"I was only agreeing"

There's a jump that doesn't feel like one, and it's probably the commonest kind in kind people. It's the agreeing jump. "Yes, exactly, that's what I've been saying." "Oh, completely, we had the same thing with." "No, you're right, and the thing is." It comes in with warmth, it takes their side, and it takes the turn.

I'd like you to look at it with the test from chapter 7. Who's talking afterwards? If the answer is you, it was a jump, and the fact that it agreed with them doesn't give the turn back. From where they stand, they were three words from the tail and a friendly voice arrived and the tail went. The friendliness makes it harder to object to, which is why the agreeing jump gets the least complaint and does exactly the same damage. Nobody says "let me finish" to someone who's agreeing with them. They say "yes" and stop, and go home with the point unsaid.

The matching story is the agreeing jump's big brother. They're telling you about their mother, and it reminds you of yours, and the reminder arrives as "oh, mine did that", and now the conversation is about your mother. You meant it as connection. This is what your story reminded me of, so we're alike. What arrived was a change of subject, and the change happened before they'd reached the end of theirs. The phone call in chapter 1 was this. The friend rang about their mother and got yours, and it wasn't unkind, and it was still a jump.

The fix isn't to stop agreeing or stop matching. It's the same fix as everywhere. Agree at the finish. "Yes, exactly" after the drop and the half-second is agreement received as agreement. Two seconds earlier it's a person being talked over by an ally, and being talked over by an ally is a strange, lonely thing, because there's no one to be annoyed with. The matching story goes on the pad, as one word, and gets told after theirs is finished, and told to a person who's now free to hear it. In my experience the matching story is better received that way by a wide margin, because it's now an answer to their story instead of a replacement for it.

One more thing about the agreeing jump. It's often a way of showing that you'd understood before they'd finished, and chapter 4 is about why that understanding is mostly of the shape and not the tail. "Exactly" delivered mid-sentence is a claim to have got there first. Sometimes you had. Often the tail was about to say something the "exactly" didn't cover, and now it never will.