How to gently stop someone who talks way too much

Overtalkers can be entertaining storytellers but drift easily into being self-absorbed bores. There are ways to cope and respond.

April 13, 2025

Guest column by Lesley Alderman

My husband has always been a big talker. Early in our marriage, I found him entertaining, but now — 20 years in — it’s getting on my nerves. Since the pandemic, he’s been working from home, so I think he’s lonely and doesn’t get enough time with friends or colleagues. When I come home, it’s a torrent of information. What’s more, I don’t feel that he listens that well to me when I have something to say.

A new patient explained these concerns to me. She had come to therapy to work on being more assertive, so I was pleased she wanted to deal with her partner’s conversational domination, and I was empathetic to the delicacy it might require.

Overtalkers can be entertaining storytellers but drift easily into being self-absorbed bores. They seem to have an opinion on everything, can’t stop to take a breath or seem to be enchanted with the sound of their voices.

To cope, weary listeners feign attention, seethe with resentment or practice tactical avoidance. But better strategies exist.

Why people overtalk

Our minds were designed to be egocentric, Alison Wood Brooks, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, explained to me recently. “Self-disclosure feels as good in our brain as eating chocolate or having sex,” said Brooks, author of “Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves.”

For many, she said, “that’s a hard force to fight against.”

Also, big talkers are often rewarded for their ability to inform and entertain.

At the extreme, overtalking may be caused by a serious mental health or neurological condition, such as ADHD, autism or bipolar disorder. Long-winded people may also struggle with social anxiety and fill the airwaves to cope with nervousness, self-doubt or social jitters.

If you, like my patient, want to better manage the chatterboxes in your life, consider these actions.

Look within

If you seem to attract overtalkers, get curious about the dynamic. Like my patient, you might have trouble being assertive and find it easier to listen than interrupt.

Some people also find it scary to expose their opinions and thoughts and prefer to have another person run the conversation. Others may be such good listeners that people gravitate toward their attentional aura. If any of this sounds familiar, setting boundaries (or finding friends who are better turn takers) could help you grow personally.

Have empathy

Big talkers can’t always control themselves, so try to be patient in addressing the issue with them. Think of the overtalker as having a nervous habit or a blind spot, and remember that it’s human nature to be self-focused.

Be honest

When the talker is your partner, child or close friend, offer a direct statement such as: “I know you like to share your opinions and ideas, but I think sometimes you annoy people.”

If that feels too harsh, try something like: “You are such a great storyteller, but I think you would benefit from asking questions. You can learn a lot that way.”

Then explain that research consistently shows people who ask good questions are more appreciated by their conversation partners.

Be situation-specific

I coached my patient to first address her husband’s end-of-day download. She told him: “Hey, I know you have a lot to tell me at the end of the day, but your updates are long and I start to zone out. What if we took turns filling each other in?”

From there, over time, she was able to talk about other situations where she felt he was talking too much and listening too little.

Use humor

If you’re on intimate terms with the talker, try some levity. “Whoa, you have a lot to say about that!” or, “I think you just talked without pause for 7.5 minutes.”

Point out the pattern in real time, before you rely on an old ineffective pattern such as tuning out or escaping.

Take a quiz

At your next get-together with a garrulous pal, whip out the Talkaholic Scale and suggest you take the quiz together. You might preface it with, “Hey, let’s figure out which one of us is chattier.”

The 16-question scale was developed in 1993 by Virginia Peck Richmond and James McCroskey, when they were professors of communications studies at West Virginia University, to identify compulsive talkers.

Introduce a new topic

Overtalkers can get bogged down; help them out by interjecting something novel and juicy into the conversation. While it may seem rude, it could help your chatty friend out of their anxious need to fill the silence and create a better dialogue.

Don’t be shy about jumping to an entirely new topic — it will probably make the interaction much more interesting and give you a greater sense of agency in the conversation.

Help them make a graceful exit

If you want to politely end the conversation, provide a conversational assist such as: “Okay, so it sounds like you are saying [insert a summary here] …”

If they are talking about an emotional topic such as a recent breakup or their boss’s bad behavior, try, “I know this is upsetting, can I give you some feedback?” Or if you want out of the conversation, “I’m sorry you’re struggling.”

Create a hard stop

Some people will talk too long no matter what. Get ahead by giving them a time limit: “Happy to talk, but I have just 15 minutes, then I need to get on another call/run an errand/take the dog for a walk.”

Walk away

You can always invent an emergency. A trip to the bathroom, a visit to the bar or the urgent need to answer a text are good ways to get out of a one-sided exchange.

Overtalkers can be fascinating and entertaining. Learning to set boundaries helps you enjoy the best of them while creating a healthier and less resentful dynamic.

Lesley Alderman is a psychotherapist based in Brooklyn.

Don’t make the mistake of comparing someone else’s external life to your internal life. Each person’s life appears coherent and certain from the outside and feels incoherent and uncertain on the inside.

Also, don’t make the mistake of assuming somebody doesn’t have a messy and uncertain internal life. We all fucking do.

–Mark Manson.

Are you drinking a wee bit more than you think you should? Quit Lit may help. Read more in my Washington Post story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/13/mental-health-hope-fatigue-coping/

The End of Quarantine.

Published June 2, 2020 in Medium

There will likely be a time, in the not-too-distant future, when we look back wistfully on quarantine.

For those of us fortunate enough to be able to stay home, this time of isolation has been a lot of things — anxiety-inducing, boring, stifling, overwhelming — but it has also been simple. We knew what to do. When we ventured out, we knew the precautions to take. And once we got the hang of seclusion, it became almost routine.

As states begin to lift their restrictions, that simplicity is evaporating, replaced by a new kind of uncertainty about the risky world outside. Back in April, a month into quarantine, my psychotherapy patients would ask, “When will this be over?” Now I am hearing more specific anxieties: “Can I visit my grandparents?” “Can they force me to return to work?” “Is it okay to take an airplane?”

Not all of them are eagerly anticipating a green light. Many of us who have been safely sequestered in our homes with strict germ-control procedures in place may not be so eager to head back to a bustling workplace or plunk down a blanket on a busy beach.

That’s especially true for people in hard-hit areas and those who are especially vulnerable to Covid-19 (a group that disproportionately includes people of color, who make up an outsize percentage of new cases and deaths). In a Quinnipiac poll taken early last month, about half of adults in the greater New York City area say that they would be uncomfortable returning to the workplace if restrictions were lifted in the next few weeks. And in a more recent survey from the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of respondents said they were more concerned about things reopening too quickly than not opening quickly enough.

Right now, the freedom of a post-lockdown life isn’t just daunting; for some, it can feel like a terrifying loss of control.

“There is for many of us an underlying anxiety about the unknown, and a feeling of helplessness in dealing with an unseen enemy,” says Judy Levitz, PhD, the founding director and board president of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center in New York City. Sheltering at home has become the devil we know — and with conflicting and ever-evolving rules about what’s considered safe, there’s so much we don’t know about engaging with the outside world.

Returning to the office brings up a host of concerns: Will the office be well sanitized, are elevators safe, how much space will you have? What about the bathrooms?

Some offices are leaving it up to workers to decide when they return to the office, but that can create its own anxieties. Are you missing out on anything if you stay home as some of your colleagues return to the office? One of the benefits of working in an office or co-working space is in-person camaraderie, but it’s hard to imagine chatting over a sandwich in the common room, masked and socially distanced.

Returning to social activities outside of work might seem stressful, too. “Amidst the pleasure of getting things back and seeing people again, all the interpersonal demands, obligations, and pressures will be renewed,” says Levitz, a practicing psychoanalyst. “I suspect there is a part of many of us that don’t particularly look forward to that.”

And of course, the relearning and redefining of social norms brings added pressure. Each interaction will require its own calculus: How much closeness are others comfortable with? How much time in a new situation will feel safe? How much do you trust this person?

And face-to-face isn’t the only thing that will feel uncomfortably new. We have grown accustomed to less stimulation. Many people have come to appreciate the low-key cocoon of quarantine, and navigating mass transit, crowds, and elevators may feel like what one of my patients has called a “jarring transition.”

“I am guiltily happy,” one of my patients confessed to me recently. “I prefer being at home where I can set my own schedule, wear what I want, and spend lots of time with my dog.” We’ve developed new habits and routines. Maybe we’re appreciating more downtime with our families, the right to be lazy, or the simple pleasure of cooking all our own meals.

Forgoing all that will be a difficult transition, says Karestan Koenen, a professor of psychiatric epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Covid-19 Mental Health Forum Series. “Sheltering in place allowed us a pass on some things we did not like to do, such as facing difficult colleagues, coping with a busy schedule, and shuttling kids around,” she told me. “Now, when we are feeling really depleted, we have to deal with those things again.”

I know that doesn’t ring true for everyone. Some people are champing at the bit to re-enter the world, and will happily embrace a life with more freedom to go where they please. But for people who feel apprehensive and anxious, the ones who will be taking small steps, it can help to think of this next phase as a new routine to build: Just as we adjusted to washing our hands all the time, we’ll now have to evaluate each new challenge with our own personal, and ever-evolving, risk-reward re-entry matrix.

This is all very unsettling. To say the least. Here are some ways to stay centered.

Be kind. Be very kind to everyone.

Be attuned. When the intensity is rising, stop, notice, investigate and then try to breathe into the emotion.

Be tuned in (to others). Text the ones you love, the ones you have lost track of, the neighbors down the block. Plan a Zoom Happy Hour. Facetime with Grandma, or Dad, or Sis, or whomever.

Be grounded, or at least try to be! Look around at all that is good, at all that works, at all that you have, at all those you know.

Be ready to distract yourself. Take a walk, have a large glass of water, do some jumping jacks, marvel at the sky, find a photo that makes you super duper happy.

Be imaginative. Buy a flowering plant, start a large puzzle, clean out a closet, repair something that’s been broken, make a scrapbook, make a photo album, write a letter (yes, a letter!), to a pal, a relative, a colleague you miss seeing every day. Start meditating, or listen to podcasts about meditating.

Thinking about the future often invites a strange sort of cognitive dissonance: We have all sorts of expectations, hopes, and fears about it — but the image of who we’ll be remains murky. Many of us see our future selves as abstractions, or even as strangers.

In part, that’s accurate. One of the longest-running studies on personality found that our six core traits change almost completely between adolescence and old age. But for many of us, the difficulty in imagining what we’ll be like in five years, or in 50, is the result of cognitive biases — errors in thinking — that distort the way we understand the world and our place in it.

No one is completely immune to the bias of shortsightedness, which is baked into who we are as a species. “Our brains evolved for a very different world than the one in which we are living,” explained Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor and author of Stumbling on Happiness, in a TED talk. “They evolved for a world in which people lived in very small groups; rarely met anybody who was terribly different from themselves; had rather short lives in which there were few choices, and the highest priority was to eat and mate today.”

Read the rest on Medium.

Bill Gates meditates, so do Derek Jeter, Arianna Huffington, and Oprah.

You probably know a few devoted meditators. You might even be one yourself. 

The number of Americans who say they meditate for better health or wellness increased threefold from 2012 to 2017, from 4.1% of adults to 14.2%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And folks age 45 to 64 are the most likely to say they practice regularly.

There’s a lot of hype about what meditation can do, but it has one undeniable benefit: more clarity. In addition, research consistently shows that a regular practice may be helpful for depression, chronic pain, and anxiety. 

Studies have also documented that meditation can increase your gray matter and help slow some of the natural age-related atrophy of the brain. Regular meditators report feeling calmer, happier, and better able to deal with stressful situations.

Read the rest of my story on Considerable.

Another day, another upset: Your manager gives you an bad review. Your love interest ghosts you. Your teenager tells you to f&^% off. Your mind whirls, your heart pounds, your palms sweat.

How do you get back to baseline? You could distract yourself (TV! Shopping! Social Media!). But a better option would be to try this simple trick: Accept and identify what you’re feeling, and then say it out loud or write it down.

Though it might seem counter intuitive, researchers have found that focusing on your feelings and succinctly labeling them helps to lessen their intensity.

Click here to read the rest of my story on MEDIUM.

View this collection on Medium.com

View this collection on Medium.com

Each year the New York Times WELL blog publishes dozens of wonderful health articles. This year my story on controlling negative thoughts made the Top 10 List of best read stories of 2017. It came in at #6. Yay!

And boy was it a year that called for thought control. Read it again here:

The Year of Conquering Negative Thinking

A quick excerpt:

The first step to stopping negative thoughts is a surprising one. Don’t try to stop them. If you are obsessing about a lost promotion or the results of the presidential election, whatever you do, don’t tell yourself, “I have to stop thinking about this.”

By acknowledging your negative cycle and accepting it, you are on your way to taming your negative thoughts. Acceptance is the basic premise of mindfulness meditation, a practice that helps reduce stress and reactivity. You don’t necessarily have to close your eyes and meditate every day to reap the benefits of mindfulness. You can remind yourself to notice your thoughts in a nonjudgmental manner, without trying to change or alter them right away.

Accepting negative thoughts can also help lessen their weight. Getting mad at yourself for worrying or telling yourself to stop worrying only adds fuel to the negativity fire.

After you’ve accepted a negative thought, force yourself to challenge it.

READ THE ENTIRE PIECE HERE.