Pseudolistening & Monopolizing

After reading about forms of nonlistening in this chapter, I realized that a few of these forms exist in my own life and personal communication. The first form I've discovered was pseudolistening. This is where you are pretending to listen to someone talk about something, but you're mind is elsewhere. I find myself doing this a lot, especially with my roommate. My roommate tends to complain a lot and vent to me. I'm never really interested because it's a lot of drama, so I find myself zoning out but nodding along to make it look like I'm listening. Something I can do to change this is to genuinely be interested and perhaps try to help her with her issues. Another issue I may have at times with conversations is monopolizing. With some people I tend to continuously focus a conversation on me. But, I've recognized that and I've tried to change that by focusing on the other person involved in the conversation.