People who always change the subject… from themselves
Hi there, I’m Aarti, Founder and Lead Counsellor at Incontact. Some people are remarkably easy to talk to. They ask thoughtful questions, they remember details, and they listen closely. They know how to make others feel seen.
Yet, after years of knowing them, you realise something curious. You know almost nothing about them. Not because they are secretive. It’s because, somehow, the conversation always returns to someone else.
It is easy to mistake this for generosity. My experience, both inside and outside the therapy room, has taught me that it’s not always generosity.
Sometimes, it is protection.
1 Story — The question that never came back
There was someone I knew who had a gift for conversation. Whenever we met, I would leave feeling heard. She remembered things I had shared months earlier. She asked thoughtful follow-up questions. She listened with genuine interest.
One day, I realised something surprising.
I could tell you about her husband’s work, her children’s interests, and the challenges her friends were facing.
But I could not tell you how she was.
Our conversations had become beautifully one-sided.
If I asked how she was coping, she would smile briefly before asking another question about me. If something difficult surfaced, humour would quickly arrive.
Or curiosity.
Or an observation about someone else’s experience.
It happened so gracefully that it almost went unnoticed.
She was always present.
Just rarely present to herself.
I have come to realise that this is not uncommon.
Some people become experts at making space for everyone else’s inner world, while quietly stepping away from their own.
1 Insight — Avoiding yourself can look surprisingly generous
We often imagine emotional avoidance as denial or silence.
But it can wear much more sophisticated disguises.
It can sound like endless curiosity.
It can look like being the person everyone turns to.
It can be humour that lightens every difficult moment before it has the chance to settle.
It can be analysing a situation instead of feeling it.
None of these are inherently unhealthy.
Curiosity is a strength.
Humour can be deeply healing.
Thinking helps us make sense of our experiences.
The question is not what we do.
The question is what it helps us avoid.
Sometimes asking another question feels safer than answering one.
Sometimes understanding our emotions feels easier than experiencing them.
Sometimes becoming indispensable to others protects us from revealing where we ourselves feel uncertain, lonely, or overwhelmed.
Over time, this can become a way of living.
You become deeply connected to other people’s lives while becoming increasingly unfamiliar with your own.
The irony is that the qualities that make someone wonderful to be around can also become the very things that keep them hidden.
2 tools to notice when you might be changing the subject
Tool 1 — Notice where the conversation goes after someone asks about you
The next time someone genuinely asks, “How are you?”, pay attention to what happens next.
Do you answer briefly before asking about them?
Do you make a joke?
Do you offer an analysis instead of sharing an experience?
Do you quickly reassure the other person that you’re fine?
There is nothing wrong with any of these responses.
Just become curious about whether they are choices or habits.
Sometimes the quickest way to change the subject is not to refuse the question.
It is to redirect it.
Tool 2 — Sit with your own answer for a little longer
The next time someone asks how you are, resist the urge to edit your response immediately.
Before changing the subject, pause.
Ask yourself:
“If I stayed with this answer for another minute, what else might I say?”
You do not have to reveal everything.
You do not have to become vulnerable with everyone.
But allowing yourself to remain with your own experience, even briefly, is a quiet way of reminding yourself that your inner world deserves attention too.
Some of the kindest people I know have become exceptionally good at looking after everyone else’s emotional world.
Sometimes they have spent so long doing that, they have forgotten that they are allowed to occupy space in the conversation as well.
Listening is a gift.
Curiosity is a gift.
Humour is a gift.
But they become even more meaningful when they are not used to protect us from ourselves.
Perhaps one of the quietest forms of courage is allowing someone to know how we are, too.
With warmth and care,
Aarti ❤️
