Regret sharing personal information with a new acquaintance

I can relate to sharing too much. it's probably the reason I don't have any friends.

I meet someone, and I'm immediately like and by the way, this is my issue- and talk about how it affects me

I think why I do it is to prevent any awkward questions by the person in the future

they meet me, they need to know what they are getting in to

Yes, I think I hear you, Motts.

Maybe their ADD comment caught you off guard and triggered annoyed feelings in you as well, but rather than respond defensively causing a possible 'fracas', you opted to just go along with it to keep things cool, which is probably quite common actually. BUT going along with it obviously meant validating the ADD comment too, and, so, that's where, in the spur of the moment, you volunteered the tidbit of personal info. It was, in the end, a sort of 'snowball effect', if you will. That's basically why I think the situation happened the way you described = you just wanted to keep things peaceful.

To find normal, healthy people who have normal boundaries has been an elusive experience for me my entire life. Obviously, it's reflection of my boundary-issues with people. I meet people and try to practice what I learned during my time in DBT and CBT therapy, only to be disappointed that I attract and practice on extremely emotionally volatile, manipulative, divisive people who normal, healthy boundaries backfires on.

I have a ton of acquaintances but no true friends for this reason. And it irks me to no end. We all deserve to be accepted for our true selves. Yet, we aren't.

Immediately after opening up and sharing some very personal information about myself with a new acquaintance, I immediately regret it. They didn't ask me to share and weren't expecting me to share what I did.

So...why'd I do it?

I forget that my achilles heel with social relationships has to do with my boundaries. I am really good at setting up my boundaries with other people verbally. But when it comes to sharing personal information, I don't like to.

When I do, it almost feels like I do it when I'm triggered which stems from the emotional abuse and neglect that I grew up with from my parents, I think? Like, we were discussing a conflict between us, and I blurted out this tidbit of personal information because i felt triggered to do so; that if I shared that irrelevant information about myself, it would pacify them.

Instead of a previous bad-habit I had from my childhood of over-apologizing (I have since learned how to stop doing that), now I just concede when there's conflict, even when I've done nothing wrong, if that makes sense. I really wish I could unlearn that trauma-learned behavior response to conflict. It's so detrimental to my well-being.

Instead of just telling the other person what I was really thinking - that I was just distracted - I immediately handed over some very personal information about myself, that I still feel vulnerable about which is why I don't share it with anyone. Now, this person can use this piece of information that I gave her about myself, against me in the future. "Oh, you're acting this way because of..."

For some context; this person made a value judgment about me which was 100% wrong, because they were 'projecting' their life experience on to me instead of just viewing the situation objectively. This person tried to label me as ADD b/c they view my flighty personality as impulsive, when I'm just flakey. Flakey and impulsive aren't even the same character trait. You know? Their adult children have ADD and instead of defending myself, telling this acquaintance, "Hey, don't project your kids diagnosis on to me, I"m just flakey," I inadvertingly enabled her label as correct, by revealing a trait I have that fits her ADD label.

Why do I do that? I don't have ADD. Never did. Never will. And I let this person's judgment about me control my self-perception thanks to past childhood trauma I experienced, where I didn't know how to defend myself or failed when I did try to, with my abusive parents.

I wish I could fix that need to erase myself to please others. That's not a good coping skill.

This is an interesting article (it mentions PDs so ignore that part)

Oversharing Syndrome - the Truth About Too Much Info - Harley Therapy™ Blog

@Motts

Yes, it's always a real case of introspection and almost a 'soul searching', for me, to try to understand why old patterns of behaviour (in myself) remain in spite of efforts to change, Motts.

So yes, I have areas in my own life that basically defy efforts at change as well, but in certain other areas, change has/is taking place. I can only put it down to growth. It's like plants: you put in the effort to understand their specific needs etc., and you do what's necessary to nurture their growth; but some plants are fast growers and some are slow growers, they reach maturity in their own time, and we don't have control over that part.

Maybe similar growth patterns happen within people as well, and people aren't all the same either just like plants aren't.

In terms of your behavioural changes, you might still be in a process of growth in specific areas. Maybe that's why the old reactions still take place sometimes Motts. So, perhaps it's still a case of just doing your best to approach the whole dynamic as best you can, which you obviously are, and let, I guess 'nature', take care of the growth?

I feel for you because you've taken an emotional and psychological blow, which is hard. Once the feelings about what happened have settled and mellowed, you'll feel freer in terms of tackling the social interactions with this person again. And when doing so, maybe just keep it in the back of your mind that there's a chance she'll eventually trigger you again, so just be a bit mentally prepared.🙏

My husband overshares. Its a process but I doubt it will ever fully change. It’s a life long thing. When he tries hard not to overshare then he just doesn’t say much and comes across aloof. He is opposite of aloof but if he forces himself to keep his mouth closed it’s because he knows he’ll overshare when he opens it. So there is no middle ground. It’s never “let’s just share a bit.” But it’s a work in progress

In most cases I think and have read that oversharers do it subconsciously because of various anxiety disorder. Don’t want to diagnose but person could be anxious in the absence of diagnosis.

I don’t think that it’s a valid question why wouldn’t you want to change. Some things are just how they are. You can only do so much in changing who you are

As about this woman you could still contact her or wait when you two are hanging out you could say “ hey btw I do not have ADD, last time we spoke you said I do. I don’t”. Not in accusatory or argumentative tone, just as a passing comment. I’d not mention her projecting as you just can’t know that. Otherwise it’s accusing each other of things and will cause more friction. Or you could maybe tell her your feelings were hurt when she labeled you ADD fit no reason .

I do have to say that ADD diagnosis doesn’t mean one is impulsive. Not at all. Impulsivity might come in with ADHD. Attention deficit disorder means just that. Difficulty sustaining attention. The person could be calm as a clam 24/7.

Overall not sure why she said you have ADD just because you were distracted once and she doesn’t even know you, it takes a bit more than that. It’s like saying you like to clean you have OCD.

Actually she might be impulsive one here as she blurted you might have a diagnosis even though she doesn’t know you well

This is an interesting article (it mentions PDs so ignore that part)

Oversharing Syndrome - the Truth About Too Much Info - Harley Therapy™ Blog

Ok so I had a looot of thoughts reading all this. Because I've gone through some of this experience myself. After years of observing these situations and experiences both inside myself and outside in the world, in my life, I came to some conclusions for myself. I will share some of them below in case it helps some.

Yeah, we won't be accepted for our true selves in most social situations. That's only for the inner circle, people who truly accept us. And that's actually ok, I mean why not be selective and enjoy the truly good relationships? And with others just enjoy the social interactions in the moment but not go deeper - is what I tell myself.

And yeah that's part of life's unfairness. Just how life is. I mean, having to rebuild ourselves from other people doing real bad sh**. But think of how it means you can build yourself up to be in a better place than ever. You will be more experienced, more aware of yourself, more aware of your true desires, your goals, visions, mission, and go for it all, all that.... Even if this world isn't perfect or totally perfectly fair and won't ever be.

I will be blunt....you don't have to agree. But I find, I've been to therapy for years, yeah, and I've read a lot of books, self-help, articles, whatnot, and I find those talk about the ideal, the perfect. The real world isn't like that.

There are even scientific experiments about how the Tit for Tat strategy works best for the prisoner's dilemma type of issues we often run into in the real world. You first act nice, your first move is fair and nice, but if the other person responds bad to it, not as nice, not as fair, .... then you immediately stop giving and don't give more than what they give.

Don't disclose anything personal to people you barely know. Let alone your weaknesses or flaws. Nothing can justify it, no vision of the perfect, moral, nice world can justify it. It doesn't make you a bad person either. You can let go of all obligation to be too fair, too nice, too giving.... You can let go of all the guilt that people in your past tried to shove onto you to make you act that nice and giving to them. This includes pacifying at your expense.... it's most decidedly not worth it in the long run. It will just make you anxious, depressed, stressed....open to more exploitation and selfish actions of others. Even if they are not even malicious people by nature, if you spoil them by giving too much, it's just going to be them getting used to it without even knowing what's going on, without it ever being intentional on their end.

BTW in the actual example, I wouldn't have said "Hey, don't project your kids diagnosis on to me, I'm just flakey". I wouldn't start psychoanalysing anyone without their permission or allow anyone else to do it to me either, or say negative things about myself ("flakey") or explain or justify myself saying "I'm just...", not even try to explain it like "I was just distracted".

You can just tell them it's not their business about analysing what you are like, and that you're not interested in their opinion of you. That they can keep their opinion to themselves. Simple as that.

And then focus on resolving the original issue, like if they needed you to do x, then ask them when they'd need x done, or whatever the whole issue was about. (Assuming you promised to do x. If you didn't promise, then it's not your problem at all)

Ah they don't even have to be cement thick all the time. Just don't get into drama and all those negative emotions basically or psychoanalysing it as "projection" and the like either. Because that's what I learned, therapy and all that psychoanalysing can't prepare anyone for engaging with the sh**ttier parts of the real world. You simply don't have to engage with it. You don't have to feel obligated to. You can value yourself higher than that.

Personal experience: I was actually OK with a lot of the cold, hard world until I was burnt about something (where I wasn't prepared for it), and then I tried out psychotherapy and all those books, articles, whatnot.

What helped in all that was really just about going inside myself and understand stuff inside better and see more clearly about my direction, my life.... But none of it would prepare me directly for returning into the cold, hard real world stuff. None of it is meant for that. This is my own conclusions about therapy and psychology.

And that there, the freeze thing sounds like old trauma yes. I find that going through all the buried negative emotions about it helps. It helps go out there again without having to freeze so much. It's a very long process tho imo.

Be patient with it. And part of that will be getting used to "fracas", conflict, all that again (I had to get used to it again myself in personal relationships. In business it was always easier for me and socially too, but close relationships wow no, not easy). The world and people out there just isn't always peaceful and it never will be all peaceful. Even in close relationships tbh.

Even if those will have more of a sync between you and your partner than with most other people. Is what I meant earlier. But it's like, most of the conflict will not be blown up into extreme sh**, with most normal people. That's the good news. With most people, you can dare to go ahead and go through the conflict and find that it's actually fine.

Can't know what she really had in mind. Instead of all the psychoanalysis of both yourself and of her, get in touch with your gut instinct imo. The psychoanalysis is just a bunch of ungrounded theories that never end up fitting in reality because we never have enough information and don't even have enough understanding in psychology to have those theories really working.

I would again leave the theoretical psychoanalysis out of it and again just accept the reality and the moment as it is, even when it's a hard, cold reality. Yes, they do have the same flaws.

Yes, a lot of people won't understand why you care, why you are sensitive about something. Most people won't have the time and the energy or even the capacity to try and understand how you are with it.

Yes, some people will even try to reflexively attack if they are annoyed or even just tired or upset. But it's not about you, it's not actually personal. It's usually just interactions gone negative. Understanding others with cognitive empathy on this can really help.

And if someone's actually malicious (not the majority of people) then of course keep away from them.

There is science about this again. With social relationships, they are of course more superficial. But even in a close relationship, unless the partners both work on being more in tune, it's only about 10% of the time that the sync happens naturally between the partners.

Because say, the other person is available for it naturally, spontaneously 30% of the time. Same true for you. (As a generality.) Then that means 30% of 30% is about 10% (less). Now it's probably even worse for a social interaction with someone who's not close with you.

Emotion regulation....I know DBT talks a lot about emotion regulation. I don't know if all that DBT stuff includes anything on how to avoid the paranoia of how malicious other people's intents may be. Trauma and even too much stresss can cause us to feel paranoid like that and easily lose trust and grounding in the world.

But I would say one way to go through and past that is recognising all this for what it really is, it's paranoia, loss of trust, loss of groundedness, emotional flashbacks,.... That gives the chance for us to work through it and not have to be very sensitive and we can react less strongly eventually. As far as it as caused by trauma or stress, the sensitivity and reactions. Some of it is just personality traits like for HSP traits.

I'm not HSP so I wouldn't be able to understand that part fully. I also didn't have childhood abuse. I did have some bad experiences as a kid but no abuse at home. But I understand sensitivity and overemotionality after having gone through very bad experiences in close relationships or too much stress.

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Sorry I'm finding it hard to sum up my message in one short line. But I'll try. Accept the world and people for how they are, the good and the bad too, keep observing the situations without psychoanalysing and theories, and recognise your actual emotions behind that freeze and go through them, don't give up, keep going, and eventually you'll be okay.

Hi Motts,

I am sorry that happened to you and now you feel vulnerable.

I know it's not a good feeling to have. Don't beat yourself over it. It is regretful but maybe it's a learning opportunity for yourself?

It's good that you're trying to examine why you did that. Trying to process it, write it down, discussing it with others and understanding your behavior can be self healing and help you adjust your behavior if it happens again.

Did the other person react strongly with emotions, words and expression? Are you sure they were paying attention? I say this not to invalidate your experience but because most people are concerned about themselves moreso than an acquaintance. Maybe they might not have noticed you didn't want to reveal it.

If they bring it up, I think you have a right to say you don't want to discuss it again or that it was a misunderstanding so it's irrelevant for discussion.

I do the same then "shut down" when they start asking me questions as if I don't know myself. I blamed it on my brain issues from surgery but didn't know it was a CEN thing.

Shutting down was my safe childhood go-to, but what I (and you?) could do is count to five before talking. Easier said. I tried putting a rubber band on my wrist to "snap me out of it" before talking. I keep telling myself to lift a finger for them to be quit so I can not blab out stuff.

I guess those are my best ideas.

I just had a thought reading this. Oversharing can also be a self fulfilling prophecy behavior. I share X, you get mad, "I knew it.." type of thing. It's easy to fall into a rabbit hole because of it.