Published on 12, July, 2020
I watched this video today and found it very interesting and useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYCJ9pvQJhA
When I was a young grasshopper, I used to wear my heart on my sleeve and overshared a lot. In hindsight, I realise why this caused problems for me, pushed people away and made me vulnerable to people who took advantage of me. These days, I'm a lot more guarded and careful - I don't feel the need to overshare with people I've just met or random acquaintances for example - but NT rules of oversharing seem to be quite complex, I find.
I am normally quite a closed off person irl, but every once in a while, if I'm in a bad place or if a topic is brought up that I feel strongly about, I do have the tendency to rant/vent (so when the bottle overflows, basically). I've had incidents where I've been friends with people for quite a while, but when I was in a bad place and overshared about something, those friendships ended abruptly. I realised retrospectively that this was my fault for incorrectly assessing the friendships. I noticed that many NTs have friendships that are solely based on superficial/light-hearted "banter" - even if they have known each other for many years and hang out all the time. Personally, I don't see the point of such "friendships" but hey ho, each to their own!
I've also had incidents where friends have opened up to me/vented to me about something on several occasions, and I listened and gave advice, but when I opened up to them about something, it wasn't well-received and they distanced themselves from me or were dismissive of me. This has usually been involving "cool" NT people, who would never dream of showing themselves as anything other than permanently happy and successful to their "cool" NT friends, who pretty much used me as a therapist, but didn't really give a hoot about me. I've had one-sided friendships like that that have lasted for years, because they would occasionally be super nice and generous towards me (when it was convenient for them or when they needed something from me).
Similarly, I've had one or two incidents with people I've known for a long time and spoke to regularly, and we were pretty open with each other about life and its tribulations, and then they would make excuses not to talk to me like "I'm busy" etc. If I would reach out to them about something (I usually always ask beforehand like "can I talk to you about something? I'm really struggling at the moment", instead of just offloading, because I'm polite and don't want to annoy my friends) and they would straight up tell me "I don't have time to hear about your problems". Later it had transpired that they were annoyed at me for some minor transgression or social faux pas, but didn't tell me, so I'd been downgraded from friend to acquaintance.
When the tables are turned and people "overshare" to me, I've also been known to cause upset. While I do feel uncomfortable if a total stranger offloads on me (due to bad past experiences mostly), I'm always there for my friends and always happy to help them. However, if someone I care about comes to me with a problem, my immediate instinct is "how can we fix this?" but if I give advice or come up with solutions, people sometimes get upset and defensive. Sometimes, some people just want to hear something like "oh, that must be awful, poor you". I do say such things to my friends who are more emotional and sensitive, but it feels inauthentic, and it takes me a lot of willpower to repress myself if I have potential solutions to their problems, because I hate seeing people I care about suffer... I've also had incidents where someone would vent to me over and over again about the same problem, I would give them the same solutions, which they would completely disregard, and carry on venting about the same problem...
What are people's thoughts on oversharing?
oversharing = easily exploitable something i want to avoid
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.