Thoughts on oversharing

I do have a handful of solid friendships with NTs, but those NTs are different, don't give a hoot about status, and very much march to the beat of their own drum. 

I think for NTs, they have different friendships for different reasons - eg one group of friends to play tennis with, one group of friends to go to the pub with and have a laugh with, another group of friends who are their work colleagues... most of these "friendships" are quite superficial, so it doesn't surprise me how they have so many "friends"!

I know NTs who have hundreds of "friends" but no one really close... or very few people... I think some NTs prefer superficial friendships, because they're a distraction from their stressful office job, which they secretly hate.I have two NT friends like that, not sure why they still keep me around... maybe cause I'm the reliable one who will be there for them in a crisis lol

I find them confusing too. And for me it also takes a while, at least until trust is established, to consider someone a "friend".

I think me being a verbal communicator, and my rather juicy ways of describing feelings and experiences, is part of what makes people uncomfortable lol. 

Someone once told me that I "look like a lady but speak like a rough bloke who's done time" LOL

I think spanking children is wrong. Surely positive reassurance and making a child understand that they're doing something wrong is better than them not doing something out of fear of punishment?

And yeah a lot of people have traits of narcissism, doesn't necessarily make them a narcissist. I don't use the term lightly. The people whom I consider narcissists have a long history of treating many people badly and manipulation. Craving approval doesn't make you a narcissist.

NTs sure love to gossip!

I also find superficial ‘friendships’ really confusing. I’m really resistent to thinking of someone as a friend until I feel we’re really close, but that doesn’t happen very often.

I’m a very verbal communicator too, and I think in my case most people (possibly me included) have put that down to blindness. But yes, we can’t know how someone is feeling unless they say, but then I use lots of energy imagining how they might be feeling, if that makes sense!

Special Ed by Stephen Lynch. :)

Dawn said:

I do wonder whether NTs really do have "friendships" based on superficial small talk only.

Yes - I find their 'friendship' to be a thin veneer of measuring your status and them feeling superior because we are clearly 'special' and inferior so they tolerate us.

I find my aspie friends to be very solid and real - and status is irrelevant - we all help each other or we're interested in the same stuff - we don't bother with 'small talk', it all has data-value to each other.

Thanks for the video. I like this guy and that was an interesting one. And thanks for bringing up the topic. It's useful. Also for being open because that helps others; it's helping me anyway. You know, you won't ever be accused of "over sharing" here, right? Because our stories are genuinely useful to eachother :-)

It has happened a time or two to me. I think because in order to not override other people's feelings, I need them to say what their problem is and how they feel about it. I will then respect that and help if I can. I find it hard to give consideration to a feeling I don't know is there. With that in mind, I share a lot assuming that other people need that information in order to know how to respond to me. That's certainly where some oversharing comes from for me. It took me a long while in life to work out that some people like to be private and this might have something to do with trust. And I'm only just working out now that most of the planet are working out other people's feelings, and hence able to show considerations, by means other than the verbal.

I do wonder whether NTs really do have "friendships" based on superficial small talk only. Is that really a friend? That to me is just some one you know to say 'hi" to. Odd. Can't wrap my head around that one.

For all I've made my gaffes in the oversharing department, I guess I'm lucky in that I've also met a few like minded souls with whom I have built a whole relationship based on our ability to be open about absolutely anything anytime. Those are friendships and they've lasted decades. Those are the people who know it's ok to call me in the middle of the night if they need me and are always there for me.

I find the term Narcissist used excessively. Though I've been that way in the past, it was because I always craved approval as I felt like s**t.

I think it's just general disrespect. If you ask me, then I'm grateful to have been spanked as a child. Appreciation for what our parents did for us takes time.

Yeah -  you are effectively loading their guns with ammunition to use against you.

I know the theory and if i really try i could probably get it right for a while but that is exhausting, so in practice i keep to myself .

That’s fascinating, thank you so much – I don’t have much energy at the moment, but hopefully when it comes back I would love to get more into psychology, and learning about these personality disorders would be something I would definitely like to explore.

Cluster B personality disorders include NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), ASPD (antisocial personality disorder, also known as sociopathy), BPD (borderline personality disorder) and HPD (histrionic personality disorder).

Not all borderlines are bad though. One of my best friends has BPD, and she is awesome. But she is very self-aware, has spent many years in therapy and has put a lot of effort into healing, and her ego is in check. Unlike narcissism and sociopathy, BPD can be treated, but it requires a lot of effort and willingness from the person.

Malignant borderlines are usually co-morbid with NPD; they tend to be manipulative and toxic.

Also, high-functioning sociopaths can be decent people - they usually receive a diagnosis because they go to the doctor's for chronic depression. Even though a sociopath cannot feel empathy, guilt or remorse, they are highly logical creatures and they can understand that using people, lying and manipulating is "wrong". However, with them it's wise to bear in mind that all of their relationships are transactional.

I'm not familiar with all the terminology you’ve used, (Cluster Bs, narcs, although I assume the latter means narcicist?) but again I really relate. It's so hard when you've offered your time and energy to someone and grown really to care about them and feel that maybe you're finally forming a close friendship that will last, only for them suddenly and harshly to reject you, with no explanation. I’m so sorry you’ve experienced this too.  

It takes me a while to trust people irl - on this forum, I find it easier to share my thoughts because it's anonymous, lol.

I have indeed had long-term friendships end because I overshared or vented when I was depressed. Which feels unfair, because I was there for these friends when they were having a hard time and spent hours listening to them.

Part of the reason why I am so selectively social these days is because throughout my whole adult life (pretty much since age 18 up until before the lockdowns started), I seemed to have a habit of forming close, intense but short-lived friendships/relationships with cluster B personality types. I guess they see me as easy prey/someone who is patient and "easy to talk to", and up until recently, I've been quite blind to red flags - they feel familiar because my mother is a narc. Of course, narcs and ASPDs will discard you once you're no longer useful, or if you don't agree with them on everything and don't jump through their hoops/see through their BS, and untreated/malignant borderlines do the idealisation/devaluation thing (so one moment, you're their favourite person in the world, and the next moment, you do something cringey or disagree with them on something or say something wrong by accident that wounds their fragile ego, and then you fall off the pedestal). To an autistic person who doesn't like sudden changes, this has always been a shock for me, I would always blame myself and work my ass off to get back into their "good books"... and then of course the cycle repeated itself. Some of my past "close friends" sometimes were super nice and supportive, and other times would "not want to hear about my problems", which was confusing as hell. In the past, some of these cluster Bs would succeed at chipping away at my self-worth and getting me to change for them... never again!

I have met many, many NTs (both with and without personality disorders) who have serious issues, but are in deep denial about their issues - partly because of social status/pride/shame, and partly because they see going to a therapist or taking medication as "weakness". Cluster Bs especially are very concerned with status because of their ego, pride and superficiality. So they suppress their issues with alcoholism/drug abuse/compulsive shopping/excessive social media use (overhyping how fun and glamorous their life is, of course), which can't be good in the long run. So I guess if someone else opens up about their issues, it makes them uncomfortable, because it reminds them that they have issues too, from which they are running.

Thank you for being so open about this, in a way which feels both honest and very far from over-sharing. I could relate to much of what you said very strongly: I also used to over-share a lot, and I have also lost friendships because of it. and it really hurts when that happens, because like you describe, the friendships I gravitate towards are usually close and intense, the kind where you can have emotionally intimate conversations about things that really matter to you. I think I used to trust people automatically, like not even question that they may not have good intentions, and this has got me into some vulnerable situations in the past. now I find it much harder to open up, except as you say when I’m really struggling. At that point, I overflow, and I tell people everything. For me, opening up now feels like an act of trust – and yet some people still seem to see it as pushing away, including people I felt extremely close to for a long time.

You’re not alone. Here’s hoping we can all keep finding ways to navigate the strange and complex rules of the world in ways that work for us.

Yep, that's what I've learned. These days I'm very careful who I "overshare" to - pretty much only a few close friends - because showing vulnerability means that people can take advantage of you, or gossip about you, and gossip spreads like wildfire.

In the past, when I had Facebook and had a lot of "friends" on there, I used to be quite open about my mental health (anxiety/depression etc), and also about autism, because I wanted to contribute towards erasing the stigma, to educate people and to normalise talking about that stuff. It backfired spectacularly, because it just made people see me as a mental person, and before I knew it, I had people whom I didn't know well irl, who were on my Facebook, spread rumours such as "stay away from her she's mental!" or make assumptions about me which were incorrect.

oversharing = easily exploitable something i want to avoid