Why Some People Talk Too Much

In an earlier post, I described ways of improving conversations with people who talk too much—from the perspective of the beleaguered listeners.

I received many comments from people who believed they were over-talkers. They were aware of their conversational dominance but felt unable to limit their talking. They sought guidance for conversing in a more balanced way.

This post changes the point of view and looks at managing over-talking from the perspective of people who talk too much. (If you want to assess how talkative you are at social gatherings, you can begin with the Talkaholic Scale.)

Over-talking often arises from social anxiety, which creates a troubling feedback loop. The more people talk, the more anxious they become about their social selves, and the more they talk. At that point, over-talking can feel like an uncontrollable habit. Many of us talk a lot from time to time, but habit creates problems because it reinforces itself and discourages self-awareness.

If you believe you habitually over-talk, consider the following.

Questioning Instead of Expounding

Ask open-ended questions to direct the conversation to other people while also using the questions to stop yourself from taking over the conversation. If someone is telling you about an interesting trip, redirect the response of jumping in with a travel story of your own.

Instead, respond with an open-ended question about the trip. People who ask questions are considered more appealing–by showing interest in others.

Monitoring Conversational Self-Talk

When feeling anxious, people may use conversation to think aloud. The result is a sharing of personal experience that comes across as an overwhelming stream of confession–usually with unnecessary detail. When coupled with an inability to pick up social cues that listeners have had enough, the self-talking can go unchecked.

If you feel you are over-sharing, tell yourself that taking turns is the defining structural feature of conversation. For every paragraph of self-talk you voice, stop and let others offer commentary. Give them their turns.

We are designed to talk–and to talk about ourselves. Up to 40 percent of a person’s speech is about oneself. Talking about oneself activates the brain's reward centers–so individual satisfaction often conflicts with allowing others to speak. It’s natural, then, to expend effort on balancing self-focus with the conversational needs of others.

Reading Conversational Cues

Socially appropriate talkers perceive when to interject and when to sit back and listen and are, therefore, more relaxed in conversation. Many over-talkers are less skilled at picking up social cues, exacerbating social anxiety.

One solution is to direct attention to reading conversational cues. When people want to talk while you’re talking, they will lean forward, look at you, move a hand as if they're going to speak, and begin trying to say something. When they grow restless with your talking, they look away–or down, fidget, repeatedly, check their phone, or even get up. When these responses occur, it’s time to stop talking.

Acknowledging One’s Anxiety During a Conversation

Stop and openly acknowledge your anxiety if you’re anxious in social settings and you hear yourself monologuing your thoughts. That acknowledgment pauses the monologue and allows you to show awareness of your over-talking, providing an opportunity for others to understand your concerns.

Accepting the Frustration of Unexpressed Thoughts

When my father wanted to interject at the dinner table, he would say, “Stop talking while I’m interrupting.” We understood he had something to say. His disarming combination of self-deprecation and assertiveness encouraged us to welcome his comments. If we can accomplish that, then our interruptions may not seem disruptive. But most of the time, we should be judicious about breaking in while someone else is talking.

Many of us experience not speaking our momentary insights during a conversation and then losing them from working memory. Although frustrating, it can be conversationally more appropriate to let someone else finish and risk losing our thought. Some over-talkers find this unbearable, so they interrupt. But the loss of one’s insightful comment should not be guarded against with such tenacity as to staunch the conversational flow of others.

It’s certainly satisfying to voice our insights, but if they go unspoken, that should be accepted as a natural consequence of conversation–and not dwelled upon later.

Directing Attention

People with attention deficits tend to move from one topic to another associationally instead of thematically. If your attention wanders and you feel overwhelmed or unable to focus, place your talking on pause. Then listen for overlap between comments from the other people. Each overlap is a theme, something in common among the participants. Work on identifying these themes. Add an overlapping comment rather than using a comment fragment as a springboard for associating your experience.

Communicating Instead of Expressing

Basic communication requires an idea, a medium of expression (for example, talking), and someone to receive the expressed idea. If conversation transforms into thinking out loud without considering the receivers' experience, it is no longer communication. It’s expression.

Sitting alone and expressing oneself by writing poetry, painting, or playing the piano can be creatively satisfying. But engaging in conversation isn’t poetry or art, or music. It’s a social act that requires consideration of others; if you find yourself expressing a lot and not communicating, close with a stock phrase (“That’s all I had to say”) and stop talking, breaking the overflow.

Asking for Help

For those who consider themselves over-talkers, invite a friend or two to help. Have them point out if you’re going on too long during a conversation or provide candid feedback afterward. Openness to critique will lead to more awareness of one’s over-sharing and more sensitivity to cues from listeners.

Relinquishing Control

Some professors mainly lecture because it’s easier to control the subjects and the time. The same goes with excessive talking in conversation: it maintains control. But conversations are not lectures, and even classroom interactions are more effective when they move toward the conversational. Stepping back from center stage and letting others take the lead can encourage relaxation and decrease anxiety.

Staying Centered

Digressions may work in written essays but rarely in spoken short stories. When you have something to say, strive for focus, keeping the central theme in mind and limiting meandering. If you hear yourself wandering, return to the central theme. When relating a story, use basic narrative structure: a setting, a complication, and a resolution. And only one or two characters.

Trusting Others' Knowledge

Be on guard against too much detail. Leaving out common knowledge allows the listeners to participate by drawing inferences while showing respect for their ability to fill in necessary gaps.

Reinterpreting One’s Expertise

Consistently feeling like an expert can lead to excessive talking–the feeling of knowing what’s best and needing to impart this knowledge in great detail to others. It can be frustrating to hear what we already know. But you can accommodate this frustration. If a feeling of expertise persists during a conversation, channel this feeling by taking on the coach role and encouraging others to put their ideas forward. Draw out the knowledge of others. Be Socrates.

Closing Words

For over-talkers, shutting down is not the solution. It avoids learning how to converse and can lead to a later unrelenting stream of words. The goal is to restore the balance of talking and listening by asking questions instead of providing answers, limiting overt self-talk, learning the cues that other people want to speak, taking turns, acknowledging one’s anxiety, responding to themes and not fragments, and asking for help from trusted friends.

These strategies will create a new feedback loop, with balanced contributions leading to less anxiety and less anxiety leading to more balance. Ultimately, more fluidity in conversations reduces social anxiety and creates easier, more graceful interactions.

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