You’re in a conversation with someone, and it’s only later that you realize you shared far more personal details than you intended to. Or you just meet someone new, and divulge private details about your life that even your closest confidants don’t know. Sometimes your go-to strategy for breaking awkward silences and forging a quick bond is to share intimate information about yourself.
Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. In fact, oversharing is especially common in today’s digital age, where posting personal thoughts or feelings online for validation is just a click away.
If you find yourself oversharing more than you’d like, and feeling a bit uneasy about it—wishing you could press rewind on the entire interaction—there are steps you can take to have better boundaries in your relationships and build healthier communication habits.
Why do you overshare?
Understanding why you might overshare is the first step in addressing the habit. Here are some common explanations:
- You have a desire to connect: Many people overshare because they want to build a deeper connection or feel understood. Sharing personal details can feel like a way to create trust and intimacy, but it can easily backfire—creating only the illusion of a more intimate bond.
- You’re coping with trauma or processing emotions: For some people, oversharing is a way to work through unresolved feelings or trauma. Sharing your story might seem like it will be cathartic, but it can easily leave you feeling vulnerable or “exposed” if the person you’re talking to isn’t the right audience (or doesn’t respond in a way that helps you feel seen).
- You’re seeking validation or reassurance: Some people share excessive details to get confirmation that they are okay or that their thoughts aren’t “bad,” says Patrick McGrath, PhD, NOCD’s Chief Clinical Officer. You might tell someone, “I’ve done or thought this thing”—and wait for them to tell you they’ve done it too or that you’re completely normal. Unfortunately, the need for external validation can create a cycle where oversharing feels necessary to ease your uncertainty, even if it leaves you feeling vulnerable or regretful later.
Impact of oversharing
If you’ve ever experienced a vulnerability hangover, you know that oversharing sometimes has consequences you’d rather avoid. Regularly oversharing can lead to feelings of embarrassment or regret—factors that affect your self-esteem and your relationship with yourself.
In some cases, oversharing can also lead to relationship strain. Sharing deeply personal experiences too soon, such as telling a new friend about a traumatic event, can overwhelm them and place unintended emotional pressure on the relationship. In fact, studies show that excessive self-disclosure can strain relationships and cause mistrust, especially when the person on the receiving end feels unprepared to handle the information.
Oversharing and mental health: how they’re connected
Oversharing can lead you to feel more anxious, but it’s also possible that certain mental health conditions may make you more likely to overshare in the first place.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
OCD is a mental health condition characterized by intrusive, unwanted thoughts or obsessions, along with compulsions (repetitive behaviors or mental acts) that people perform to get some relief from the distress that obsessions cause.
So what does this have to do with oversharing? Well, people with OCD may feel the urge to confess their unwanted thoughts and urges to another person. They may also confess compulsions that they have performed or other behaviors that they feel guilty about. The confession is typically an admission of something that the person with OCD perceives they have done wrong and is an attempt to alleviate anxiety, guilt, or other painful emotions. Confession may also be a means of reassurance-seeking—trying to get feedback that “bad thoughts” don’t mean you’re a bad person.
Dr. McGrath gives the example of moral scrupulosity —a subtype of OCD that’s characterized by a fear of being immoral. Someone with this type of OCD may have a fear of being dishonest, and feel obligated to share every intrusive thought with their partner, thinking, “If I don’t, I’m lying to them.” Unfortunately, like all compulsive behaviors, compulsive oversharing usually fails to provide any long-term relief.
Social anxiety
People with social anxiety often feel nervous in social situations, as they frequently worry about being judged or rejected. Oversharing can become a way to mask their discomfort or fill awkward silences.
For example, someone with social anxiety might meet a new coworker and, in an effort to seem friendly and relatable, overshare about a personal struggle or mistake they made in the past. While their intention is to connect, they may later overanalyze the interaction, wondering if they said too much or left a bad impression. This overthinking can feed into the anxiety, creating a difficult cycle of worry and self-doubt.
Keep in mind, when oversharing is linked to conditions like OCD or social anxiety, addressing the underlying issue is key. That means getting the right kind of treatment—from a professional who is specially trained in what you’re dealing with. Dr. McGrath highlights exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy as a highly effective treatment for OCD that’s also helpful for behaviors tied to social anxiety. ERP works by gradually exposing you to the cause of your discomfort while preventing you from engaging in your usual compulsive responses.
ERP is a very collaborative process with a therapist. For someone who is oversharing compulsively in the workplace, an ERP therapist might encourage limiting your responses to three sentences only—say when a new colleague asks you a question (yes, even when the urge to say more feels overwhelming). “We might role-play that in therapy first before having people go out and try it in their social interactions,” says Dr. McGrath. The goal is to help people realize they can tolerate the discomfort of not oversharing and build confidence in their ability to have healthier communication styles.
How to stop oversharing: practical strategies
Of course, not everyone who is prone to oversharing needs professional treatment. When the tendency isn’t related to an underlying mental health issue, and you simply wish you could keep your cards closer to your chest, there are actionable strategies you can try on your own. These tips, approved by Dr. McGrath, can help you reflect, set boundaries, and foster more balanced conversations:
- Pause before speaking: “Sometimes we don’t know that we’ve said something that’s potentially uncomfortable until after it’s been said and we see the reaction to it,” notes Dr. McGrath. To avoid this, practice taking a moment to reflect before sharing. Truly think about the potential outcome of sharing what you are about to disclose. Is it too dark or deep for someone to handle? Would you feel a little weird if someone told you something similar?
- Set boundaries: Decide what’s okay to share with different people in your life. Not every relationship requires the same level of disclosure, and setting personal boundaries can help you feel more in control of what you share.
- Identify triggers: Pay attention to the emotions or situations that tend to lead to oversharing. For example, do you share more when you’re nervous, trying to fill a silence? Or do you tend to overshare more when you’re around certain people that you’ve put on a pedestal? Recognizing these patterns is key to breaking them.
- Seek feedback: If you’re unsure about your sharing habits, ask trusted friends or loved ones for their honest input: Do they have any feedback about your communication style? That said, “You’ve got to watch the reassurance seeking—it could be a slippery slope. Maybe you ask once or twice, and then move on,” cautions McGrath. The goal is to gain helpful insights without relying too heavily on others for validation.
- Aim for a 50-50 exchange. The idea is to listen as much as you share. “It turns out that people, for the most part, like to talk about themselves and the stuff that’s going on in their lives,” Dr. McGrath explains. Instead of needing to fill awkward silences by oversharing, try to remember this—and wait for the other person to contribute to the conversation. Doing this can help create more meaningful and reciprocal conversations—and healthier relationships in the long run.
Sometimes we don’t know that we’ve said something that’s potentially uncomfortable until after it’s been said and we see the reaction to it.
Dr. Patrick McGrath
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Key takeaways:
- Oversharing is common and often stems from a desire to connect, cope with emotions, or seek reassurance. Recognizing its root causes can help you address it.
- Mental health conditions like OCD and social anxiety can contribute to oversharing. Identifying these patterns and seeking appropriate support, like ERP therapy, can make a difference.
- Oversharing impacts relationships. It can leave you feeling vulnerable or misunderstood while placing unintended pressure on others.
- Practical strategies to stop oversharing include pausing before speaking, setting boundaries, identifying triggers, seeking balanced feedback, and practicing active listening.
- Healthy communication habits can be built by practicing mindfulness, journaling, and approaching oversharing as an opportunity for personal growth—not a failure.
- Let yourself off the hook. Even if you share more than you intended, practicing self-compassion is crucial. Being critical of ourselves keeps us locked in unhealthy patterns, while self-love opens the door to being able to do it a little bit differently the next time.
