Sometimes, remaining silent appears like passive acquiescence or even endorsement. But sometimes it’s the best way to not reinforce. One way to counter the tendency to incessantly attend to the irrelevant until you capitulate is to deliberately mention a time or two when the person exhibited full accountability and attention to the relevant without going off on tangents and indicate how much respect and admiration you had for that. That puts the person in a bind whereby they can either choose keep focusing on the irrelevant and secure no reinforcement or change their tact and secure some positive regard.

The most important thing to remember about any of these erroneous thinking patterns is that as long as they are present, there is a high likelihood that the maladaptive behavior such thinking spawned will occur again in the near future.