Excessive talking, known as logorrhea, often signals conditions like Bipolar Disorder (mania), ADHD, Schizophrenia, and certain Personality Disorders (Narcissistic, Histrionic), but it can also stem from Anxiety or be a coping mechanism, involving rapid, pressured, or grandiose speech, often linked to intense emotions or difficulty controlling impulses, requiring professional diagnosis for proper treatment.
Linguists call them conversational narcissists, talkaholics, over-communicators, and high verbalizers, and what they're verbalizing so highly is largely chitchat, short for chittering and chattering, both synonyms for incessant talk.
Anxiety, especially social anxiety disorder or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), can lead to excessive talking as a coping mechanism. Nervous chatter often stems from a deep-seated fear of silence or awkwardness.
Post-traumatic stress disorder has anxiety as one of its symptoms, which can lead to over talking. Complex PTSD, post-traumatic stress caused by an ongoing set of stressful experiences such as childhood sexual abuse, often comes with shame.
Excessive talking is a symptom associated with multiple problems with mental health. This makes it important to properly diagnose your child or teen to develop an effective treatment plan. Common disorders associated with overtalking include ADHD, anxiety, bipolar, and personality disorders.
Change the conversation: If an excessive talker is monopolizing the conversation, suggest a change of conversation or ask a question of someone else in the group. Excuse yourself: Don't be afraid to interrupt to excuse yourself from a conversation. Try to be polite and firm, even if they object.
You can also call them chatty or gabby, but either way, they're loquacious. Whenever you see the Latin loqu-, you can be sure that the word has something to do with "talking." So a loquacious person is a person who talks a lot, and often too much.
Out of all the mental disorders including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, which do you think is the deadliest? A review of nearly fifty years of research confirms that Anorexia Nervosa has the highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses (Arcelus, Mitchel, Wales, & Nelson, 2011).
According to psychology, there are specific personality types that are notoriously difficult to live with. These can include the passive-aggressive communicator, the relentless critic, or the energy-draining pessimist. However, recognizing these traits is the first step toward managing the stress they cause.
To tell if someone has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), look for patterns of intense mood swings, unstable relationships, a distorted self-image, chronic emptiness, impulsivity, intense anger, fear of abandonment, self-harm, and stress-related paranoia or dissociation; a diagnosis requires a mental health professional to assess at least five of these core symptoms, which often overlap with other conditions, making professional evaluation crucial.
Logorrhea is a speech disorder characterized by excessive, often incoherent or repetitive talking. It may be linked to neurological conditions, mental health disorders, or other cognitive impairments.
Loquacious is an adjective we use to describe someone who talks easily, fluently, and a lot.
Pseudolistening is a barrier to active listening that consists of appearing attentive in conversation while ignoring or only partially listening to the other speaker.
The first red flag of bipolar disorder often appears as significant changes in sleep patterns, mood instability (irritability/euphoria), increased energy/agitation, and rapid thoughts/speech, frequently mistaken for unipolar depression or normal moodiness, with sleep disruption (insomnia or oversleeping) and heightened irritability being very common early signs, notes Better Mental Health.
You can use a 48 hour rule where you wait at least 2 full days with 2 nights sleep before acting on risky decisions. Review your decision to avoid a tempting, but risky, behaviour.
Five key signs of bipolar disorder involve extreme mood shifts, including manic symptoms like inflated energy, reduced need for sleep, racing thoughts, impulsivity (spending, risky behavior), and irritability, alongside depressive symptoms such as profound sadness, loss of interest, fatigue, significant sleep/appetite changes, and suicidal thoughts, all lasting for extended periods and impacting daily life.
Need for Attention and Validation
Some individuals talk excessively as a way to gain attention and validation from others. They may feel that speaking constantly helps them stay relevant in social interactions.
The 3-2-1 method in public speaking offers frameworks for quick structuring (3 points, 2 types, 1 key takeaway) or practice (3 reads, 2 recordings, 1 peer practice) to enhance clarity and reduce rambling, helping speakers think on their feet by distilling complex ideas into simple, memorable formats, or by refining delivery through repetition and feedback. It's about creating order, preventing overthinking, and making messages impactful by focusing on core elements.
Interrupting: The ultimate conversation killer. One common habit that springs from the desire to be right is interrupting.
The ADHD "2-Minute Rule" suggests doing any task taking under two minutes immediately to build momentum, but it often backfires by derailing focus due to weak working memory, time blindness, and transition difficulties in people with ADHD. A better approach is to write down these quick tasks on a separate "catch-all" list instead of interrupting your main work, then schedule specific times to review and tackle them, or use a slightly longer timeframe like a 5-minute rule to prevent getting lost down "rabbit holes".
Adults can have ADHD.
Inattention: Difficulty paying attention, staying on task, or being organized. Hyperactivity: Excessive activity or restlessness, even at inappropriate times, and difficulty engaging in quiet activities. Impulsivity: Acting without thinking or having trouble with self-control.
The ADHD "30% Rule" is a guideline suggesting that executive functions (like self-regulation, planning, and emotional control) in people with ADHD develop about 30% slower than in neurotypical individuals, meaning a 10-year-old might function more like a 7-year-old in these areas, requiring adjusted expectations for maturity, task management, and behavior. It's a tool for caregivers and adults with ADHD to set realistic goals, not a strict scientific law, helping to reduce frustration by matching demands to the person's actual developmental level (executive age) rather than just their chronological age.
A garrulous person just won't stop talking (and talking, and talking, and talking...). Garrulous comes from the Latin word garrire for "chattering or prattling." If someone is garrulous, he doesn't just like to talk; he indulges in talking for talking's sake — whether or not there's a real conversation going on.