Confessions of a Chronic Undersharer

I’ve been thinking about oversharing this week.

Not considering doing it, but mulling over the concept itself. Oversharing frightens me. It is one third of the unholy trinity of things—the other two being zombies and cephalopods—I would least like to encounter during my remaining time on this earth.

I’m thinking about it a little differently this week, though, as I came across this passage in Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser (emphasis mine):

“…their families, their feelings, their grief, their joy, and the day-to-day intimacies and challenges of being human. Some may denounce that kind of talk as oversharing. That’s a word I would like to banish. No one gets criticized for undersharing… Undersharing, underpraising, under-talking things out are at the core of some of humankind’s deepest problems.”

…DO we want to banish the word oversharing?

I mean, I kind of do. I don’t know about you, but if I no longer had to fear oversharing, I’d have cognitive bandwidth for DAYS.

I am a chronic undersharer, which is another way of saying that, consciously or unconsciously, I live in constant fear of my own death. Socially speaking.

Although I wore it for years as kind of a badge, I’m starting to understand that undersharing is a highly protective and moderately pathetic posture. It’s walking into every conversation with my hands over my jugular, glancing about for predators. You are saying, “So, what’s going on with you?” and I am hearing a T. rex eating a live goat.

I’ve been working on this for about a year, but I still blanch at the mere suggestion that I may have overshared. In fact, just READING the word oversharing in that passage made me stop in the middle of my kitchen, put the book on the counter, and wonder if I had been too open with the dog this morning.

I share this with you now—despite my discomfort—because I think Elizabeth Lesser is probably right. Undersharing probably isn’t helping anybody.

I share everything that I have on this blog—despite my discomfort—for the same reason.

Not that long ago, I came to the conclusion that I contribute very little to the world by pretending to have it all together. The only person who benefits from that is me, and I wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of mental and emotional wellness under that model.

I think we kinda need to hear each other’s stories. We need to be aware that other people are real and imperfect and sometimes struggling, not only because it helps us feel less alone, but because it helps us connect.

On a larger scale, this urge to prune and curate vulnerability away is part of how we have arrived at a mental health crisis among adolescents. Social comparison is one of the most destructive behaviors humans can engage in, and when all kids can see of each other is social media perfection, they start to feel insufficient and alone.

Let’s be honest and say that the adults aren’t doing so hot with this, either.

My first instinct, I can assure you, is to write about frivolous nonsense. I would strongly prefer to be crafting an essay about the finer points of the *NSYNC Christmas album right now, holding you all at arm’s length with my thoughts about “The First Noel” (it’s a masterpiece) and “I Guess It’s Christmas Time” (it’s an abomination), but I keep getting these nudges instead.

Be a little more real. 

I don’t think I’ll ever quite get to the Elizabeth Lesser-level of disregarding oversharing entirely. Facebook is a pretty poor substitute for a diary, and as Brene Brown says, you need to make sure people have earned the right to hear your stories before you start spewing them.

I can sense in myself, however, the same craving for authenticity that I think we’re experiencing as a culture. Maybe we don’t want OVERsharing, but I think we do want sharing. One million of us bought Untamed, after all. Brene Brown has the fourth most-watched TED Talk of all time, and podcasts with vulnerable hosts only seem to be growing in number and popularity.

We’re already physically isolated. Maybe we’re losing our tolerance for emotional isolation as a result.

So, I’m going to keep making the effort, here and in real life, to let a little light in. A little. A lot would probably still send me packing for the next SpaceX flight, but a little, I can do.

As such, I shall leave you this video of an octopus eating a shark, which traumatized me as a young college student eagerly clicking her way down a YouTube rabbit hole that probably started with Michael Rosenbaum and ended in permanent fear of open water. Now we share the same fear.

…too much sharing?