I find myself feeling really embarrassed if I start telling a story and the person already knows it. It happened recently and they cut me off to tell me. It's been a week and I am still cringing about it.
I don't think that I'm the kind of person who keeps saying the same story over and over but whenever it happens I start worrying about whether I'm just boring everyone by saying the same stuff over and over.
The problem is I feel I have only so many stories so e.g. when a conversation comes up about e.g. bad jobs, interviews, dates etc and everyone's sharing, I can't remember if I've already told this group of friends or not.
I try to keep in my head and remember who I told it to. On one hand, I think its pretty normal to do it and I know with friends I've heard the same stories more than once, but I feel really embarrassed when it happens. It makes me feel less comfortable joining in on conversations and often I want to talk but decide not to just in case.
I do still ask questions and comment on what they're saying but there's often a certain style of conversation especially in a group where we all share experiences, especially humorous ones and it's making me anxious about joining in.
Anyone else experience this? I think I worry so much about being boring or people wanting me to shut up that I sometimes overthink it.
On a related note, I have been having issues with fatigue/brain fog lately - I think partly autoimmune and partly hormonal - so I'm also forgetting things that other people have told me. When I forget things, people assume I wasn't listening to them but at the time I absolutely was. It just goes out of my head. I so want to be the kind of person that pays attention and remembers and I've started writing specifics down eg "Sally has an interview on Wednesday - remember to message and ask how it went" but that only works for those sort of specifics. I don't particularly want to start keeping files on all the details of people's lives they've told me e.g. their siblings, partners names etc because it seems creepy. I feel other people seem to just remember this stuff and I don't and I wonder if this is playing a part in my worry about repeating the same stories.