Oversharing - or is this another epic overshare on oversharing??

I wanted to write something about oversharing, but then I got stuck almost immediately because I noticed the judgement inherent in the word. Who decides what is too much sharing anyway? And are all the people who think they overshare actually oversharing? Or have some of us just been told, explicitly or otherwise, that the amount of ourselves we naturally bring into a conversation is too much?

Some people are open. Some people tell long stories. Some of us give you the entire backstory because otherwise how on earth are you supposed to understand the story? Some of us think out loud, make connections while we are speaking and suddenly find ourselves somewhere completely different from where we thought the conversation was going. Which, now that I think about it, may be part of the problem.

Because there is also that moment. You are happily talking away, completely absorbed in whatever you are talking about, when someone gives you the squinny eye. Or there is a tiny change in their face. Or they make some slightly passive-aggressive comment about “people who need to overshare”. And suddenly you wake up from your reverie and realise, Oh. I’ve done it again.

There can be so much shame in that moment, especially, I think, for neurodivergent people who may already have a lifetime of these little moments behind us. We thought everything was going swimmingly and then discovered, apparently, that we had broken a rule. We were too loud, too excited, too detailed, too personal, too enthusiastic, too intense. We had answered a question with considerably more information than the person asking it apparently wanted. And we can really beat ourselves up about this stuff.

What if talking is part of how you think?

This is certainly true for me. Sometimes I don’t know what I think until I hear myself saying it. I can start talking about something, hear a sentence come out of my own mouth and think, Oh! That’s interesting.Then it connects to something else, which connects to something else, and eventually I arrive at the thing I was apparently trying to say in the first place. Sometimes it would have been considerably more convenient if I had thought of that thing first, but my brain doesn’t always appear to work in that order.

Talking isn’t necessarily me reporting back on a nice completed piece of thinking that has already happened privately inside my head. The talking is some of the thinking. Which is great, except that sometimes I am processing in the presence of someone whom, in retrospect, I might not actually have chosen as the recipient of all that information. I haven’t thought, I’ve known this person for twenty-three minutes and I think they should now have access to some fairly personal information about me. I’ve just been talking, and afterwards I think, Oh bugger.

There can be a neurodivergent piece to this. ADHD can involve impulsivity and difficulties with inhibition; sometimes the thought-to-mouth journey is remarkably efficient. Autistic people can experience some of the unwritten social rules around what we are supposed to discuss, how much detail is appropriate and when a relationship has reached the mysterious stage at which particular information becomes permissible rather differently. And then there is excitement: you meet someone who is INTERESTING, your brain lights up, the conversation is alive and two hours later you realise you have told them approximately everything that has happened to you since 1987. Oops!! Not again.

Social anxiety can do something surprisingly similar. We tend to imagine an anxious person going quiet, but anxiety can also make us talk. Silence feels like something that needs fixing. Is this going well? Do they like me? Was that a weird thing to say? SAY SOMETHING. So we do. We explain, add context, tell another story, perhaps disclose something personal because we’re trying very hard to make the interaction work. What looks like social confidence can sometimes be social anxiety with its foot on the accelerator.

And trauma can get mixed up in all this too, particularly if we have known what it is to feel misunderstood, disbelieved or misrepresented. We can find ourselves giving more and more context because if I explain it properly, surely you will understand me. At some point we aren’t having a conversation so much as presenting the complete bundle of evidence for the defence. But more information doesn’t necessarily produce more understanding, and not everybody is entitled to the complete bundle of evidence.

None of this means that openness is a problem. Sharing is also how we find each other. Someone says, “Actually, I struggle with that too,” and somebody else says, “Oh God, ME TOO,” and suddenly neither person is quite so alone. I don’t want to become less open, and I certainly don’t want neurodivergent people to receive yet another message about how to make ourselves smaller and more socially acceptable.

So perhaps the useful question isn’t How do I stop oversharing? Perhaps it’s How do I have more choice about when, where, how and with whom I share myself?

Some things that might help…

Remember that privacy isn’t secrecy - these can easily get muddled.

Secrecy says, Nobody must know this. Privacy says, I decide who gets to know this. You don’t need to be ashamed of something to keep it private, and not telling someone everything isn’t dishonest. You are allowed an internal world. Privacy isn’t deceit and it isn’t lying by omission. It’s making a choice about what feels right to share.

Ask whether this relationship has earned this information.

Liking someone doesn’t necessarily mean knowing whether they are safe with vulnerable things. Trust can accumulate. You can give someone a little and notice what happens. Do they listen? Are they curious? Do they gossip about other people’s disclosures? Can they tolerate experiences different from their own? You don’t need to conduct an interview; you can simply let time give you information.

Give people the headline rather than the archive.

“There’s quite a story behind that, but I don’t want to go into it.” “I’ve had some difficult experiences around that.” “That’s something I’m still processing.” These are complete answers. You don’t have to provide the supporting documents, and you can always tell someone more later. I find this strangely useful to remember: I can tell them tomorrow what I could tell them today.

Notice whether you are sharing or processing.

If talking is how you discover what you think, the solution can’t simply be to stop talking. But perhaps the processing needs somewhere safe to go: therapy, a trusted friend, a Focusing partner, voice notes, dictation, journalling, talking to yourself in the car. There is a difference between I want this person to know this about me and I need to hear myself think about this. They can look exactly the same while we’re doing them.

Let silence be silence.

If social anxiety sends you into talking mode, experiment with not rescuing every gap. A pause doesn’t necessarily mean the conversation has gone wrong. And perhaps you don’t actually have to make somebody like you before you have worked out whether you like them.

Notice the pull towards instant intimacy.

Sometimes meeting someone who seems to get us feels delicious, particularly if that experience has been rare. Enjoy it, but perhaps allow the relationship to catch up with the feeling. Intimacy can develop gradually without becoming less real.

And if you’ve already overshared … don’t turn the vulnerability hangover into a character assassination.

There may be useful information in I wish I hadn’t told that person that. There isn’t much useful information in Why do I always do this? What is wrong with me? Maybe you got excited. Maybe you were anxious. Maybe you wanted connection. Maybe your mouth got there while the part of your brain responsible for information governance was still looking for its shoes. You can notice, learn and adjust without shaming yourself.

I thought when I started writing this that I was going to write about how to stop oversharing. I don’t think I want to stop, actually. I like openness. I like conversations that unexpectedly become real. I like enthusiasm and depth and the “Oh God, ME TOO” moments through which we often find each other.

What I want is choice. I can share enormously with one person and 10% with another.

I can keep something private without making it shameful.

I can enjoy the delicious pull of a new connection without immediately handing over the archive.

And I can have an experience without automatically making it available for somebody else’s interpretation.

Perhaps the opposite of oversharing isn’t being guarded.

Perhaps it’s knowing that I belong to myself, and therefore I get to choose when, where, how … and with whom … I share me.