I sometimes use oversharing as a way of not having to take up for myself, an abdication of my power and responsibility to make my own calls, and I think that’s why doing it feels vaguely icky inside.
This is a very insightful take, especially as I am working through my own calibration on how (and how much) to share the emotionally difficult aspects of my life experience. Your essay almost made me wonder if I am deluding myself about my own potential oversharing.
To explain this more clearly, I spent most of my life chronically undersharing about the most difficult to interpret event of my life--my mom contracting a random unknown virus that caused lesions on her frontal lobe and eventually brain surgery that removed much of her frontal lobe, which happened when she was 34 and I was 6.
My primary defense mechanism was to compartmentalize my emotions so strongly that I did not cry at all from the ages of 11-29. I didn't talk about how to interpret the event, my mom's illness, with anyone except for a couple of very very close friends during this entire period. Something you said in the comments, which is also insightful, is that I had to realize that I was very shame-prone. I didn't feel shame about my mom getting sick, which was outside my control, but I did feel shame that I basically tried to avoid her for all of my childhood after her illness.
I started to share this event and how I felt, slowly at first, but eventually, really just in the last couple of months, I've started to write about my mom publicly. Mostly this is in the form of a couple of memoir type essays that I have written here on Substack. I thought that I was potentially oversharing with these essays. But I now wonder if I was undersharing--in the sense that I am presenting things in a literary fashion that perhaps obscures more than it reveals. Rather than putting the interpretive burden on the reader, this overly stylistic way of sharing refuses to grant them the courtesy of doing their own interpretation at all. Perhaps the best way to reconcile this is to embrace that this sharing--whether over or under--is more an exercise in literary writing than the act of sharing as you are, I think, presenting it here.
Thanks for this essay, which is provoking me to take a look at my own sharing from a different angle!
I was going to make a comment about how this is all wrong and you're venting about oversharing as just another defensive self-admonition or something, but what you write seems irritatingly sensible. Almost too sensible.
> "Mostly I vent purely as act of release, but think I sometimes vent as a way to remain confused by weighing less informed takes and avoid getting clear about how I actually see the situation."
Alternatively, it started out as you feeling like the world could be so much better if everyone shared their whole selves with the sun, and you were willing to pay the cost of going first. Because if everyone did that, fewer people would have to feel ashamed of the complicated mess that we are, and we'd be forced to find a more harmonious way of dealing with it.
Maybe that's where it started, so you acquired the habit, and it's been exapted as a defense mechanism against your conscious will because you did not maintain Constant Vigilance. Thus, you end up making the moves as if you were trying to expose the world to your reality, but it ends up not being optimised for communal integration at all.
It honestly doesn't seem dyssocial to go "here's what a complicated human mess I am, let it be recognised communally and bearbeidet (ie. if a valid part of the human condition doesn't seem like it fits with the communal reality, communal reality should adapt to integrate it). If your honest first reaction to feeling reputationally threatened in a way that people in general shouldn't feel, is to attempt to give the community an opportunity to update on it through your example, I think the world could use more of that.
The correct story about "oversharing" in general is a mix. Your analysis is involved, but my guess is that it's 3% a story about you needing to shut up, and 97% a story about social reality being stuck in inadequate equilibrium.
This was an interesting read! It made me think of other kinds of oversharing that I've encountered and struggled with:
The first is oversharing as a way of extracting emotional support. Let's say you're meeting a new neighbor, and they share their bitterness over a divorce they've recently gone through, or detail the bad parenting decisions they make when they drink too much. I think this often happens with people who don't have lasting, intimate relationships because they struggle with boundaries. Instead, when they meet someone who is nice and agreeable, the over-sharer divulges things that make them feel uncomfortable. Since the audience is nice and agreeable, the over-sharer knows they will be heard, and get some awkward pity / sympathy. Maybe a good term for this is "dumping"?
The other kind of over-sharing is like a bid for attention. Maybe you have an aunt that's generally withholding, and does not take an interest in your feelings. However, the aunt loves to gossip, so she gets really excited and interested whenever you spill the T. In a situation like this, you might feel the urge to overshare with your aunt, because it will make you feel likeable and interesting, and worthy of your aunt's attention. You might share intimate things that you later regret, or share private things about your partner that they later get upset at you about. This makes me think of a dog performing "tricks for treats", since your aunt has conditioned you to perform a certain behavior for a reward.
From the inside, sharing my interpretation feels much more like oversharing (more vulnerable) than sharing facts.
I don’t think it’s a duty to interpret situations in my life for other people. I do seek out others’ interpretations when I describe situations without interpretation, which, after reading this, does seem problematic.
I do see it as a self-betrayal to value others’ judgments over your own about your own life. I’m guilty of that, and I think that gives off a bad vibe that makes others uncomfortable, if they pick up on it. Still though, I don’t like the idea of having to decide on an interpretation before I’m ready. I guess the real courageous move in that situation is to indicate that you don’t yet know how to feel about it, without giving off the sense that don’t trust your own interpretations.
This is a very insightful take, especially as I am working through my own calibration on how (and how much) to share the emotionally difficult aspects of my life experience. Your essay almost made me wonder if I am deluding myself about my own potential oversharing.
To explain this more clearly, I spent most of my life chronically undersharing about the most difficult to interpret event of my life--my mom contracting a random unknown virus that caused lesions on her frontal lobe and eventually brain surgery that removed much of her frontal lobe, which happened when she was 34 and I was 6.
My primary defense mechanism was to compartmentalize my emotions so strongly that I did not cry at all from the ages of 11-29. I didn't talk about how to interpret the event, my mom's illness, with anyone except for a couple of very very close friends during this entire period. Something you said in the comments, which is also insightful, is that I had to realize that I was very shame-prone. I didn't feel shame about my mom getting sick, which was outside my control, but I did feel shame that I basically tried to avoid her for all of my childhood after her illness.
I started to share this event and how I felt, slowly at first, but eventually, really just in the last couple of months, I've started to write about my mom publicly. Mostly this is in the form of a couple of memoir type essays that I have written here on Substack. I thought that I was potentially oversharing with these essays. But I now wonder if I was undersharing--in the sense that I am presenting things in a literary fashion that perhaps obscures more than it reveals. Rather than putting the interpretive burden on the reader, this overly stylistic way of sharing refuses to grant them the courtesy of doing their own interpretation at all. Perhaps the best way to reconcile this is to embrace that this sharing--whether over or under--is more an exercise in literary writing than the act of sharing as you are, I think, presenting it here.
Thanks for this essay, which is provoking me to take a look at my own sharing from a different angle!
I was going to make a comment about how this is all wrong and you're venting about oversharing as just another defensive self-admonition or something, but what you write seems irritatingly sensible. Almost too sensible.
> "Mostly I vent purely as act of release, but think I sometimes vent as a way to remain confused by weighing less informed takes and avoid getting clear about how I actually see the situation."
Alternatively, it started out as you feeling like the world could be so much better if everyone shared their whole selves with the sun, and you were willing to pay the cost of going first. Because if everyone did that, fewer people would have to feel ashamed of the complicated mess that we are, and we'd be forced to find a more harmonious way of dealing with it.
Maybe that's where it started, so you acquired the habit, and it's been exapted as a defense mechanism against your conscious will because you did not maintain Constant Vigilance. Thus, you end up making the moves as if you were trying to expose the world to your reality, but it ends up not being optimised for communal integration at all.
It honestly doesn't seem dyssocial to go "here's what a complicated human mess I am, let it be recognised communally and bearbeidet (ie. if a valid part of the human condition doesn't seem like it fits with the communal reality, communal reality should adapt to integrate it). If your honest first reaction to feeling reputationally threatened in a way that people in general shouldn't feel, is to attempt to give the community an opportunity to update on it through your example, I think the world could use more of that.
The correct story about "oversharing" in general is a mix. Your analysis is involved, but my guess is that it's 3% a story about you needing to shut up, and 97% a story about social reality being stuck in inadequate equilibrium.
This was an interesting read! It made me think of other kinds of oversharing that I've encountered and struggled with:
The first is oversharing as a way of extracting emotional support. Let's say you're meeting a new neighbor, and they share their bitterness over a divorce they've recently gone through, or detail the bad parenting decisions they make when they drink too much. I think this often happens with people who don't have lasting, intimate relationships because they struggle with boundaries. Instead, when they meet someone who is nice and agreeable, the over-sharer divulges things that make them feel uncomfortable. Since the audience is nice and agreeable, the over-sharer knows they will be heard, and get some awkward pity / sympathy. Maybe a good term for this is "dumping"?
The other kind of over-sharing is like a bid for attention. Maybe you have an aunt that's generally withholding, and does not take an interest in your feelings. However, the aunt loves to gossip, so she gets really excited and interested whenever you spill the T. In a situation like this, you might feel the urge to overshare with your aunt, because it will make you feel likeable and interesting, and worthy of your aunt's attention. You might share intimate things that you later regret, or share private things about your partner that they later get upset at you about. This makes me think of a dog performing "tricks for treats", since your aunt has conditioned you to perform a certain behavior for a reward.
I really like this. Really relate.
From the inside, sharing my interpretation feels much more like oversharing (more vulnerable) than sharing facts.
I don’t think it’s a duty to interpret situations in my life for other people. I do seek out others’ interpretations when I describe situations without interpretation, which, after reading this, does seem problematic.
I do see it as a self-betrayal to value others’ judgments over your own about your own life. I’m guilty of that, and I think that gives off a bad vibe that makes others uncomfortable, if they pick up on it. Still though, I don’t like the idea of having to decide on an interpretation before I’m ready. I guess the real courageous move in that situation is to indicate that you don’t yet know how to feel about it, without giving off the sense that don’t trust your own interpretations.