psychology
Oversharing: 6 possible reasons why people reveal too much about themselves
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When people tell intimate details from their life to almost strangers, we tend to perceive this as inappropriate and many of those affected do so unconsciously. You can read about the psychological causes behind the oversharing phenomenon here.
Whether we are talking to the cashier in the supermarket about our digestive routine, analyzing the erection problems of our loved one over a business lunch or explaining to a flirtatious party how our parents’ divorce shaped our attachment behavior and what difficulties this caused us in previous relationships – in all these fictional ( but not impossible) cases, we can probably agree that we are dealing with oversharing. Too much information for the respective situation or person constellation. But where exactly does the border run? At what point does openness become oversharing? And what makes people transcend it?
Oversharing is subjective
In fact, the line between openness and oversharing is neither particularly clear nor fixed. It shifts over time, varies from society to society. For example, while ten years ago it was almost taboo to talk about mental health problems, today we celebrate people for doing it – in front of thousands of users on Instagram. Menstrual cramps? Hardly a woman would have spoken openly about it in the nineties. Today some of them report to their supervisor because they are sick.
To a certain extent it seems to be arbitrary what we perceive to be too open, and there may also be individual differences. Most people have a sense of what to share with others in a given situation and what to keep to themselves. Often the reaction of our counterpart also helps us with orientation. But sometimes this feeling only occurs afterwards, when it is too late and the cashier already knows all the details about the digestive process. A study by scientists from the University of Edinburgh and Northwestern University in Illinois also showed that older people are more prone to oversharing than younger adults.
According to psychotherapist Amy Morin, the following are the most common reasons that lead people to reveal more about themselves than many others (and often, in retrospect, often see as appropriate).
6 possible reasons for oversharing
1. A deceptive sense of intimacy
A classic situation in which many people share very personal things with a rather strange person is visiting the hairdresser. According to Amy Morin, the physical closeness – the: the hairdresser: in finally massaging our head – conveys a sense of intimacy that leads us to reveal ourselves. It would therefore be questionable whether we would entrust as much to our: m hairdresser: in over coffee.
2. With strangers it doesn’t matter what they think
Some people tell total strangers the most intimate things, for example the person sitting next to them on a flight or the girl on the lounger next to her on the beach. Why not if there is a high probability that you will never see her again? After all, there is something liberating about communicating unrestrainedly and getting rid of everything.
3. Embarrassment
Sometimes uncomfortable situations or tensions in a rather impersonal relationship lead people to compensate for them through oversharing. For example, if something jerky in a friendly relationship, one of the participants may entrust something private to the other in order to improve the relationship – not consciously with this intention, but intuitively. Can go well or end badly.
4. Difficulty with boundaries
As I said: the boundaries between openness and oversharing are vague. Ultimately, we therefore have to find some for ourselves, whereby we can orientate ourselves on our fellow human beings and their feedback to us. However, if you generally have problems drawing personal boundaries, it is often difficult, according to Amy Torin, to decide not to share certain things about yourself with others.
5. loneliness
According to the therapist, oversharing is often an attempt to establish contact and bond with other people and a response to loneliness. If a person has no friends or family with whom he can talk about personal matters, he shares them with strangers and perhaps subliminally hopes for closeness.
6. Reply
Oversharing people often react to oversharing – out of empathy or discomfort when someone tells them something personal about themselves, they follow suit in order to make their counterpart (and themselves) feel good.
How do we deal with oversharing?
If we don’t want to make a statement and break a taboo, oversharing usually happens unconsciously – and we feel uncomfortable afterwards. After all, we want to be able to decide for ourselves who we tell what about ourselves. In addition, oversharing can have negative consequences for us or be a symptom of a serious problem (e.g. if it is an expression of loneliness). If we observe in ourselves that we reveal a lot about ourselves in an uncontrolled manner and that this creates a problem for us afterwards, it would definitely make sense to look for the reasons for our behavior and work on them. If we recognize oversharing with other people, the easiest way to get out of the affair is to change the subject – or we just listen without judging.
Source used: psychologytoday.com, sciencedaily.com