Nosy People

Not Feeding Into People’s Curiosity

Nosy people are those who you have little interaction with or who know you decently well. One of the most annoying feelings is when a nosy person attempts to learn more about your life. Not feeding into people’s curiosity is something that you have to learn how to do, if you want to get better at protecting your privacy.

First of all, being nosy is totally unacceptable. There’s a difference between casually inquiring about someone else’s life and inquiring when you haven’t seen them in a couple of months. We all do some casual inquiring from time to time; it’s called human nature. But it’s terribly uncomfortable when someone who you haven’t seen in a few months and who you’re not even close to, starts digging into your life the moment that you run into them again.

The problem is that you often feel bad for not engaging in conversation with them. But when you do, they then take advantage, intentionally or unintentionally, by starting to nosedive into your life and wanting to learn more about what you do in your free time. When this occurs, you’re put in an awkward situation because you don’t know how much you should divulge.

If you tell them that you don’t feel like talking about this topic, then it comes off has suspicious, strange or even awkward. But if you start telling them about what you do during your free time, they start asking more questions about this and that, continuing to make you feel uncomfortable and even insecure at times.

So how do you handle these situations? You have to have confidence in yourself and know exactly how much information you’re willing to share with others. Never be cornered into feeling pressure about sharing information about yourself with nosy people. If you don’t want to share anything, then make it clear to them, “Everything is going well. Thanks for asking” and change the topic or walk away.

But what you should never find yourself doing is leaving a conversation with a nosy person, feeling insecure or even sad about yourself. This often occurs for a couple of reasons:

You weren’t comfortable sharing information about yourself in the first place
You shared way too much information than you were planning too
Their questions made you self-conscious because you felt like you didn’t give much exciting details about your personal time

The third point is quite common; many even lie and falsify information in order to impress others about their social life. You never want to lead a fake life, but you also shouldn’t feel compelled to share details about your social life if you don’t want to. Stand up for yourself and be wise about who you share your life with.