I ran into this issue multiple times and I don't know how to act. For context: communicating in groups does not come naturally to me, so I often rely on skills I learned over time and not everyone may relate to this.
When I have a conversation in a group and just elaborated on a topic (e.g. talked about how my vacation was), it sometimes happens that another person joins the conversation and asks about the same thing. Since the people who heard the initial story are there too, I don't want to tell the exact same story again, but I also don't want to be rude to the new person and ignore their question or answer too briefly.
What goes through my mind:
- I taught myself to answer elaborately to questions, which is not natural for me. As a result these stories are usually very similar, and telling the same story twice means almost using exactly the same words twice. Doing so in a group minutes apart would be uncomfortable for me and I think awkward in general.
- I have a hard time figuring out whether someone is genuinely interested or they remembered something about me that they use as a conversation starter. I think knowing this would help me knowing how to react (maybe simply say I just told the story, but I'll fill you in later?)
What I would like to achieve:
- To show appreciation for the interest.
- To make the new person feel welcome in the conversation.
- To not hold people back to talk with me about the topic of interest again.
I wonder how other people deal with this situation and if there is any advice on how to achieve these goals and keep the conversation flowing naturally.