In Defense of Oversharing
Too often, we treat oversharing as a great social sin. But this is a spectacular misdiagnosis. The real threat to our relationships, workplaces, and families comes not from saying too much, but from saying too little.
Think about an ordinary day. You feel irritated after a meeting but say nothing. You pull back from a friend who made a comment that stung, without explaining why. You sense your motivation slipping at work, but you don’t articulate it—maybe even to yourself.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Saying nothing may not feel like an active decision. It may not occur to us that we could reveal a little more, clarify what’s going on, or explain what we’re feeling. We just move on.
We’ve become so hypervigilant about sharing too much information (TMI) that we’ve become a culture that shares too little information (TLI). We worry about blurting out the wrong thing, crossing an invisible line, or making others uncomfortable. But far more often, we withhold information that would clarify intentions, repair misunderstandings, or deepen trust. We confuse restraint with wisdom, and silence with neutrality.
We rarely even consider that revealing a personal truth is an option. And when we do, we tend to think about it in a lopsided way. We overestimate the risks and underestimate the benefits.
Imagine you are considering whether to tell a friend that their comment hurt you. What comes to mind immediately? Perhaps you worry that your friend might get defensive, feel awkward, or think you’re being oversensitive. Those possibilities are vivid and easy to imagine.
What’s less likely to come to mind are the risks of staying silent: lingering resentment, emotional distance, or a pattern of misunderstandings that slowly erodes the relationship. At the same time, we often forget about the potential rewards of opening up, including greater trust, relief, and closeness.
In my research at Harvard Business School, this pattern is strikingly consistent. When people are asked to think about whether to open up about something personal or sensitive, their attention instinctively and immediately zooms in on the risks. Other considerations, such as the costs of staying quiet or the possible benefits of sharing, tend not to surface unless people are explicitly prompted. Even then, when asked to rank what matters most, people overwhelmingly place the risks of sharing far above everything else.
In other words, even when we realize that deciding to, or not to, share is in fact a decision, we don’t give both options a fair hearing.
That skew makes a certain psychological sense. The social costs of revealing are often immediate and visceral: a grimace, an awkward pause, a fleeting look of discomfort. Those moments loom large and teach us quickly what to avoid. The benefits of revealing, by contrast—corrected assumptions, increased trust, a feeling of being known—tend to unfold quietly and over time. They’re harder to feel in the moment, which makes them easy to discount.
There’s another wrinkle that makes disclosure decisions especially hard: their outcomes are rarely all good or all bad. A reveal can make someone cringe and trust you more. It can feel awkward or even misguided in the moment and still do important relational work. But we don’t experience trust viscerally like we experience cringe. And so we learn to fear the wrong signal.
Even after two decades of studying this topic, I am struck by how often moments that felt uncomfortable at the time turned out, in hindsight, to matter far more than the polished restraint I once congratulated myself for. The problem wasn’t that I shared too much. It was that I shared too little, too late—or not at all.
This is where the conversation about oversharing has gone wrong. We treat revealing as a personality trait—something you either have or don’t. You’re either “the kind of person who overshares,” or you’re not. But revealing wisely is a skill. And like any skill, it improves with practice, feedback, and reflection.
For most people, getting better at this skill doesn’t mean turning every interaction into a confessional. It means revealing a bit more than you normally would: explaining a reaction instead of swallowing it, sharing a constraint instead of letting others misinterpret your behavior, and naming uncertainty instead of projecting confidence you don’t feel. These are not grand acts of vulnerability. They are small, calibratable moves that make our social lives run more smoothly.
Treating revealing as a skill also makes it less scary. Skills can be learned. They can be adjusted. They can be done imperfectly without being done disastrously. And perhaps most importantly, appreciating the benefits of revealing usually requires actually doing it. Silence never teaches us what might have happened if we had spoken. Only revealing does.
Oversharing is visible. It’s mocked. It’s easy to point to. Undersharing often isn’t—and its damage accrues slowly, in the form of distance, distrust, and missed chances to understand one another. We don’t need a culture of radical transparency or emotional exhibitionism. What we need is a better appreciation of the risks of silence, and a willingness to reveal a little more than feels comfortable.