I'm more than happy to hear people talking about themselves - I just wish people would remember that they've already told me a story before. The third time you hear about someone's school days when they did X, Y and Z can get a bit boring :D
Anyway, I am always happy when someone interrupts me "yeah, you told me about that indeed", before I bore them with the same story.
Where I live we call this "having your heart on your tongue." It's a way to cope with stress (for me at least). I try to limit it, but it always makes me feel better when people have been through similar things and I am genuinely curious as to how they solved similar situations.
Btw, I may remember that I told the story before, I'm just very bad at remembering who I told it to.
Maybe, but then there was that person I was close enough to, that I knew for a fact I was one of up to three people she told some of the stories to, and yet I'd still hear those stories repeatedly, on a weekly or monthly basis. So at least in that one case, I feel she must've adopted a completely stateless approach to conversation. As in, there wouldn't even be an attempt to recall she told me that exact same story just a few days before, much less that it's at least the fifth time I heard this within last 6 months.
I guess "having your heart on your tongue", as 'teekert puts it, would be an apt description. It's only now that it clicked for me that this is, in fact, a viable approach some people might have naturally adopted. Maybe it's even a superior one, as it keeps the state in the relationship.
Noticing that I'm repeating myself makes me feel old and congnitively unsound (I am hopefully not, I'm just shy of 40 ys old).
I always get paranoid they'll remember half way through the story that they've told me it before, and then ask why I didn't say anything.