You know how it goes: you meet a stranger at a party, and 10 seconds later, she’s telling you about how she just caught her partner cheating on her or the stressor at work that’s forcing her to go to therapy. It doesn’t seem to bother her that you’ve only just met; she’s more than willing to share the most personal elements of her life with you. It’s a typical case of oversharing, but why do some people share so much more than others — and have no idea that it’s making others hurt?
“When people overshare, they are often desiring very much to connect with someone,” Carolyn Cole, licensed marriage and family therapist, tells Mic. Dr. Gary Brown, a relationship therapist in Los Angeles, echoes this, explaining to Mic that “anxiety can be a big driver among people who tell-all, as well as feeling lonely and needing to connect with others.”
Oversharing is frequently an unintentional act: “many times,” Cole adds, people “don’t recognize it until after the fact” that they’ve just exposed vital details about their personal life. However, some oversharers become conscious of their conduct midway during a conversation and feel vulnerable for disclosing too much information — or, in some situations, they are aware of their oversharing the entire time but don’t view it as a problem.
Dr. Brown explains, "An oversharer may also lack a good 'internal censor." "They may not be able to read their audience in certain situations, and they often lack a solid sense of boundaries."
Dr. Brown says that if someone comes from a family of "talkers," where oversharing is the norm, they may repeat this habit in their daily lives. "Or," he continues, "a person may do it out of a general sense of inadequacy, or if they're a narcissist, they feel compelled to disclose everything that comes to mind in order to be heard."
People overshare for a variety of reasons, but the act is versatile. According to ScienceDaily, investigators from The University of Edinburgh and Northwestern University in Illinois discovered that as people get older, the danger of oversharing in conversation increases. The researchers discovered that when they tested 100 persons ranging in age from 17 to 84 years old on their attention skills, the older subjects provided listeners with more irrelevant material than their younger counterparts. This finding is critical in helping "design targeted training that helps older adults improve these skills and avoid embarrassing and potentially risky communicative errors," according to lead researcher Madeleine Long of the University of Edinburgh. Because this behavior can be dangerous — older people may accidentally reveal private information to strangers looking to take advantage — this result is critical in helping "design targeted training that helps older adults improve these skills and avoid embarrassing and potentially risky communicative errors," said lead researcher Madeleine Long of the University of Edinburgh.
Of course, giving a telemarketer your children’s names by accident vs chatting to near-strangers about your personal difficulties are two very different forms of oversharing, and most of us deal with the latter more frequently. In general, though, determining what constitutes too much disclosure is purely subjective.”Much of what determines ‘what is oversharing’ and ‘what is good self-disclosure’ is likely in the perspective of the individual receiving the information,” Dr. Brown explains. For example, if a lady told three different people about her s*x life, they might have three completely different reactions. Someone might think it’s TMI, another might think it’s normal, and a third might really want to know more. According to Dr. Brown, the notion of oversharing falls down to personal preferences.Although not every oversharer thinks twice before sharing, if you’re disturbed by too much information on social media, it’s simple to “unfollow.” It’s much more difficult to avoid hearing someone else’s information in person, especially in an environment like the workplace.
