When I was in 2nd grade, I was stuck in a corner for participating too much. This character flaw has followed me all my life. My ex told me people didn’t like me because I shared my thoughts too much, and I just got feedback from my boss about the same thing.
The thing is, I’ve tried to stop my whole life. I only participate maybe 10% of the time, and I generally try to let others speak first unless no one is speaking up. But I’m still getting this feedback. I’m like a bull in a china shop, knocking down everyone no matter how careful I try to be.
The only solution I can come up with is to assume no one wants to hear from me and disengage. Stop caring, stop thinking, and stop participating altogether. I already feel isolated from everyone. This is just making it worse. I think I have to face the fact that I’m not welcome in any degree.
Any other ideas?
I don’t have anything to add as far as advice goes, however based on your responses and initial post it sounds like you aren’t being completely honest with us or yourself. “I only participate 10% of the time”, “I highly value other people’s input/don’t interrupt people”, “I just have to accept that people don’t value my opinion”. If you’ve been receiving this feedback openly your entire life by various sources I’m very much inclined to believe it has merit.
You seem to be looking for confirmation bias here that you’ve done nothing wrong and it’s the people around you giving unfair criticism, just know that this confirmation bias is fleeting. We’re strangers on the internet, we don’t actually care how insufferable you are or aren’t IRL, because as soon as we’ve left our comments we can close this post and essentially forget you exist. It is definitely worth listening to the people around you if you want to maintain those relationships, especially if it’s affecting your career.
The best advice I can give you is to take this criticism seriously and follow the advice of other users who have experienced similar personality traits.
I think what they meant was that they participate in only 10% of conversations because when they do they talk too much. Nothing about OP’s post tells me they’re not aware of the problem or in denial of it. Their question was how to stop doing it.
I think you’re taking it for granted that if someone knew about the problem and tried hard enough, they’d be able to stop, so you’ve answered assuming that they mustn’t be taking it seriously else they would’ve quit doing it already- only there’s a lot of reasons why it might be extremely difficult.
ADHD is one of many reasons, and it’s not a matter of willpower. This is why it requires medical and psychological intervention to treat effectively, and it is by far not the only cause of overbearing social behaviours.
I disagree, that’s not how OP’s post and comments read to me, especially because “disengage because nobody wants to hear from me” was mentioned as their solution after they claimed they only participate in 10% of conversations. But like I said, it doesn’t matter. OP can choose to disregard my comment if it doesn’t apply, I’m just a stranger on the internet.
Yeah, absolutely nothing in my comment even alluded to this, I even specifically said to take advice from others in this thread. Where on earth did you get this from? This is such a ridiculous and disingenuous takeaway from my comment.