IMAGES: SHUTTERSTOCK,ELIN ROBINSON
Recently, I stepped off a train feeling drained and disgruntled. I’d spent a 30-minute journey with someone I knew, where I’d made sounds rather than words: ‘Mmmm,’ ‘Oof,’ ‘Euurgh.’ This was because I had barely had a chance to speak. I was caught in the vortex of someone else’s stream of consciousness. I felt that if I’d simply left the ‘conversation’ (in the loosest sense of the word) mid-flow, it wouldn’t have made any tangible difference. A smorgasbord of emotions flitted through me: tension, frustration, boredom and, bizarrely, a grudging admiration that someone could hold forth with such a blissful lack of awareness – a concept alien to me.
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Dipti Tait is a clinical psychotherapist and hypnotherapist, with 20 years of therapeutic experience helping people to navigate the stresses of life calmly, confidently, and successfully. diptitait.com