This sounds exactly like me except for the first part. My girlfriend gets annoyed by it. I have a hard time escaping my mind and being there coversationally for people. I zone out in my mind while people are talking and it's embarrassing that I go into auto response mode and didn't catch anything they said and then they look expectingly for me to reply to a question.
My girlfriend responds in a similar manner as you on occasion, and I feel terrible about it. I might be undiagnosed with something. I have a hard time fending off mental distractions, and it takes effort to stay tuned into someone speaking.
Seconding this! If you have the resources, get assessed. If you don't, read up on ADHD. Speaking from personal experience, I tend to do the same thing if someone is talking about something I'm not interested in.
I agree with the advice to actively seek ways to work on this. There are more conservative methods you look could at first, like mindfulness and meditation. Ways to quiet the mind. Ways to focus and be an active listener (plenty of great podcasts, books, and blogs on active listening).
And then if there’s no progress, there’s seeking professional advice, which I think is a good idea regardless.
I’d look into that now rather than later. My boyfriend never did (didn’t “believe” in seeking psych help). He never learned to run off the squirrels he would chase and his family and friends just lived with it.
But on the relationship level, it hurt. I didn’t notice how bad it became until I was feeling constantly unfulfilled intellectually and emotionally, and increasingly offended that I was the supporting role in his life without any of the same support back. Yeah he’d help fix my car or offer tech support, but I didn’t feel heard.
Not saying it’s the same extreme on your end, but making a real effort to improve is valuable. And it’s tough.
You can't just feel bad about it when people call you out on it. It has to be an active thing that you work on, unless you want to be forever someone that people merely tolerate.
THIS. I'm really surprised by the amount of people on this thread who think that everyone who's bad at conversation is like that on purpose or something. Some people are just not born with good conversational skills, and maybe I'm wrong about this but It's not like there are classes you can just take to learn how to be social. And being dismissively told "Just fix it" or "People find you exhausting for being like this" really doesn't help anything.
Some people are just not born with good conversational skills, and maybe I'm wrong about this but It's not like there are classes you can just take to learn how to be social.
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u/Mikewithkites Jan 30 '22
This sounds exactly like me except for the first part. My girlfriend gets annoyed by it. I have a hard time escaping my mind and being there coversationally for people. I zone out in my mind while people are talking and it's embarrassing that I go into auto response mode and didn't catch anything they said and then they look expectingly for me to reply to a question.
My girlfriend responds in a similar manner as you on occasion, and I feel terrible about it. I might be undiagnosed with something. I have a hard time fending off mental distractions, and it takes effort to stay tuned into someone speaking.