To bring a conversation back to life: interrupt with empathy.
I REALLY gotta try this. My habit is to inquire to increase clarity for the content of what they're saying and my understanding of the content. And that does work much of the time. But i need to have that tactic ready. Notably, for situations where there fundamentally can't be clarity in what they're saying , like when talking to my doorman Vinnie about politics--he doesn't HAVE coherent thoughts to express so my clarifying Qs didn't work, but he DID have emotional needs so this could have worked. Same if you talked to a QAnon conspiracist.
