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["Mason Woodard" <mason.woodard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yesterday my fiance was talking about his emotions related to a family member being to him. About 1/4 of the time, I responded to him about his situation. About 3/4 of the time, I responded by talking about my own situation with my mom. At the time, I felt like discussing my mom was me expressing, "Yeah, I get it, this stuff sucks, I understand you!" But that was not the right way to do it, when he needed to talk about his own feelings rather than mine. At some point he just said, "Stop. I understand that you may need to talk about your mother sometimes, and I'm happy to listen. But right now you are personalizing my own problem for yourself." And it was so true. If I were talking about my mom and he kept talking about his own troubles, that would be so hurtful. So I see how hurtful what I did was. I apologized, made sure to ask for a few clarifications so I would know what not to do again, we hugged, he wasn't mad, he said it's not what I normally do or else he would have told me earlier, etc. But this seems like a serious flea. When I think about the conversations I have with people in pain, I realize many of my responses are like, "Oh, I'm sorry about that -- now I'll tell you what similar thing happened to me!" That's bad. That's what Ns do. Does anybody have advice on how to work on changing this behavior?

I have this problem, it interferes with my life considerably. I'm working on being more present, staying in the moment, and listening to the other person. It's difficult! Like, I'm trying to listen and my mind just spins back to myself. I try to focus on the words the person is saying, and when they pause, I try to repeat what they just said, either silently or out loud, so that I stay focused on what they are saying. That way they also know that I am hearing them. Them: "And then my mom told me I would always be no matter what!" Me: "she said you would always be no matter what?" ..and they keep talking, while I avoided talking about myself. So, that's my one tip, to repeat their last line when they pause. I don't know if this is a legit technique, but it seems to help me a little.