Why Are We So Afraid of Conversation?

Krista Stevens
Wed, 26 Nov 2025 19:27:15 +0000
Editor's Pick, conversation, human connection, Lamorna Ash, Reported Essay, self help, The Dial

Why is it as humans, we can sometimes find it so difficult to talk to one another? Lamorna Ash experienced acute anxiety as a teen when faced with conversing with other people, fearing that she had nothing of interest to say. (I can relate; I maintain I can bore the socks off even the kindest listener.) Ash surveys three recent books on the art of conversation and tests the authors’ theories out in real life, in a bid to feel successful at “the most complex and uncertain of all human tasks.”

I think conversation is about the most fulfilling, pleasurable, ethically minded activity you could possibly engage in: to sit opposite another person hearing things you have never heard before because only they could have articulated them, to be saying things you didn’t know you knew until the other person’s words unlocked them in you, not to prove but to learn. To let yourself be transformed by what the other person has to say.

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