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While it is possible to overshare in therapy, therapy is a time and setting where oversharing is usually appropriate, welcomed, and helpful. That’s because the more details a client shares about their experiences and feelings, the more a therapist can gain insight into who they are and help guide them toward growth. Learn more about if you can overshare in therapy and the contexts in which sharing too much might not be as helpful.
What Is Oversharing in Therapy?
In situations outside of therapy, oversharing means sharing excessive information about yourself with strangers, friends, or even family. This kind of oversharing often has a negative connotation as it can colloquially be used to refer to the act of telling someone sensitive information they may not have wanted to hear, or “trauma dumping.”
In therapy, however, talking about yourself excessively is a good thing. Therapy is specifically set up to be a time and place in which you are meant to disclose sensitive information about yourself, your experiences, your trauma, or anything else you’d like to talk about. In fact, the more you say, the better because your words can help a therapist gain insight and provide support. In therapy, it’s important to be open and freely discuss things that may feel too personal to tell others. Oversharing in therapy, then, is not so much about saying “too much,” but rather about sharing things that are not relevant to your feelings or experiences. While there is no real harm in oversharing in this way, it is not necessarily in service of your growth.
What Is “Too Much” to Tell Your Therapist?
Oversharing in therapy isn’t so much about the quantity or depth of the conversation, but rather its relevancy. Since therapy is an appropriate place to talk about your most intense experiences and emotions, saying “too much” to your therapist involves getting off-topic or talking about something that doesn’t pertain to your treatment or therapy goals.
To help you feel like you are not saying “too much” in therapy or getting off track, it can be useful to work with your therapist to clarify and define your therapeutic goals—the purpose of the interaction between you and your therapist. This way, it will be easy to define what topics are pertinent and which are less important or relevant.
6 Examples of Oversharing in Therapy
It is possible to overshare in therapy if what you are talking about is not relevant or useful to your growth. Here are some examples of oversharing in therapy:
- Unrelated tangents: When a client goes on tangents that do not relate to their own experiences or feelings.
- Too much time on mundane details. When a person spends excessive time on surface-level details, like what they ate for dinner, what a building looked like, etc.
- Repetitive anecdotes. When a person often repeats details, complaints, or stories without interrogating those feelings or addressing why they are repeating the experiences.
- Focus on others. If a person spends their sessions talking about other people (friends, family, co-workers, etc.) in ways that do not relate to themselves or their feelings about those people.
- Sharing too many irrelevant or inappropriate details. When a person divulges details that aren’t in service of furthering understanding of feelings or meaning. For example, sharing inappropriate sexual details about others.
- Covering topics outside the therapeutic realm. When a person spends too much time talking about topics that have nothing to do with their therapeutic goals, such as work gossip or pop culture topics.
This type of information may not be useful or relevant in a therapeutic setting if the client is not willing to dig into why they are oversharing in this way.
Why Do People Overshare in Therapy?
There are many reasons why you might overshare in therapy, and ultimately it is the therapist’s duty to help you uncover and examine them. Oftentimes, those reasons are a big part of what you should be working on in therapy in the first place. Here are a few reasons why a person might talk excessively in therapy in ways that are not in line with treatment goals:
- Discomfort with silence: Some people might overshare because they are trying to fill in silences in sessions. Silence can be uncomfortable, especially when the attention is completely on you. It can take time and work to feel okay holding space for feelings without words. For that reason, people might try to fill silence with excessive chatter.
- Wanting validation: Some people might overshare by repeating details or situations over and over because they are seeking validation. Ultimately, repeating experiences or complaints often is a signal they simply want to feel heard.
- Avoidance: Oversharing in therapy might also be a coping mechanism for a person to avoid talking about themselves in a deep or meaningful way. It can feel unnatural or uncomfortable to dig into vulnerabilities, and oversharing about something irrelevant can be a way to deflect.
- Impulsivity: In therapy, a person who is impulsive or has a disorder such as ADHD may struggle to stay on topic.
Anxiety disorders. Certain anxiety or other mental health disorders might lead a person to overshare in therapy in ways that are not useful. For example, a person with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may not have the tools to emotionally regulate themselves and may cope by sharing excessive, unrelated information. A person with anxiety might spend time on details that don’t ultimately matter to deflect because talking about themselves may feel too challenging or overwhelming.
What Trauma Causes Oversharing?
While oversharing is not unusual following a traumatic experience, it does not appear to be the effect of any specific traumatic event. Many traumatic experiences can elicit intense feelings of fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other negative feelings.
It can take time to learn how to talk about trauma — but for some, talking helps provide clarity and ownership of the experience, reduces shame, and helps them feel understood and supported. However, there is certainly a time and place for conversations about trauma, and sometimes these discussions are started in inappropriate settings, such as work, school, or in another public setting.
When a person who has experienced a traumatic event shares excessive information about their experience (trauma dumping), it can result in the unprepared listener feeling varying levels of discomfort. Therapy, however, is an appropriate time to talk about trauma. In fact, it can sometimes be the whole point of why a client is seeing a therapist in the first place
How a Therapist Might Handle Oversharing
A therapist should handle oversharing compassionately and effectively. They might, for example, seek clarification, ask about the relevance of the extra information, or redirect the conversation back to its original topic. A therapist should also help their client understand why they are oversharing to get to the root of the issue.
Because a therapist is trained in understanding and creating the boundary between sharing and oversharing, they might take time to define those boundaries with their clients. They should also let their client know that therapy is a judgment-free, safe space for them to say anything they want. Through that process, however, they may find ways to help the client get back on a more productive path toward growth.
How to Stop Oversharing in Therapy
In addition to working with your therapist to help you stop oversharing in therapy, you can also take some action to regulate yourself. Here are a few suggestions to stop sharing information in therapy that isn’t helping you grow.
- Define the difference between openness and oversharing. Work with your therapist to understand what sharing sensitive information and openness means versus what oversharing in therapy means. Once you are clear on the difference, you can better identify when you are oversharing.
- Identify the issue with your therapist. Be honest with yourself and your therapist that oversharing is an issue you struggle with. Ask your therapist for help in that specific area.
- Call attention to the overshare as it happens. When you are oversharing in therapy, try to pay attention to the moment. Your therapist should help you call attention to the fact that you are oversharing and then work with you to understand why you overshared.
- Dig into the meaning of the overshare. Once you have identified an overshare, work with your therapist to identify some root causes. Perhaps it’s because you were feeling uncomfortable with silence, or that you were on the verge of getting into something that felt uncomfortable so you went on a tangent.
- Try to find relevance. Sometimes, an overshare may feel irrelevant, but if you are able to actually examine the information and put it into context with some of the larger issues you are trying to work through in therapy, it might hold deeper meaning that you and your therapist can work through.
The Bottom Line
For one reason or another, many people have a tendency to overshare with others. However, a therapeutic setting is extremely different from most social settings, which is why “oversharing” in the sense of sharing too much about your emotions or experiences is not as taboo as in public or social settings. While it may not feel totally comfortable to go into great detail about your life—especially with a stranger—try to remember that the point of therapy is to have a person listen and guide you toward growth. The more you share, the more your therapist can help.
