That being the case, what can you expect of a woman who is a nervous
talker? The more tired such a woman is the more she talks; the more
ill she is the more she talks. As the habit of nervous talking grows
upon a woman it weakens her mind. Indeed, nervous talking is a
steadily weakening process.
Some women talk to forget. If they only knew it was slow mental
suicide and led to worse than death they would be quick to avoid
such false protection. If we have anything we want to forget we can
only forget it by facing it until we have solved the problem that it
places before us, and then working on, according to our best light:
We can never really cover a thing up in our minds by talking
constantly about something else.
Many women think they are going to persuade you of their point of
view by talking. A woman comes to you with her head full of an idea
and finds you do not agree with her. She will talk, talk, talk until
you are blind and sick and heartily wish you were deaf, in order to
prove to you that she is right and you are wrong.
She talks until you do not care whether you are right or wrong. You
only care for the blessed relief of silence, and when she has left
you, she has done all she could in that space of time to injure her
point of view. She has simply buried anything good that she might
have had to say in a cloud of dusty talk.
It is funny to hear such a woman say after a long interview, "Well,
at any rate, I gave him a good talking to. I guess he will go home
and think about it."
Think about it, madam? He will go home with an impression of rattle
and chatter and push that will make him dread the sight of your
face; and still more dread the sound of your voice, lest he be
subjected to further interviews. Women sit at work together. One
woman talks, talks, talks until her companions are so worn with the
constant chatter that they have neither head nor nerve enough to do
their work well. If they know how to let the chatter go on and turn
their attention away from it, so that it makes no impression, they
are fortunate indeed, and the practice is most useful to them. But
that does not relieve the strain of the nervous talker herself; she
is wearing herself out from day to day, and ruining her mind as well
as hurting the nerves and dispositions of those about her who do not
know how to protect themselves from her nervous talk.
Nervous talking is a disease.
Now the question is how to cure it. It can be cured, but the first
necessity is for a woman to know she has the disease. For, unlike
other diseases, the cure does not need a physician, but must be made
by the patient herself.
First, she must know that she has the disease. Fifty nervous talkers
might read this article, and not one of them recognize that it is
aimed straight at her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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