always “talking over him” or trying to take over the coversation and worse, feels he is not being heard, and that’s not the case. i think interrupting and listening go hand in hand. good listeners don’t interrupt, they allow the person to be heard, and i think that’s they key point, not to interrupt and let the person be heard…but what happens to all the thoughts brewing in my head during the conversation??? 5 years ago

I tend to get excited and interrupt, but by doing that I know it means I’m assuming I know what the person’s going to say next. And even if I’m right it’s still not fair to rob them of their chance to say it in their way.

I want to make people feel like their heard and I think this is a start… 5 years ago

It has been brought to my attention that I need to shut up. Interrupting makes me look at my “speaking style” and review myself in conversation.

I need to relize that I am not the most important part of conversations.

I need to realize that people will be more impressed when I hang on their words…not cut them off to put my words in their ears.

What other people say is important. The world doesn’t need every detail I can muster…PENDANT. 6 years ago

like most americans i spend too much time at work. so i will solicit the help of my coworkers to try and get this bad habit under conrtol 6 years ago

I tend to have a lot of lively discussions and part of that was interrupting the other person to react immediately to what s/he said. This was obviously not very polite and also drove the other person into defense, usually resulting in them interrupting me to, making the discussion more aggressive. Not that I disliked that, but it was less productive.

So a couple of years ago I made the conscious decision not to interrupt other people. Not even if they interrupted me. So today if someone interrupts me, I immediately stop talking and listen to what they say.

This can be extremely annoying with someone who interrupts basically every of my sentences without even realizing it, since it makes it hard to ever get to the point I’m trying to make. Also a lot of my arguments get lost simply because the other person moves into another direction.

But in the end it all equals out. My discussion style changed. I used to have discussions where both sides threw arguments at each other, not really reacting to the opponents argument. Today I nail people by asking questions about what they just said. Most people do not have waterproof arguments, so pointing out the weaknesses in their arguments is a more efficient way to indicate that they should reevaluate their position.

It often results in a two-phased discussion. The first part is filled with the other person presenting his/her position and me just reacting to the arguments, hopefully resulting in the impression that I really thought about what was said and raised some concerns. And a second part, where I (now often uninterrupted) propose an alternative idea, ideally already formed so that the concerns from the first part of the discussion have been addressed.

In total the effectiveness of my discussions increased, since the fighting character had to step back. I also get better reactions, since people no longer feel that I try to run them over with a rhetoric steamroller. 6 years ago

Maybe it’s the lack of adult conversation. Maybe it’s feeling emphatic with the speaker. But whenever I get to talk to somebody (other than my family), I find myself breaking into their speech. I do it on the phone, I do it in person. I really don’t mean to be rude. It’s awful! Must…Stop…Interrupting. 7 years ago

especially Adam, cuz it seems like I interrupt him a lot. 7 years ago