# Is this behavior a sign of a mental illness? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 21, 2012, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746 "2012-12-21T15:55:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/21 "2012-12-21T20:43:41Z")
All your comments are a hundred and forty characters or less? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/22 "2012-12-21T21:01:25Z")
My 88-year-old aunt is like that and always has been. She has the most incredible memory and can recite moment-by-moment detail of almost every interaction she’s had with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, or whatever has transpired during her day. My sister’s daughter once dated a kid whose father as it turned out bought a car from my aunt and her husband some twenty-odd years before, and when she told my aunt about it, my aunt instantly remembered the guy, what his name was, where he lived, and started describing the car and its interior and exterior color and where it had a cigarette burn her husband had made in the seat, etc., etc., etc. And she and her husband and two boys were always buying and swapping cars. They’ve probably gone through fifty or sixty in their lifetimes together. You can literally be in a car with her for an hour and never experience a period of silence longer than four seconds. And until the last five years or so she’s always been a very busy woman. She raised two children, she worked lots of jobs, her husband was an exec. with the phone company and over time they bought and renovated lots of houses, she was a fairly accomplished painter and won several awards and sold several of her painting for fairly good sums of money to people who asked to buy them, so it isn’t like she’s filling a void of emptiness somewhere. It’s more like perhaps it enriches her life by allowing her to relive episodes of it again during during a lull. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/23 "2012-12-21T21:13:39Z")
They’re not mentally ill. They’re just boring. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/24 "2012-12-21T21:38:57Z")
I don’t know if these people are mentally ill, but they most certainly make others crazy. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/25 "2012-12-21T21:40:30Z")
If lack of social skills is a mental illness, then there are a lot more crazy people that I ever realized. ---
**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/26 "2012-12-21T21:41:06Z")
This sounds like my mother. If someone takes her out to dinner, I know that I’ll hear a blow by blow of everything everyone had to eat, along with an explanation as to why she didn’t eat all of her food and brought some home and barely had enough room for it in the refrigerator and how half her leftovers are going to go bad before she can eat them all and the beans weren’t cooked properly, they were nearly raw, and they had the best looking desserts but she couldn’t possibly eat any because she was so full, and aunt Peggy had the salmon which looked so good, but what she had was also good, it’s so hard to make up your mind when there’s so much good stuff on the menu… ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/27 "2012-12-21T21:41:38Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I don’t know if these people are mentally ill, but they most certainly make others crazy. [golf clap] ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/28 "2012-12-21T22:12:12Z")
_I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time…_ I blame our modern Celebrity Culture, which assures people that everyone else gives a shit about the minutae of their lives. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/29 "2012-12-21T22:36:32Z")
> [@VinylTurnip](#): > > “Shut up already! I swear, you’re like a human Twitter account!” Now I’m responding to your post. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/30 "2012-12-21T23:13:00Z")
This reminds me of my father, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He was still functional, and my mother trusted him enough to leave him alone for a few hours. He called me, and itemized the breakfast he made for himself. He spent about 10 minutes explaining in great detail how he made instant oatmeal. It was pathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/31 "2012-12-21T23:18:12Z")
> [@davidm](#): > > This sounds like my mother. mmmmmhm. I’m like, where is the chase, and how can I cut to it? ---
**Author:** ![chiroptera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@chiroptera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chiroptera)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2012, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/32 "2012-12-21T23:33:01Z")
I’ve known several people like this. Absent some identifiable condition (Alzheimers, dementia, autism) I’m going for - depending on the person - somewhere between “insensitive, self-centered bore” and some flavor of anxiety or complete social ineptitude for some other reason. I DO agree that being blunt, even rude, is the only way to, sometimes, stop people like this in their tracks. They are usually incapable of recognising polite hints or social cues. And, in my experience, do not tend to consider others’ being blunt or rude as hurtful: because they are incapable of recognising polite hints and social cues. So don’t worry that you’ll cause “hurt feelings” because, if I am reading the OP correctly, these are people whose feelings won’t get hurt by that. Not the way you or I would feel offended, hurt, chastised, etc. But it may make them realise they need to self-moderate. If only to keep up “normal” appearances. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/33 "2012-12-22T00:20:52Z")
**chiroptera** , your experience differs from mine. The Little Miss TMI in my life has the nerve to be the sensitive type. The type that will scream, “You’re mean!” when you finally tell her to stop talking to you. I don’t like being mean or losing my temper. But it’s kind of like when you have to go the bathroom real bad. Damn does it feel good to just let it out. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/34 "2012-12-22T00:38:41Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Yes it is a mental illness. It’s called _twitterism_. Meh. Sounds a lot more like facebook to me. But yeah, being a bore isn’t a mental illness, just an irritant to others. ---
**Author:** ![Peanuthead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peanuthead/32/360_2.png) [@Peanuthead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peanuthead)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/35 "2012-12-22T00:40:09Z")
I’ve known many people like this. Drive you nuts with stuff you don’t want to hear about and they drone on forever. And you’ll also notice that these same people who love to talk hate to listen! Try telling them a story, even a short one, and they’ll find some way of turning it around so they are telling you a story. ---
**Author:** ![Nerdessence](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/47e85d/32.png) [@Nerdessence](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nerdessence)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/36 "2012-12-22T01:01:43Z")
Every. One. Of my coworkers. Every day, I have to hear about their trips to the gas station, the drug store. They spend all morning planning lunch, then go into detail about past lunches. I have to endure imitated accounts of nearly every word their children say. Deals they got. Ailments they suffer. Drama involving everything from family garbage to malfunctioning washers. One of them will tell her daily tale of woe to each person that comes to her desk, despite the fact our office is tiny and only holds fifteen people, with a dozen or so warehousemen. So you could potentially overhear the tale that many times. Then she tells it to the air in general. They eat it up, like a creepy cult. They all have each other’s phone numbers to text and call. They belong to each other’s Facebooks. They hang out after work. Swarm any kids who come through. All except me. Nobody has ever asked for any of these. I’m the office weirdo that says little and clearly doesn’t care about their minutiae. I have been consistently amused that every new person avoids me instantly. I must look surly. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/37 "2012-12-22T01:21:22Z")
I worked with a Maynard. I started saying “I don’t know these people and never will, so let’s skip the identifiers and move on to the plot!” It occasionally even worked. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/38 "2012-12-22T01:34:20Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > She has the most incredible memory and can recite moment-by-moment detail of almost every interaction she’s had with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, or whatever has transpired during her day. Her memory isn’t that great. It’s just that when you spend every waking moment repeating, recapping, and thinking about past events, they get put in long term storage. Anyone would be the same if they actually cared about the past in the same way. It’s essentially a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (read up on hyperthymesia if you’re curious). I don’t mean to insult your aunt, of course. It sounds like she’s managed to live a more normal life than many other people with the same condition. It can be a great hindrance in some cases. ---
**Author:** ![PandaBear77](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@PandaBear77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PandaBear77)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/39 "2012-12-22T01:43:10Z")
I had a friend like this several years ago. Nice lady but talking to her was torture because she insisted on giving EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL. Turns out she was on some heavy psychiatric medications, including Geodon plus some others whose names escape me. She was schizophrenic. We didn’t know THAT until she stopped taking her meds and ended up barricading herself in her car talking to herself with foil on her head. (Yes, seriously.) All of us that hung out together had just figured that her wordiness was just part of her personality but yeah … turns out it was the meds. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746/40 "2012-12-22T02:21:42Z")
I’m the opposite, to the point where people have gotten mad at me for thinking I didn’t like them enough to tell them about my day, or worse, pressing my about what **bad** thing happened to me to make me avoid talking about it. No, I like you just fine, and nothing terrible happened, I just lack to ability to produce more than “iunno _mumble_ _mumble_” about a day where nothing extremely interesting happened. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-behavior-a-sign-of-a-mental-illness/644746.md?page=3)