With the holiday season upon us, there’ll be lots of social gatherings.  Oh so many gatherings – family, friends, co-workers, volunteer events, and on and on.  These celebrations are really lovely most of the time, but for a lot of us there are those situations and those people that make it really challenging to have fun.  One of those types of people and interactions has to do with interruptions.  I really hear it a lot about how people dread a holiday meal because they get talked over and cut off, feel invalidated and insignificant, no matter what they try to say.  So today, in preparation for the season, I did a little digging into cutting people off.

The first thing I have to say is we all do it!  I really like to pride myself on being a good listener, but the truth is, I am a good listener when I’m focused on it.  But in family discussions, I’ve been accurately accused of cutting someone off.  Am I a narcissist only focused on myself?  I think not.  Am I selfish, wanting only to hear my own voice?  I hope not.  So what is it that makes generally well intentioned people interrupt and take the attention away from someone else?

There is a psychology to interrupting.  Research on interrupting behavior indicates certain factors that determine how often someone does it.  One aspect is culture and family background.  For some families, the norm is to talk over one another and to cut in to make your point.  These people tend not to be aware of their interrupting and see it as a normal part of an interesting and dynamic conversation.  It isn’t quite seen as interrupting as it is a normal part of discourse.  For some interrupters, it is a matter of impatience.  These people tend to be goal driven people who want to get straight to a point and take control of a conversation pace.  And for some circumstances, a person is so excited about what is being talked about that they cannot control their own impulse to share and contribute their ideas.  People also tend to interrupt when they’re afraid they’ll forget what they want to say.  It’s common for older people to interrupt more frequently as they worry if they don’t say something, they’ll lose what they want to say.

There are also gender differences in interrupting behavior.  Research from George Washington University demonstrated that men interrupt women more than they interrupt men.  In fact, they found that men interrupted women 33% more often than they did other men.  In measuring a 3 minute conversation, men interrupted women 2.1 times and other men only 1.8 times.  In contrast, women interrupted both women and men only once.  These gender differences may be a result of unspoken power differentials.  People who have an ascribed higher status tend to feel others want to hear what they have to say.

While it may not be intentional, interrupting, even for benign reasons, can have an eroding effect in a relationship.  When we’re interrupted it feels as if our opinions or thoughts aren’t valued and leave us feeling powerless and shut down.  In fact, interrupting can have a strong effect of controlling the other person in denying their basic rights to even express an opinion, idea, or feeling.  It is a form of dominance when done to an extreme.

So, what can we do about interrupting?  There are ways to address it both as a person who is interrupting and as a person who is being interrupted.  The first step is to pay more attention. Just noticing your impulse to jump in before someone is finished is a big help.  And as a speaker, are you allowing others to have equal time in speaking?  Are you picking up social cues that others are wanting to join in?  Sometimes a speaker can invite interruptions if they tend to be a long drawn out story teller.  Make sure there is a lot of back and forth opportunity in the flow of your conversation.  Being a respectful speaker can go a long way into fostering respectful listeners.

And to address the interrupters, sometimes a little hand gesture can do the trick.  Lifting your hand up with a subtle, “let me finish my thought” movement can be enough.  Other times you can set the stage to avoid being interrupted.  For example, at work, you can let people know that you will present your ideas and then there will be time for questions and feedback.  Set an expectation that you want to be listened to fully first.  And in more casual conversations, you can set the stage by asking if you can tell them a story of what happened to you that is rather complicated and  “I’d love to hear your thoughts when I’m done.” Or simply a firm statement, “May I finish, please,” can be a polite way that seems like a request but is actually setting a boundary.

Of course, if you can address this with someone at a time when you are calm, that could be the most helpful.  Giving someone the benefit of the doubt is important rather than accusing them of intentional disrespect.  Be curious.  “I noticed you were interrupting me a lot. Were you just really excited about the idea?”  Or, “I wonder if you were in a hurry?”  Often people don’t notice they’re even doing it.  You may want to ask their permission if you can let them know when it happens and then have a reminder cue at the ready.

And what if it’s your Uncle Fred who dominates the dinner conversation every Thanksgiving?  It may not be worth it to make a fuss.  The best thing is not to allow yourself to be triggered into reactive behavior.  It’s easy to become passive aggressive or snippy at these times, which only makes it unpleasant for you.  Why not make it a drinking game, every time Fred interrupts, you and your sibling lift your glass with a smile? Or start a conversation with other people sitting near you?  Or think of the potential benefits.  While Uncle Fred is babbling on and on, the rest of you can finish all the pie. I tend to be less talkative when pecan pie is at hand…and in my mouth!

I’ve been struggling with both how and what to write since the brutal terrorist attacks of October 7th in Israel and the subsequent horrific ongoing war.  I’ve been looking up articles on how to cope and how to protect your mental health, but they all seem so woefully inadequate to the situation and for the depth of what I feel.  Cutting back on media time, taking a walk in nature, doing an act of kindness for someone…they all seem so superficial when addressing these events.  This experience is more than vicarious traumatization or or secondary trauma, it is trauma with a capital T.  It is personal for me and so many around the world, it is scary, and it is contagious.  So today, I have no answers, only some reflections from my experience in working with trauma.  There is no doubt, trauma begets trauma.  The pain invoked by trauma, unless carefully addressed and attended to, only leads to lashing out, reactivity, and the infliction of more pain.  It is with this in mind I share my thoughts with you about our pain and how important it is to hold it carefully.

It hurts.  The brutal attack on Israelis hurts.  The fact that over 240 people are being held hostage hurts.  The suffering of so many Palestinian people for what the terrorists did is painful.  The images of children and elderly, innocents and victims on all sides, injured and dying is painful.  The fear people live in as the bombing continues all night long is painful.  The loss of homes and communities is so painful.  The feeling of helplessness is so painful.  The spreading of misinformation and propaganda is painful.  The brutal stabbing of a 6 year old Palestinian American boy is painful.  The image of swastikas being drawn on a Jewish cemetery in Europe is painful.  The thirst and hunger and deprivation of civilians in Gaza is so painful. The media posts and spread of hatred is painful.  Going to my synagogue and seeing a police presence for security is painful.  Seeing the words “From river to the sea” projected on the walls at college campuses is painful.  There is so, so, so much pain that it feels too overwhelming.  We are not just passive witnesses to atrocity, we are also victims. 

But we are not powerless, although we may feel that way.  We do have the power to control how we respond to this pain and an opportunity to limit the spread and effects of aggression.  Every human being deserves a place to live that is safe, where they can raise their family in good health, and express their culture.  One person’s safety should not be at the expense of others.  And yet, here we have a centuries old conflict perpetuating violence and hatred, setting up another century of violence and hatred.  How we, as the rest of the world, respond to what is happening is all we can control at this time, but is the most important thing we can do of consequence.  We have the opportunity to be an example.  We have an opportunity to take a deep breath and choose our words carefully.  We have the chance to step back and increase our understanding and our compassion for all peoples.  We have a choice in how we use our pain to be in support of de-escalation and peace or in fanning the embers of burning resentments.

Holding pain is so difficult.  It’s so much easier to jump to action to discharge the pain.  We blame, we rant, we hop on bandwagons to make ourselves feel better and righteous, we tear down a poster, we lump all people together in one group called “those people.” We do so to distract from the pain and momentarily mute it. Yet, in doing so, we perpetuate the divisiveness of conflict and the infliction of pain.  Instead, we need to listen.  We need to listen to the urges inside of us and the fear underlying our behavior.  We need to listen to others and acknowledge their pain and the fear that drives them to action.  I do believe that only by being an example of how to come together under such painful circumstances can we offer any chance to be a power for good and not a perpetrator of further conflict.

The international community must hold on to the values of peace and peaceful protest, democratic values of self determination and accountability.  We must resist the pull to polarization and hold a space for negotiation and validation.  We must denounce and condemn violence and support the process of negotiation. This is a conflict of great complexity and implication.  We cannot boil it down to a slogan or a meme.

I recently returned from a trip to Romania, coming back to CA on October 8th.  I was there in search of a connection to my ancestry of roots in the Romanian Jewish community.  I was so incredibly saddened at learning the history of the death of over 400,000 Jews in Romania, second only to Germany in loss of Jewish lives.  Prior to the war there were 750,000 Jews in Romania.  Today, there are only 8,000, most of whom are elderly.  “You are looking at the last of the Jews in Romania,” our guide said as he spoke in the synagogue in Bucharest. Most Jews fortunate to avoid the death camps were able to escape, some to the US, but most to Israel.  

There is a universal human need and right for both physical safety and emotional safety.  We must be free to be who we are, feel what we do, and  think what we might.  But this freedom cannot be without responsibility and accountability, respect and tolerance.  The incredible pain we are all feeling is a good example of our profound capacity for caring and empathy.  Now we must hold onto it as we hold on to our humanity, respecting it, feeling it, and using it to guide us with wisdom and for the sake and goal of transformation to a better path toward resolution for the next generation.  As we therapists say to victims of trauma in their journey of healing, you are not responsible for what happened to you, but you are responsible for how you respond to it.