Overtalking and the Use of Conversational Dominance to Intimidate and Control
Four techniques for accommodating excessive verbosity
I have a friend who talks too much. He is a great talker, entertaining, informative, and educated — the whole package. But it drives me crazy that he talks so much. It violates my private rule of fifty-fifty participation. I can’t keep up. The only way to stop him is to overwhelm him with your own talk, but even that does not work eventually. His volubility knows no limits.
I have finally found an interpretive frame for dealing with him, which is to see that he is merely expressing his self-worth. His voluble speech is a display of his self-certitude and life accomplishments. With this perspective, I can withstand the overtalk or at least accommodate it with a grain of salt.
He presumes that what he has to say will be of interest. For him, speaking up with whatever is on his mind is a sign, a metric of his sense of self-worth. It is an expression of the same. (If you speak up, that is a sign you think well of yourself and have self-respect.)
These considerations suggest that self-assertions validate that you have arrived at enhanced self-worth. You can be said to have the courage to acknowledge your self-worth and to speak up to express it. Hence, expressing yourself can be empowering.
