Think about the nicest person you know. The one who comes through when times are tough. They remember everything: your work stress, your sister’s surgery, that job interview you mentioned casually a couple of months ago. They don't make it about themselves.
Now, try to say one thing about what they're going through right now. For most people, that's where it ends. You can learn all about what this person does and almost nothing about who they really are. That gap between what they give and how little anyone really knows them turns out to be more than a personality quirk. It’s a pattern and it has a price.
In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a formal public health advisory on loneliness not a virus, not a disease, but the silent epidemic of disconnection that’s spreading throughout the country. According to the advisory, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, about half of American adults said they felt lonely, the advisory found, and Dr. Vivek Murthy warned that the US has shifted from confidants to contacts more people in our lives, but fewer we can truly count on. What the report didn’t capture is the particular flavor of this that clings to extremely kind people: the ones who are, by all external metrics, surrounded by warmth and yet somehow alone.
When every conversation is about you
Watch such a person closely and you will quickly see a pattern. They ask the questions when you talk. When you turn one back on them, they answer in a sentence, and pass the conversation right back to you.
You could know somebody like this for years and not even know that they went through something huge, like losing their job, or a breakup, or a really hard time, until long after, almost accidentally. They’ll say it like you’d say a detour. It happened, they went around it, anyway, how are you?
It runs the same way with good news. Tell them yours and they are delighted for you. Bring up their own win and they'll undercut it before you can even react, like standing still long enough to be congratulated is more exposure than they can handle. They are the ones who have heard it all and given away nothing about themselves.
