Write-Talking vs. Two-Way-Get-to-Know-Each-Other-Talking & the Start of the School Year

I’m an over-sharer. There are lots of reasons for that — some of it may be the influence of Ashkenazi-Jewish culture and its broader acceptance of certain conversational topics, my ENFP Myers-Briggs type, my ADHD, my astrological chart that is 76% talkative air, but it is also complex PTSD. I struggled this summer with the realization of how my oversharing pushes away some of the people with whom I want to be close. This video by Alan Robarge / Attachment Trauma Therapist — Emotional Oversharing – Codependency and Love Addiction — is the best description of how I came to be 45 years old and find myself in this situation. Even my therapist of approximately 20 years says that it gave her significant insight into my behavior and its motivations.

During the height of this summer-time oversharing smack-down, a newer friend of mine said that he never asks me questions because I “automatically share everything anyway.” This hurt on multiple levels. However, it is also mostly true. When I asked another friend, one who has known me for decades and who had to take a LONG break from me, what she thinks about oversharing, she texted, “I think that oversharing can push someone else out of their comfort zone too fast. It can suck up all the oxygen in an exchange. It can reveal deep selfishness and an inability to calibrate who one is to another person or situation. It can feel like a false connection, like no one person is special, it’s just all about sharing, no matter who.” While my intellect agrees with that completely, an emotional part of me feels trapped in a crashing elevator because that objective assessment of my behavior is so far from my consciousness while I’m engaging in the behavior.

When I am emotionally stirred up about this self-realization, I’m not as angry at my parents as I would have been in the past. I’m more shocked about the healthy reality in which most of the people surrounding me have lived and worried that I am too damaged to change. The biggest benefits that I’ve derived from this maladaptive behavior is that I really know my own inner emotional landscape. I think it serves the writer part of me. However, as I am just learning, communication in friendships is not about “write-talking” as I call it. I can’t throw open the map to my inner-world and count someone as a friend just because they don’t immediately run away. Everything I’ve read and watched about how to avoid oversharing talks about a progression of sharing and intimacy in relationships that is a completely foreign concept to me. Because of my childhood and my parents lack of interest in me. I’m used to doing all the sharing work. I honestly can’t remember a time when I have waited for someone to ask about me before I started sharing. I will admit that there is a part of me that is terrified that no one will ask or that the people for whom I starting to care will not ask. In the past I’ve overshared to try to push closeness to develop more quickly because the self-doubt and self-hatred that comes into my thoughts while waiting for the friendship to develop naturally is excruciating. I’ve also overshared to protect myself as I get attached so that if someone is going to run away when they get learn certain things about me, we can just get that over with before I get hurt even more. (This is what I did when I re-met my husband 13 years after our first meeting as teens.) Lately, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to what Brené Brown says about oversharing vs. vulnerability.

While I know my own emotional landscape well and I’m truly interested in the lives of those about whom I care, I have managed to get this far without really understanding how get-to-know-you conversations are supposed to work. I say this as the bewildered child of a now-retired speech-language pathologist. I’ll just say this about that situation: Teaching people how to communicate does not equal teaching people how to connect with others through that communication.

If I am remembering correctly, I went from being painfully shy (almost living life outside my home as a selective mute) to constantly talking around the time that puberty started kicking in. In some ways, this year’s intention of avoiding oversharing, makes me feel as though I’m going back to that shy pre-puberty self.

In the Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy work that I’m doing, I label the “parts” of myself that developed to help me get through my childhood. There are “manager” parts (my perfectionism, the various critical voices, controlling tendencies) and “fire-fighter” parts (all my various addictive behaviors — both “soft” and “hard”). In IFS sessions, these parts are acknowledged and put in conversation with one another and that Self, which miraculously is curious, compassionate, clear, connected, creative, confident, and calm even though I wasn’t raised to be that way. I think of this part of myself as that part of me that is connected to G-d as understand “It” as a BuJu-Reconstructionist-Post-Denominational Jew. My parts have names such as “Butter Couch,” “Peeled Grape,” “Book Shelf,” “Hammer,” and “Capering Half-Jew Jester.”

The oversharing part of me is the first time that a part of me is a fictional character. The part of me that overshares is Adèle Varens from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Jane takes a job as governess to Adèle, Mr. Rochester’s ward, possibly his illegitimate daughter, who might have been conceived in a relationship, affair, or encounter with a French actress and dancer. Even though it’s not said explicitly, it is strongly suggested that Céline Varens is basically a prostitute. In the very least, she is a “loose” woman with multiple lovers who abandons her daughter. Upon first meeting Jane. Adèle tries to please her by offering a performance in the style of her mother. Because the other members of the household staff do not speak French, they are not aware of the inappropriate nature of little Adèle’s performances. To make the matter more cringe-worthy, poor Adèle is also not aware that this way of trying to introduce herself and win favor is not appropriate. Jane tries to preserve the girl’s dignity by not translating accurately while also trying to protect her from the devastation of more rejection and abandonment. (This is the scene from Franco Zefferelli’s 1996 version of the film, and this is the scene from Cary Fukunaga’s 2011  version. ) I have often tried to joke my way out of being called on my oversharing by referring to myself as “emotionally promiscuous” or “an emotional whore.” The contemptible, “emotionally promiscuous” adult part of me that alienates people with her oversharing is being run by the cast-off, neglected child of a promiscuous woman who taught her all the wrong skills. When I meet new people and am developing relationships with them, Adèle is running the show.

It is my intention to work on my oversharing this year in all parts of my life. I’m hoping that it will make my work-life more peaceful and give me some clarity about my relationship to my work-place. I’m carrying Bréne Brown’s guidelines concerning vulnerability vs. oversharing from Daring Greatly in my head as I speak to my students, cautiously re-engage with social media, participate in meetings with my colleagues, interact with people at my synagogue, and try to save a couple of friendships that I might have killed with oversharing.

I am also trying to treat the Adèle-Varens-part-of-me with compassion as I take on this challenge, which feels like learning how to connect with beings on a different planet with customs that differ greatly from the ones with which I’ve been raised. I need to be careful not to lash out at students who remind me of this part of myself that I often feel is pathetic or of which I am ashamed. My struggles this summer with oversharing have also made me feel more compassionate toward my students who are neurodivergent and those who have been negatively shaped by trauma in their lives. I feel an overwhelming love for all my dear friends who have stuck around through my oversharing to get to the version of me that is not scared and controlling. However, I am especially appreciative of my neurodivergent friends, people with ADHD or who are on the autism spectrum, who know what it is like to have to refashion one’s communication style to make oneself more appealing to “the neurotypicals” — as one of my friends calls those who through luck or upbringing don’t have to consider or learn these ways of interacting.