The Key to Stronger Connections? A Little Oversharing, Says a Harvard Researcher

I used to constantly overshare—so much that “chronic oversharer” was the tagline for my blog. Ask me how I was doing, and I’d tell you everything, in full, with footnotes.

Then I got therapy. I scaled way back, but that doesn’t mean I transformed into one of those mysteriously alluring women who could be a barista or an international spy. I still self-disclose quite a lot, but I’ve at least learned the difference between mentioning in an article that my husband and I are having an argument and airing all our dirty laundry. (The argument is probably about dirty laundry.)

I’m not the only one who struggles to find the balance between appropriate self-disclosure and inviting a camera crew into my ob-gyn appointments. But it turns out that most of us have been operating under a flawed assumption about openness. “We’ve been warned not to overshare, but in my research, the bigger risk is often undersharing,” says Leslie John, PhD, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the new book Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing . “When we reveal something real—like something slightly imperfect—we signal trust. And trust invites trust back. That’s how relationships deepen .”

These days, I still lean toward the sharing-too-much end of the dial. (I did recently inform the students in my adult dance class that the pain in my side was either a pulled muscle or me ovulating.) But I also have a set of rich, meaningful relationships, including a great group of girlfriends . Coincidence? According to the research, probably not.

Ahead, John explains the science of oversharing and how you can use it to deepen your relationships and even get ahead at work.

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Is oversharing really a smart move?

Yes, actually, and John’s evidence is pretty convincing. We’ve absorbed decades of cautionary advice about TMI, keeping things professional and not “burdening” people with our inner lives or “trauma dumping.” The result, John argues, is a culture that chronically undersells the value of openness and dramatically overestimates the risk.

In study after study, John has found that people assume revealing something vulnerable—like admitting “I get nervous before big presentations”—will tank their reputation. It almost never does. Small, authentic admissions tend to increase trust without reducing how competent someone appears. What feels risky in the moment often builds connection in the long run. The thing we dread (judgment, awkwardness, that specific face or throat-clearing noise people make) is far less common than we fear.

“I’ve come to believe that more often than not, what we call ‘oversharing’ is really just sharing. What feels like overcommunicating is really just communicating,” John says.

The labels themselves, she says, carry a bias. Telling someone they are overdoing anything is like saying they are “too much,” which, as I can attest, is a very painful thing to hear. Labeling people is isolating. Openness, on the other hand, is one of the fastest routes to genuine closeness, because vulnerability signals that you trust the other person—and trust, as John says, is contagious.

Is there any science behind this?

Plenty! And some of it will make you want to call someone and tell them your deepest secret immediately.

The benefits of getting candid

In one of John’s studies, nearly 90% of people said they’d rather hire a job candidate who admitted to failing an exam than one who concealed their grades. Around 85% preferred a colleague with a painfully transparent calendar (therapy appointments, colonoscopy prep and all) over someone who kept everything locked down. And in a study on confessions of romantic feelings , John found that the declaration was reciprocated more than 80% of the time. That’s probably much higher than most of us would predict—I would have guessed 12%, tops, and only if the other person had recently watched a rom-com—which suggests we are catastrophically bad at forecasting how people will respond to our honesty.

Opening up also increases relationship satisfaction—daily sharing of feelings is a reliable predictor of it. It reduces rumination, which in turn boosts overall well-being, and can even make you more influential in professional settings. Not bad for something most of us have been trying to suppress since middle school.

The downside of saying too much

Of course, there are drawbacks. When oversharing crosses into poor timing, one-sided monologues, gossip or a complete disregard for context , people understandably become uncomfortable.

John describes what she calls a “disclosure hangover,” that gut-wrenching conviction, usually at 2 a.m., that you definitely said too much. I know that feeling all too well and am delighted to finally have a name for it! But even here, she’s found the bright side: “People can cringe and admire your guts,” she says. “We see the cringe. We don’t always see the admiration or the long-term trust we’ve built.”

This can vary by audience, however. At work, vulnerability requires more careful calibration than it does with close friends or family. Sharing your feelings with a longtime best friend is very different from sharing them with your boss in a quarterly review. Context and power dynamics matter (more on that below).

What’s the right way to overshare?

“Revealing is a skill,” John says. “And like any skill, it improves with practice.”

The goal isn’t to treat every interaction like a confessional. It’s to develop the kind of situational awareness that lets you open up in ways that actually deepen connection. Here are John’s pro tips for doing exactly that:

Match the depth to the relationship

Don’t start at chapter 10. Let openness build gradually, the way any good story does.

This has been one of the hardest lessons for me. I’m basically a golden retriever in human form and want to trust and share everything with everyone immediately. But unloading your full history on someone you met 40 minutes ago at a birthday party isn’t vulnerability. It’s a red flag. (Healthy people will back away slowly. Those with narcissistic or borderline tendencies, on the other hand, will flock to you like a honey badger to, well, anything it can destroy. Learn from my mistakes.)

Begin with lower-stakes disclosures , and let intimacy develop organically.

Share feelings, not just facts

There’s a meaningful difference between information and connection. “I had a tough week” is a fact. “I felt overlooked, and it stung more than I expected” is a feeling that builds a bridge.

John’s research shows that sharing feelings , both positive and negative, is predictive of relationship satisfaction. The specificity is what makes it effective.

Make it a conversation, not a confessional

Revealing should feel like tennis, not a TED Talk. If you’ve been yapping for 20 uninterrupted minutes about your complicated feelings about your childhood bedroom, it’s time to pass the ball.

The best conversations are exchanges, and the best disclosures invite the other person to share something in return. (Note: Be wary of people who never self-disclose anything in return. They’re either undercover agents or toxic people who collect information as leverage. Neither is great from a relationship perspective.)

Read the room

Think of sharing as a Goldilocks problem: Too little openness can feel cold and bland; too much can feel jarring and overwhelming. “Just right” depends heavily on the audience and the moment.

A heart-to-heart over wine with your closest friend calls for something different from a team meeting on a Monday morning. Learning to gauge this isn’t magic. It’s mostly just practice and being aware. I’m still working on this, as my therapist can attest.

Include reflection

Raw disclosure is a starting point, not a destination. “I’m a mess right now” has some honesty to it. “Here’s what this experience has taught me about myself” is what actually creates connection and signals emotional maturity . Struggles plus insight are a powerful combination.

Watch the ratio of positive to negative

Openness is a gift, but a steady diet of doom gets heavy fast. Sharing your struggles is healthy and human; making every interaction a grievance session is a fast track to people suddenly being “so busy lately.”

And remember, self-disclosures can be happy too! One of the best things I’ve learned is that sharing my happiness or good news with others is a great way to build rapport and spread joy. I recently shared a huge win at work with a cashier, and she was so happy for me, she came around and hugged me. Allow others to be happy with you!

Practice self-awareness first

If you can’t name what you’re feeling, you can’t share it well. Emotional literacy is a learnable skill—John describes herself as “a former emotional illiterate,” which should be encouraging to anyone who has ever responded to “How are you? ” with a 10-minute spiral and then claimed to be “fine.”

Journaling, therapy or even just pausing before you speak can help you get clear on what you’re actually trying to communicate.

Is oversharing ever a bad idea?

Yes, but it’s less about “being too much” and more about miscalibration. John’s research suggests that the content matters less than the context, and the problem is almost always a failure to read the room rather than an inherent excess of honesty.

Revealing can backfire when you ignore power dynamics at work, share information that isn’t yours to share (this is a big one), vent without giving the other person room to breathe or gossip about mutual acquaintances. All of these feel like openness in the moment, but they erode trust rather than build it.

At work

In the workplace especially, John draws a useful distinction between transparency (sharing your thoughts) and vulnerability (sharing your feelings). Both can be powerful professional tools, but vulnerability requires more care, particularly in hierarchical environments where it can be misread or exploited.

In relationships

Oversharing can harm your relationships, particularly if one person consistently offloads emotional weight without any mutual exchange . But John argues that the opposite—chronic silence—does far more damage over time.

Resentment, “mind reading” and emotional distance are the slow, quiet results of never saying your thoughts and feelings out loud. It’s a bit of a paradox: Silence feels safer in the moment, but over time, it erodes closeness in ways that are hard to trace until the relationship is already strained.

In the wrong hands

There’s one more risk I’d like to point out from personal experience: Not everyone who receives your openness will treat it with care. Sharing something vulnerable with the wrong person—a competitive colleague, someone with a score to settle or anyone who tends to treat information as currency—is like handing them exactly what they need to hurt you.

This isn’t a reason to seal yourself off entirely, but it’s a reminder to be intentional about who gets access to your inner life. Trust is built over time for a reason. Openness and naivety aren’t the same thing, and knowing the difference is part of what John means by “situational awareness.”

What shouldn’t you share?

Glad you asked—this one genuinely keeps me up at night. I’ve shared things I absolutely should not have. The fact is, some things genuinely should stay in the vault.

Other people’s secrets are not yours to share, full stop. Gossip, even the delicious, irresistible kind, tends to backfire in ways you won’t see coming. Information that could compromise your safety or violate a professional confidence should be protected. And highly stigmatized personal information deserves careful thought before disclosure, especially in professional settings. Have healthy boundaries .

The bigger skill, John says, is situational awareness: reading the room, considering power dynamics and asking yourself why you’re sharing before you speak. Is this for genuine connection? To process something you’re working through? Or is it to impress, manipulate or discharge discomfort at someone else’s expense? The “why” matters enormously.

And for those who default to silence because it feels safer, John offers one final question to ask yourself: “What’s the price I’m already paying for not saying this?” We are very good at imagining the risks of speaking. We are also, she argues, pretty terrible at noticing the quiet costs of silence—the distance that accumulates, the resentment that festers, the intimacy that never quite arrives. “Silence isn’t neutral,” she says. “It charges interest.”

Which is probably why, even after all that therapy, I’m still out here telling near-strangers about my reproductive system. At least now I know it’s science.

Why trust us

For over 100 years, Reader’s Digest has explored the nuances of relationships, working with such luminaries as Dr. Ruth Westheimer, John Gottman, PhD, and Leo Buscaglia (“Dr. Love”). We ran a decade-long relationships column and have published a compendium of features, Love and Marriage: The Reader’s Digest Guide to Intimate Relationships . We support this information with credentialed experts and primary sources such as government and professional organizations, peer-reviewed journals and our writers’ personal experiences where it enhances the topic. We verify all facts and data and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team , our contributors and our editorial policies .

Source:

• Leslie John , PhD, professor at Harvard Business School and author of Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing ; interviewed, Feb. 22, 2026

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