How To Deal with People Who Interrupt You

Can I ask you a question? Da, da, da, da, da. I'm going to interrupt you. I don't want to hear your answer. Right. This video is about interruptions. And most likely, if you're watching this, if you're like most of my clients, you really struggle with this, because when someone interrupts you, you do something other than what you want to do. Maybe you go silent and feel like you get walked over. Maybe you collapse. Maybe you go into your head and feel bad or worthless. Maybe you go into resentment stew, and your only option is to either shut down in silence or explode in rage. You don't want to do that at work or in a relationship, so you just stuff it all down. Or maybe you do explode and there's ramifications, and people are like, whoa, whoa, what got into that person? They're crazy. And I got to deal with that. So the problem is not the response. The problem is that you don't have a good strategy for how to deal with interruption. And in this video, you're going to learn how do you deal with it when someone interrupts you, especially if you have social anxiety or you're a nice person. Those are the biggest pitfalls that prevent us from being able to deal with interruptions. You're going to learn how to do it, and ultimately you can stop fearing it so much. And part of the fear that I see with clients about speaking up in groups or meetings or other places is they're afraid of that person who's going to interrupt or challenge them, and so they rather just avoid the whole thing. But then that doesn't allow you to grow in your career, in your life, and feel confident in any setting, which is the ultimate goal of freedom, right? Social confidence. So let's talk about interruptions. The first thing is a lot of people that I see are basically, they're playing with their hands tied behind their back because they have all kinds of ways they could respond to interruption. But that's not allowed. Why is it not allowed? Because they're a nice person. And a nice person can't get angry, can't be annoyed. A nice person has to be timid, because if you push back, you can't handle the. The other pushback or the, God forbid, upset or irritation or anger in somebody that feels really dangerous to people that I work with. So as a result, I just gotta, I guess, just take it, kind of go into the doormat mode, which gets very frustrating and ultimately stifles you in your life. So the key thing before it's what to Say is permission inside of yourself, which is I have permission to interrupt back to override somebody. I'm allowed to finish my thought, finish my perspective, and it's okay if someone's upset with me. And that might sound obvious when you hear it out loud, but trust me, tune in emotionally. You might have a very different set of programming, which is why in my book, not nice, we go through your Bill of Rights and if you haven't read that book, definitely check that out. It's my most popular book you can get on Amazon or audible. But we go through your Bill of Rights, which is I have permission and you need a permission set around when people interrupt you. I have permission to finish my thought, notice, like, feel that, that tone of almost healthy entitlement. That's the term I'm going to use, healthy entitlement. I'm not entitled to, like everyone has to shut up and listen to me while I go on a five hour ran. But look, I'm entitled to finish my point without being interrupted. That's a healthy. Just like you're entitled to have someone not physically abuse you or yell at you or character attack you. You have a right. Like, you want some healthy entitlement. In fact, that's the inner response you want to have of like, what the hell is this? No, that's the inner response you want to have. Now you might not say that in a meeting, like, what the hell is this, Terry? Right? But maybe you might, I don't know, it depends on where you work. But you want that healthy inner response versus this kind of like deflated balloon, collapsy response. Oh, helpless. Oh, hopeless. Oh, I can't. Oh. Or the other nice person strategy is I can't speak up for myself because I don't have permission. But instead of being a sad, deflated balloon, I'm like a pissed off ball of condensed rage, like a dwarf star, right? It's sort of, how dare that Terry. I'm gonna use Terry here as an example. Sorry, if you're named Terry or have someone you know Terry. In any case, Terry's like, how dare he interrupt. What a selfish, self absorbed. And you just go on this huge rageful resentment fest inside of your head and you're just expecting him to be different like he should be different. And look, I don't know, Terry, maybe he should be different. Maybe he should be more polite and inclusive. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Is that going to change him? Or are you just kind of a victim of people that are difficult to be around and so we have to take Ownership and say, look, I don't. The only way to change my dynamic with Terry is to change me. I can't sit here waiting for him to change. How long are you going to be waiting for? Probably the rest of your life for as long as you know that person. So you need to be able to fire back. That's the key for when you're being interrupted, is to not allow the interruption. What? Not allow. How do you not allow it? You don't allow it because you stop being silent and condoning it. If someone interrupts you and you just collapse into silence, you're basically saying, do that again, just every time I talk, or you don't like what I'm saying, just. Just jump in. Just shut me down anytime. It's fine. It's fine. We condone it. We encourage it by allowing it to continue. So what you have to do is anything other than that. Anything other than that. So one of my favorites is, let's say I'm saying something and they jump in. You override and say, let me finish. And I like to put a hand gesture in. So let's say I'm talking, and right about now, someone interrupts me and I say, hold on a second, Terry, let me finish my point, and then we can hear your idea. Do you see that? I put my hand up. You know, it's not like a stop there. Intruder. Right? But it's. It is. It's a communication of stop, but it's more of a casual gesture. And then I say, hold on a second. I might stutter it a little bit. You notice how I did that? I'm like, hold on a second here. Why am I doing that? Well, it is kind of increasing the energy without, like, raising your voice. You can. You might need to raise your voice a little bit, but I would raise it only enough to, like, match or slightly exceed theirs. You don't want to go into, like. That's a little extreme in this case. You just want to go up to where they are, maybe a little louder. Hold on a second. And then you say, let me finish. So I'm instantly interrupting the interruption. Now, look, if you're in a power dynamic where there's a boss there, you know, and they have direct power over you, that's a little more complicated. That's a scope for a different video. But I'm talking about peers, someone who's not technically. It doesn't have the, you know, control over your salary instantly and just instantly interrupt the interruption. There's a dozen other ways you could do it. You could find your style. But I wanted to give you an example of one of my favorite go to's. The key is just to do something and sometimes people just continue going so they're talking as an interruption and you just keep going a little bit louder. That can work. That's a more subtle approach. But if they. You might also just have this kind of cacophonous two people talking at once thing, in which case you might need to say the. Hold on a second, let me finish my point. So the key here to actually be able to do this, because now you know the strategy, you know what's behind it. Now you know the strategy, but there's still one more obstacle, which is fear. Because the fear is if you do like, oh, how dare I do that, right? Because most people I work with who are nice, or social anxiety, you kind of see yourself a little bit lower in the social hierarchy. Like, how dare I, how dare I challenge someone else? How dare I challenge Terry? And man, fuck that. Like, it's just how long you get to choose where you are in the social hierarchy. And the good news is you're not a wolf and you're not a chimp. Because if you're a wolf or a chimp and you grow up in a pack, where are you going to go? I mean, I guess you could leave and find a new pack, but it's pretty hard to be a lone wolf. And you can't really rise through the ranks if you try it, you know, the higher wolves might just beat you down. But as humans, the good news is your physical strength doesn't determine your place in the pack. It's your perception of yourself. And if you start acting like, like you belong, acting like you have more power, not letting people interrupt you, all of a sudden people start to treat you with more respect. And this blows the mind of clients that I work with who've been nice for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. And like, I was being nice to everybody and instead of everyone, like, treating me well, they kind of just took me for granted and almost treated me poorly, maybe even took advantage of me. Like, I know, I noticed the same thing. It's a terrible strategy. The nice strategy, it doesn't work. Seems like it's going to work. It's got a good, you know, good on paper, bad in practice. So what we need to do is we need to claim that power and then people respect you. And here's a specific example. To not let people interrupt you. The next thing to do is to practice it. I mean, there's no way you're going to watch the video and be like, got it. You have to implement this, implement it in low stakes situations, don't you don't have to do in the highest profile, intense meeting in your life, but in social interactions, someone jumps in and you go ahead and just keep talking to finish your story. If you're one of those people who is like two people start talking at the same time and you're like, oh, sorry, sorry. People do this as if they've been like, like zapped or stung by a wasp. Like, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry. You know, just don't apologize and either let them talk or you keep talking. Nothing dangerous, nothing bad has happened. It's not a car accident, it's two humans talking at the same time. So let me know in the comments what you're finding most valuable. If you want to take things further and you're finding this useful, you are going to absolutely love my courses that are all part of Confidence University. The first course is the Ultimate Confidence foundation, which is going to give you that power and that raw ability to not fear rejection and other people's opinions. And then you can build your social mastery, your dating and relationship mastery, and career acceleration. Those are all included, plus more bonuses inside of Confidence University. Click down in the description to find the link to that course and until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.