I think telling T that you're going to really work on interrupting is a good place to start. I think it's okay to ask your T to help you become aware of when you interrupt by stopping and saying "Rainbow, you're interrupting! Let me finish!" However, I also think it's important to try and catch yourself. I know it might seem hard, but you really do have the ability to stop yourself before you interrupt someone, or to start and say "oh, wait, I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you!" You might not be perfect at it, but you do have the ability to start monitoring yourself, both in T and in RL. Finally, I think it's important to work on not interrupting in your RL. Tell your H and your close friends that it's something you want to work on, and give them permission (IF they would like) to stop you when you interrupt them. This is something your H might even enjoy! You call tell them that you want to do a better job of listening to them and hearing what they want to share. What H or friend wouldn't like that? The reason I think it's important to work on this both in and out of T is because working on it in T is ONLY helpful IF it transfers to your RL. It's no skin off T's back if you interrupt her; she's only talking for your benefit, not her own. You're not trying to build a reciprocal relationship with T, or show her that you listen and care about her life. T is just there to help you develop these skills so that you can use them in your RL relationships. You should think about the interrupting things not as a "special" thing you are working on "with T" (which encourages the transference) but as a RL skill T can help you develop for your RL (which makes your therapy about therapy, and not about T).

I can totally understand why a T would tell a new client that it is okay to do most of the talking while the T just listens and "bears witness." My first few months with my T were certainly like that! It was my first time in T as an adult and it was the first time in my life I had the opportunity to talk and have someone just listen to me, with undivided attention. It was so healing, especially after a childhood without a mom or any other caretaker or adult supporter. However, after that initial flush of "getting things out," I think it's important that therapy really "begin" which means that we stop sharing about our week and that kind of "surface" level stuff and really do the nitty gritty work of therapy, which requires listening to T and having T guide us. Keeping up with the chatter of "I went here, I did this, my H or friend did this, etc" can really get in the way of us focusing on our deeper issues and the real reasons why we're in therapy. It also prevents us from learning what T's insights are and how they might be helpful to us. Often, T's see things in our behavior and thoughts that we don't see; learning what these are, digging deeper, and working on changing our behavior/thought-patterns are what therapy is all about. If we interrupt T, we'll miss this valuable information and help. Especially if we've spent a long time talking in therapy and aren't seeing a lot of behavior changes, it's possible that we're talking too much and using T as a confessional instead of listening to T and using her as a tool for change. It might not be as "fun" as having T just listen to us talk, but the real work happens when we let T guide us towards new insights, thoughts and behaviors.

This has a parallel in the classroom, too. Those students who sit in the front row, constantly raise their hand, and interrupt every few sentences don't tend to learn as much as those students who sit alertly, take notes, and only raise their hand after I've paused. They're too busy thinking about their next question-- or how that minor detail I mentioned relates to their grandma, their cat, or Harry Potter-- that they don't actually HEAR what I'm teaching. They spend so much time in their head that they aren't fully present in the classroom. But, come exam or paper time, they're dumbfounded as to why they aren't getting "As" since "they talk all the time in class!"