It's Not Always About You
Seriously, it really isn't
Have you ever had the lovely experience of telling someone about something that is happening in your life that is significant, only to have them feel the need to make it about them immediately without actually hearing a word you said? Isn’t that annoying? I find it annoying anyway, and I see this happen all the time. I don't know if they truly feel devoid of the attention that they require, or if the entire world is filtered through a lens of “look at me”.
I have mentioned in the past how people tend to tell me things unprompted. I think that part of this is because often other people that they are speaking to don’t really listen. They are either waiting for the other person to take a breath so they can cut in, or they aren’t listening in the first place. This leaves the person that decides to tell me their darkest secrets lacking an outlet for their problems to be heard.
What amazes me, however, is this unique ability of the people that can turn every single conversation back to themselves without a hint of self-awareness. Or, perhaps I am wrong about that. Perhaps they know exactly what they are doing, and do it anyway. Some of these types have had everything happen to them. Doesn’t matter what it is, they had it happen to, but better, or worse, or more, or something that makes their experience way more impressive than yours.
Did you break your leg?
They broke both of theirs.
Did you get a promotion?
They got three.
Did you get a new dog?
They got one that talks.
You saw a UFO?
They were abducted.
You got a new phone?
Theirs hasn’t even been released yet and it can see through time.
You were robbed?
They had a home invasion.
You were murdered?
They were kidnapped, held, and then killed by the most notorious serial killer ever.
Yes, I know, they are extreme examples, but you know the type of person that I am talking about. You could just be bringing them factual information, but it doesn’t matter, it somehow still has to be about them. Exhausting, isn’t it?
I have always found this behavior to be vexing. It is very strange to me that this type of person feels that they are in constant competition with the entire world for who has the best or worst things happen to them. What this accomplishes, I have no idea. Maybe it feeds their internal narrative about their lives. Maybe it makes them feel important. Maybe they like outdoing everyone that they know because it makes them feel important. Who knows?
What I do know is this. This sort of person is very annoying to deal with. They don’t listen to a word you say, they dismiss actual problems that someone might be going through because their need to be held in higher regard makes them scoff at anything that challenges their superiority, and as much as they may be able to pretend to be a good friend, they don’t consider those around them at all. Again, it’s always about them.
While people like this annoy me, I know that they do far more damage to people around them that have deep emotions. As I mentioned, they are good at pretending to be a good friend, but you are nothing more than a vessel to point more attention in their direction. If there is a chance that you aren’t the best option to get their needs met, you will be discarded quickly in lieu of someone that is a richer target. If that doesn’t pan out they will be back to smooth over any ruffled feathers, only to do it again when it suits them.
If you know someone like this and are tolerating them, they aren’t going to get better. Also, most of their stories aren’t true anyway, so why bother dealing with them in the first place? For someone like me, this sort of person can be amusing for a time, but they are screaming into the wind with me. Nothing about their lives has anything to do with mine, so whatever they say, it simply goes in one ear and out the other. However, when the things that happen in your life actually have emotional significance to you, and someone that is in your life constantly has to undermine your experience in service to their ego, that isn’t someone that you should bother with.
Sometimes this person is in your family, and sometimes this makes them difficult to avoid or cut off. I have always said to people in this situation, don’t engage. They do not need to know anything about your life. Don’t give them an in to start their storytelling and you will find them less interested in being in your presence. Everyone wins. Well… you do, nuts to them. They don’t need to use your life to have a reason to talk about themselves.
These types are the high middle part of the spectrum that this behavior falls on. Everyone for the most part is on this spectrum, but usually falls in the middle to low sections. That translates to hearing something from someone and finding that indeed you have a personal experience that is relatable, and possibly helpful to the person that you are speaking to. It is one thing to offer information that they may not have while at the same time listening to them completely. Also, I do understand that people do feel better when they know that they are not alone in an experience, and can find comfort in someone else being able to relate.
The high end of this spectrum is the really toxic side. There is a documentary that details this side of things called, The Woman That Wasn’t There. For clarification, it is the documentary about 9/11. There are a few movies titled this, so I want to be clear. If you are interested in watching it sans spoilers, stop reading now, go do so. Also, this part of the post is going to deal with some upsetting things, so if you are easily bothered, you may want to skip it.
For the rest of you, this movie details the story of a woman named Tanya that was heavily involved in the groups for survivors of 9/11 and claimed to be one herself.
She organized these groups and gave tours.
She said she was on the seventy-third floor of the second tower and watched the plane coming towards the building.
She claimed that she was rescued by a famous victim who is often referred to as the man with the red bandana (there is a documentary about him as well, but I haven’t watched it yet).
She met with this victim’s family. She spoke at his memorial.
She claimed that her civil ceremony husband was in the first tower located above where the first plane hit.
She spoke of that loss with detailed stories about this man, their civil wedding in Hawaii, how they were so much alike, and how deeply in love they were with one another.
She had a severely injured arm that she said was nearly severed in the attack, and that another victim who was out of their minds had clung onto that arm, and she was terrified they would pull it completely off. She tucked the arm into her jacket as she made her way down.
She counseled other victims and survivors. For some of them, she was their best friend.
She did numerous interviews where she repeated her story.
She was known for doing more than anyone else in a day when it came to the groups, tours, survivor meetings, organizing online spaces where anyone could come at any time for help if they were having an overwhelming day.
She was very convincing.
Only, she wasn’t even in the country when 9/11 happened.
The man that she claimed to have a civil marriage to never even knew her name.
She almost lost her arm in a car accident. It had nothing to do with the towers.
She never met the man with the red bandana.
None of what she claimed was real, but she had no problem inserting herself into these people’s lives and taking for herself what she could. Her story was always the worst one. She even went so far as to get one of the survivors named Linda to participate in a sort of therapy called “flooding”. This is described as a sort of exposure treatment where a person is immersed in a fear reflex until the fear itself fades away.
Tanya tape-recorded her September 11th story and play it in the presence of Linda. Tanya would circle around and around Linda while reacting to this story where she is describing seeing the plane coming towards the building, seeing her assistant decapitated, how everyone around her was burnt, the part where someone almost pulled off her arm, and how that made her panic.
Tanya made a real production out of this, and had actual breakdowns that Linda had to coax her through, literally hold her up and comfort her while she sobbed. During this time, many of the people in the support groups were concerned that Tanya might be at risk of taking her own life because of how intense the therapy was, and how it was affecting her.
Remember, Tanya was never there, but Linda was. Linda was on the ground and saw the second plane hit from the street level while running for her life. The stories that Tanya told were so intense that finally, Linda had to tell her that she couldn’t help Tanya with the flooding exercise with her anymore because of the nightmares that she was having, and that was when a switch flipped. Was Tanya grateful for all the help her friend had provided her?
No.
Linda was a horrible friend and she was so selfish.
How could Linda be such a selfish person? Didn’t she realize the trauma that Tanya had sustained was so much worse than the trauma that Linda had sustained? How could she live with not helping?
The high side spectrum of the people that have to always have it be about them is really ugly, but fortunately, these types are relatively rare. I have met the ones that will make up whatever story they have to one-up you, but to go to this level takes a special level of toxicity.
If someone you know seems to have the preternatural ability to always turn things around and make it about themselves, keep a close eye on that person and evaluate if they actually contribute to your life in a meaningful way. If not, cut ties and find people that have an interest in what you have to say because they have an interest in you.
*interrupts, speaking in unself aware narcissist*: Yeah, I remember 9/11. It was actually much worse for me, because I saw it on good morning America. So the trauma is much more real than it could've been for people who merely were there, but didn't have to see it on tv. Plus, I was on intense probation at the time.
Anyway, Athena, did I tell you about the time I was 5... maybe 6 years old, and at the breakfast table? I asked for a second helping of Count Chokula cereal and I was denied this by my own mother. What kind of person would do that to a 5 year old kid??! I hate this country sometimes, people are so apathetic to those of us who are really knowledgeable in suffering. Jesus, now I gotta do a load of laundry so I have a shirt to wear to work. I hope I've helped you with my reality here, and if you're still reading this... </sarcastic humor> I'm terribly sorry, lol. I am no stranger. I do sometimes find these folks entertaining. But I'm trying not to make this all about me. And failing. :-)
Oh dear, there are a LOT of Tanyas out there. I call them alligators, as they are all mouth and no ears. Apropos of all this, allow me to share with you a quick English translation (sorry for the errors, but I hope at least the main ideas are intelligible) of a passage from a wonderful book by French philosopher David Le Breton entitled "Du Silence" ("On Silence"), which I believe defines with great brilliance, irony and eloquence all the Tanyas and alligators of this world:
- The loquacious person's heaviness -
The loquacious person abuses verbiage and, above all, leaves no room for the other. He takes the ritual recourse to emphatic communication to its ultimate consequences, and goes so far as to caricature it by means of the symbolic annihilation of his companion, from whom he seeks only a complacent ear. In his stubborn struggle against silence, he achieves the feat of spending his life making the simple emission an indefatigable activity. He seeks to saturate time through the charm of a discourse in which the addressee matters little, since its content is not only empty of meaning, but also indifferent to the listener: its only objective is the reiterated affirmation of himself. The cogito of the loquacious speaker could be formulated as follows: "I exist because I continually break the silence with my proliferating word". He ignores the need for pauses in discourse and turns of speech, he alone consumes the time that the exchange lasts, and saturates the resources of silence with his poor speech, imposing on the other the ordeal of having to listen to him. He does not tolerate any interstice in speech. He needs his companion to complete the simulacrum, for being incapable of keeping silent, it is natural that he cannot hear him; he does not even realize that good manners require compliance with certain rules. He invades the mental space of his interlocutor, he overwhelms him with a series of uninteresting details that only concern him; and, not content with setting himself up as the master of ceremonies of the exchange, he suppresses any possibility of reply, settling for a denaturalized face to face, which is also conditioned by a forced acceptance. Kafka says in his Diary: "Is the forest still there? The forest was more or less there. But, as soon as my sight was ten paces away, I gave up, trapped once more by the dull conversation."
Since he is frightened of silence, and continually breaks the rule of reciprocity of language, the loquacious runs the risk of endless repetition of the futile. His tireless rhetoric on the insignificant exposes him to the boredom or impatience of an interlocutor, who is submerged under a closed verbal flow, without pauses, without silence, whose only reason is to proclaim: "I exist, I continue to exist now and always". The loquacious person speaks only of himself. But he needs the pretext of another, a double with an indifferent face; for, curiously enough, in spite of his thirst for discourse, no one is going to speak alone in front of a wall or a mirror: he demands the shadow of another to give body to his verbal assault. So that his interlocutor is practically interchangeable; for a simple modification in the orientation of the discourse solves the problem. Sometimes, he becomes so bold that he confesses that he is very talkative, thus disarming at the outset any reproach, and vindicates without a misunderstood embarrassment this profuse and uninteresting speech. "It is as if he wishes to annul his relationship with his fellow man the moment he brings him into existence; remembering (implicitly) that if he confides it is by means of an inconsequential revelation, addressed to an equally inconsequential person, by way of a language that excludes all responsibility and refuses any response," writes Maurice Blanchot.
The loquacious manifests a special passion for the emphatic function of language, and proclaims it. The characters of Clamence, in Camus' 'The Fall', and of Louis-René Des Foréts' 'The Charlatan', illustrate the inordinate fondness for a speech without a real interlocutor; the covert soliloquy that demands from the other only the appearance of attention, and whose preferred place is the bar of a bar.
To speak, to speak incessantly in order to oppose silence, to testify that the social bond has not been completely undone, and to affirm in this modest way his personal importance. Beckett says: "To talk fast, words plus words, like the solitary child who divides himself into several, two, three, in order to feel accompanied, and to talk accompanied in the night."
The loquacious one sometimes provokes the dispersion of the group when he approaches, or the sudden departure of those who went towards him without having recognized him. Before him, silence suddenly acquires an unexpected value, even for those who had not considered this question before. Plutarch, with great skill, speaks of the emptiness that surrounds the speaker the moment they see him approaching -at a show or in the square-, and the sudden silence of the group surprised by his arrival, who are afraid to give rise to his speech before finding a good reason to leave the place: "Everyone is horrified by hurricanes and dizziness .... That is why no one is at ease with these people: neither their table companions at the banquets, nor those who share their tents with them in the army, nor any of those who come across them in their travels by land and sea". The proximity of the loquacious is a guarantee of noise, the impossibility of finding in oneself a propitious interiority. His infinite speech is a declaration of war without quarter to silence.
Even if he says nothing, the loquacious person says a thousand things; the content is of little importance, since the aim is to maintain the distance, to occupy the time, to conjure up the arrival of silence. All this in exchange for a constant nod, and a gaze that does not leave him, even at the risk of suffering painful muscular tension. This minimum of listening stimulates his loquacity and even, sometimes, as he notices that he has awakened a modicum of attention, his words become more animated as if he were making a plea, all the more convinced of what he is saying the lesser the transcendence.
M. Blanchot also says: "Chattering destroys language by totally preventing speech. When one speaks incessantly, nothing is really said; this does not mean that what is said is false: what happens is that one is not really speaking". But speech is not as inexhaustible as silence, and it is understandable that such an attitude leads to verbal inflation. Nothingness is infinite and, therefore, always remains to be filled. If verbiage is a necessary and amusing factor of daily life, an elementary form of complicity, the loquacious, on the other hand, causes great harm to language, since it is fundamental for the establishment of social ties. By denying the other, without realizing it, his place, what he does is to continually project himself, hiding his ability to communicate and interest his interlocutor. Since he has not a shred of silence, the loquacious person's speech is excluding and oppressive, lacking reciprocity. It tries to ward off the threats of silence, and is doomed to always be empty and endless.