As with everything, context is pretty important. There are definitely people who are one-uppers, but not everyone. Context can usually provide the answer, unless one is socially disadvantaged.
this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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I changed jobs about a month ago, but never felt like my previous boss actually cared about my spouse having cancer (always said she could relate because her 70 something year old mother had a different type of stage 4). New job, people have said they can relate and understand, but have absolutely made it about me and how I'm doing, not how they're doing.
I learned about shift response vs support response from this Anna Akana video: https://youtu.be/y99WZ-3c6zE
Time and place for both, but putting names to them made me a bit more conscious of balancing the two.
PS, if you haven't seen her LA Metro PSA videos, treat yourself and check them out
Oh shoot, is this not normal human behavior?
Connecting: "I know how that feels. This one time, something similar and awful happened to me. It still hurts."
One-Upping: "Oh, that's nothing. This one time, something similar and awful happened to me, pity me for how I hurt more than you."
it is. However, some people (fuck you dana) can’t let someone tell a story without interrupting with a “my story is worse” and then just talk over you, telling their whole story you just reminded them of….
it’s “one upping” that’s the problem… it’s nuanced but it’s possible to relate without taking over the conversation.
Meh, I dont have the patience to figure out all the sophistications of small talk. If I'm telling you something you left a lull in the conversation and feel free to take back over when ever you like.
it all depends on what the conversation is about. If it’s about my toenail, feel free to chime in… and balance, like don’t just prevent anyone else from talking
One time I made the mistake of trying to relate to somebody with many allergies by comparing it to how I was raised vegetarian. Wow I've never made somebody so offended in my life. I really fucked up and I am never going to relate to anyone again.
Letting one bad experience change the entire way you interact with the world is giving that one person who was offended an insane amount of power over you and your life
I was being a bit facetious, don't worry haha. But yeah that's a good way to look at it, thank you.
I’ve absolutely never understood the idea that this is one-upmanship or trying to make the conversation about yourself. It’s a very solipsistic take - we are social creatures.
I use Arch btw.
I use Debian. Anyway, what desktop environment do you use? KDE, XFCE, or something else?
I have this one friend who is an immensely kind person but she's just horrible at this. She tries to relate with a relevant story but it always comes off as her just trying to shift the story to herself. If she wasn't such a sweetheart I'd think it was intentional but I think she's just bad at this one particular conversational aspect. Is a little cute seeing her try so earnestly and fail so spectacularly, not gonna lie
I mean there are people who do that and it’s usually very obvious they are doing it, not just relating to you. It’s a completely normal and acceptable way to have a conversation and I’ve never understood the people who say otherwise like what do you even talk about if you can’t even reference your own life? I think those people are probably just those “I don’t do small talk” people
I use LFS btw.
yeah, I almost always preface my rants with "is it just me or .."
I do want to know what other people think and if the things driving me insane are also driving them insane
Whenever somebody tells me about the death of a family member, I always end up mentioning my cat that died six years ago. And I feel fucking stupid as I'm saying it but I can't seem to control myself. I've never lost a (human) family member that I was really close with so I just feel like I have no idea what to say, although I'd like to somehow make the person feel better in some way. So out comes the cat comment.
As someone who has lost a dog they were really close to, i get it, and i appreciate it. Loss is loss. The feelings we feel are similar.
Its like when people with kids talk to people with pets and they talk about pets as their kids. It doesnt bother me, thats what you know. And honestly, sometimes, my 4 year old isnt much different than a dog anyway. People that get offended by that, imo, are self centered and lack empathy themselves
So I can totally see myself and especially my boyfriend doing that in a couple of years. (Our cat died this year) Sweetly he and a friend connected over death because a friends mum died a coupe of years ago. I was like oh my god you can't compare that, but our friend really opened up about his mum after we told him how heartbroken we're after our cat's death.
I think everyone secretly yearns for the opportunity to reenact that tired old movie cliché where someone half-heartedly says "yeah, I know how you feel" which causes the other person to angrily respond "NO, YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL, YOU CAN'T KNOW HOW I FEEL" and for the first person to sheepishly agree and apologise for the presumption.
It makes every character who has ever said that seem like an insufferable cunt, and in real life it's a thousand times worse. It sounds more like you fear that someone is trying to crib some of your weirdly-beloved pain as though it's currency, and to wear it on themselves like the spoils of a war you just lost. The difference between thinking that, and thinking "this person wants to be with me in this moment and share the burden", is so slight that it's easily-missed, so I don't necessarily fault people for the mistake. But you can literally just choose to go with option B in future, and in doing so improve your overall mental health and general vibe.
I feel like you can tell where the intent is behind it when they bring up a similar situation from their life. It's not hard to tell if it's from a helpful place vs them trying to upstage you.
I tend to do this to try to relate and let them know they're not alone, but lately I've just been trying to listen so that I don't come across the wrong way.
I read a post about different communication styles, and this is "builder vs maintainer". https://www.haileymagee.com/blog/three-communication-differences
A builder will try to add to the conversation by adding their own experiences. A maintainer will not add their own, but will focus on the other person's.
A builder talking about something may feel like a maintainer isn't that interested because they're not adding anything.
A maintainer talking to a builder may feel annoyed because the builder keeps talking about themselves.
I like that framing. I've noticed I'm a builder, although talking about myself is just most accessable strategy. In academics, at least, it's allowed me to instead pivot from myself to a theory or observation or something so building isn't quite as self centered.
In a sense that's what you're doing by providing that post, too. Best of both worlds to add to a conversation without diminishing the original. Master conversationalists can usually do that back to back to back, keeping a conversation going.
And I just think these grossly oversimplified textbook explanations for people are abject garbage.
Cool
Can you switch between the types during a conversation? I don't have time to read that at the moment, but i will later. Sounds interesting.
Of course you can. Giving the two methods of communication names doesn't make them absolute universal categories.
My wife is a one-upper when it comes to trauma. Unless I was legally dead and came back to life, she'll always win.
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