You don’t. And you’re also steering the focus away from someone who probably just wants to be heard.
A couple were sitting together outside after the woman had just lost her father and I overheard the man telling his story about how his father and two siblings had died in a car accident when he was younger. You could hear in his voice he was trying to let her realize she wasn’t alone, he could understand how she felt. But, when he was finished with his story the woman snapped and said “Okay, David, you win! You had it worse! I guess I shouldn’t be so upset that my dad just died then!”
The man was stunned and mortified. “No, no, no,” he said, “that’s not what I’m saying at all. I just meant I know how you feel.”
And she answered, “No, David, you don’t. You have no idea how I feel.”
The woman walked away and the man stood there then walked past me and said “ I just wanted to help and I made it worse.”
I got a chance to talk to both of them a couple weeks later.
When the woman began to share her raw emotions, he felt uncomfortable so he defaulted to a subject with which he was comfortable: himself.
The woman wanted to talk about her father, to tell him about the kind of man he was. She wanted to share her cherished memories. Instead, he asked her to listen to his story.
From that day forward, I started to notice how often I responded to stories of loss and struggle with stories of my own experiences. My kids would tell me about clashing with a kid in school and I would talk about a girl I fell out with in college.
When a coworker got laid off, I told her about how much I struggled to find a job after I had been laid off years earlier.
But when I began to pay more attention, I realized the effect of sharing my experiences was never as I intended. What all of these people needed was for me to hear them and acknowledge what they were going through. Instead, I forced them to listen to me.
This is described as conversational narcissism.
Often subtle and unconscious, it’s the desire to take over a conversation, to do most of the talking, and to turn the focus of the exchange to yourself.
There are two kinds of responses in conversations: a shift response and a support response.
The first shifts attention back to yourself, and the second supports the other person’s comment.
Example number 1:
The shift response
Mary: I’m so busy right now.
Tim: Me, too. I’m totally overwhelmed.
The support response
Mary: I’m so busy right now.
Tim: Why? What do you have to get done?
Example number 2:
The shift response
Karen: I need new shoes.
Mark: Me, too. These things are falling apart.
The support response
Karen: I need new shoes.
Mark: Oh yeah? What kind are you thinking about?
Shift responses are a hallmark of conversational narcissism — they help you turn the focus constantly back to yourself. But a support response encourages the other person to continue their story. It lets them know you’re listening and interested in hearing more.
The game of catch is often used as a metaphor for conversation. In an actual game of catch, you’re forced to take turns. But in conversation, we often find ways to resist giving someone else a turn. Sometimes, we use passive means to subtly grab control of the exchange.
This tug-of-war over attention is not always easy to track. We can very craftily disguise our attempts to shift focus. We might start a sentence with a supportive comment, and then follow up with a comment about ourselves. For instance, if a friend tells us they just got a promotion, we might respond by saying, “That’s great! Congratulations. I’m going to ask my boss for a promotion, too. I hope I get it.”
Such a response could be fine, as long as we allow the focus to shift back to the other person again. However, the healthy balance is lost when we repeatedly shine the attention back on ourselves.
While reciprocity is an important part of any meaningful conversation, the truth is shifting the attention to our own experiences is completely natural. Modern humans are hardwired to talk about themselves more than any other topic.
Recently, I had a long conversation with a friend who was going through a divorce. We spent almost 40 minutes on the phone, and I barely said a word.
At the end of our call, she said, “Thank you for your advice. You’ve really helped me work some things out.”
The truth is, I hadn’t offered any advice. Most of what I said was a version of “That sounds tough. I’m sorry this is happening to you.”
She didn’t need advice or stories from me. She just needed to be heard.
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