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Hello Captain Awkward,
A few years ago, I (she/her) randomly struck up a conversation with a neighbor on a bus we rode together. We had seen each other on the bus before, but had never talked. In the space of the 15-minute ride our conversation veered from the innocuous (birds are cool pets) to her trauma dumping on me about her abusive mother. Over the next week or so, these conversations continued with increasing trauma dumping and increasing invitations to hang out, which I consistently and politely declined. I ‘solved’ the problem by taking a later bus, and occasionally pretending to be asleep if we were on the same bus together. Classy, right?
My wife (she/her), recently experienced something similar at her place of worship. How can she gracefully shut down the trauma-dumping without having to find new services to attend? We are both people pleasers and would deeply appreciate a script for redirecting conversations from near strangers when they get traumatic.
Thank you!
Hello:
You cannot prevent people from approaching you in the first place or control what they talk about when they do. All you can do is control how you respond. Which is what you did with your bus nemesis. I know you don’t feel good about how you handled that, but if you’d continued riding the same bus while being visibly awake you would have had to build yourself a “don’t talk to me” fort out of headphones and sunglasses and deep hoods that hide your face, and when that didn’t work, you would have had to be direct: “You’re very kind, but I don’t want to be friends or spend my commute in conversation, especially about deeply personal topics” and it would have felt as bad or worse. She stopped bothering you, right? Then the message was received.
Whatever social skills you and your wife struggle with as recovering people-pleasers, some people lack the social skill of checking in with others to make sure they have consent before they divulge their innermost feelings and dark secrets. And unfortunately, some people use oversharing as a social tractor beam because somewhere they learned that the more in pain they are the more compelling they are. Once an ‘ALL ATTENTION IS GOOD ATTENTION’ person locks on, you can’t fix that shit with social scripts.
Stuff you can try: You can end the conversation altogether and make the reason all about you. “I’m so sorry, you’ll have to excuse me.” You can sometimes interrupt the flow before it gets intense. “Sorry to interrupt. I’m so sorry you are dealing with that, but this is a more [involved][sensitive][heavy][detailed] conversation than I’m prepared to have [right now][today][at this event].” Both of these strategies work best as an immediate prelude to moving away and creating physical distance.
At church, your wife can try redirecting. “That sounds serious! Let’s find someone who can maybe help.” Then she can walk them over to the pastor or someone whose explicit job description is to listen to church members and try to help them, foist with all her might, and hope they stay foisted. She may have to repeat the foist protocol several times before it sticks. “But I’d much rather talk to you!” “Oh, I’m so sorry, but I don’t have the right training or skills for this kind of issue, so let’s find someone who does and you can tell them what you were just telling me.” The trick is, once she offers to walk them to somewhere else, she must never stop walking. They’ll either follow (and be foisted) or they won’t. Either way, she’ll be free.
Depending on the denomination and the culture, Church Social Fallacies can operate a lot like Geek Social Fallacies, except much, much stronger. (See also: Addiction Recovery Space Social Fallacies). “I want you to feel welcome here, but that doesn’t mean I agreed to be your new best friend or make all my time here about you” is a tough boundary-needle to thread at the best of times, it’s even harder when there’s an extra layer of GOD WOULD NEVER REJECT ME, DO U HATE GOD? running through the culture. Is your wife’s church a good-with-boundaries church or a God-hates-boundaries church? If it’s a God-hates-boundaries church, y’all will need to find a new church soon anyway. One way to test is to ask the pastor (or similar) for advice about how to handle people who overshare upon first meeting. “Oh yeah, that’s a thing we’re trained to deal with when we become clergy, you did the right thing to refer them to me” = green flag. “WE ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO BE OPEN ABOUT EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME” = RUN.
When I say that these strategies “work,” what I mean is that they are the most likely paths to get you out of conversation you don’t want to be having as quickly and efficiently as possible. Implementing them won’t feel good for you or the person you’re getting away from, and I don’t have any way to mitigate that. No matter how polite and reasonable you are, interrupting someone who is talking about heavy stuff with you mid-share so that you can extract yourself from the conversation is gonna make them feel bad. Being stuck in a conversation you know you’d rather not participate in is gonna make you and your wife feel bad. It’s awkward to realize you’ve misjudged your audience and level of closeness, as these people have clearly misjudged you and your wife. It sucks to be a survivor of abuse and trauma and not know who is safe to tell. It’s also awkward to have to be like, “cool story, CHANGED ANY SUBJECTS LATELY?” to someone who is obviously in pain when you don’t consent to be drawn into the graphic details of their story.
These mismatches in wants and assumptions won’t ever get less awkward, but you do get better at handling them with practice. Here are some places you can shore up your own skills:
- Practice interrupting and extracting yourselves with each other until you have the language and the moves down.
- Practice saying no and hearing no with each other without adding a ton of extra explanations or apologies.
- Practice sitting with the awkwardness and temporary discomfort of situations where it’s not possible for everyone to get what they want.
- Consistency is better than perfection. There are no perfect words that will make any of this feel good for all involved. However, consistently withdrawing from conversations you don’t want to be in sends the consistent, *accurate* message that these are conversations you don’t want to be in. Mixed messages, where you fake interest because you think you’re supposed to while inside the resentment grows and grows, help no one.
- Remind yourselves that consent is ongoing and can be revoked at anytime. Just because you listened once, whether it was out of kindness or being too nervous to interrupt or leave, doesn’t mean you’re obligated to listen forever or do it next time.
- Remind yourselves that compassion is not wasted. Sometimes people serially take advantage of the kindness of strangers, but sometimes you meet someone in the middle of their worst day ever, in a vulnerable moment when they truly do not have the ability to modulate or discern, you do the best you can under the circumstances, and life goes on. Each encounter is a new chance to do things differently, on both sides.
Announcement: the audience for these has changed, so I’m going to do them once every three or four months instead of monthly. So please come to this November one if you’re interested, there won’t be another until probably February.
2nd November, 1pm, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX.
We will be on Level 2 (the upper levels are closed to non-ticket-holders), but I don’t know exactly where on the floor. It will depend on where we can find a table. I have shoulder length brown hair, and will have my plush Chthulu which looks like this:
https://images.fun.com.au/products/53367/1-1/cthulhu-12-plush.jpg
Please bring your masks/exemption lanyards, and obey any rules posted in the venue.
The venue has lifts to all floors and accessible toilets. The accessibility map is here:
https://bynder.southbankcentre.co.uk/m/7dc306803bc2d7cf/original/21539-24-Access-Updated-Access-Map_Proof-2.pdf
The food market outside (side away from the river) is pretty good for all sorts of requirements, and you can also bring food from home, or there are lots of cafes on the riverfront.
Other things to bear in mind:
1. Please make sure you respect people’s personal space and their choices about distancing.
2. We have all had a terrible time for the last four years. Sharing your struggles is okay and is part of what the group is for, but we need to be careful not to overwhelm each other or have the conversation be entirely negative. Where I usually draw the line here is that personal struggles are fine to talk about but political rants are discouraged, but I may have to move this line on the day when I see how things go. Don’t worry, I will tell you!
3. Probably lots of us have forgotten how to be around people (most likely me as well), so here is permission to walk away if you need space. Also a reminder that we will all react differently, so be careful to give others space if they need.
Please RSVP if you’re coming so I know whether or not we have enough people. If there’s no uptake I will cancel a couple of days before.
kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com
All of us can recall experiences of rejection, whether in our professional lives, social circles, or romantic relationships. For many, the initial disappointment fades quickly, managed through effective coping strategies. […]
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