Shankar Vedantam

When we lean towards sharing our thoughts with others, it can increase the trust between us and the people we care about.

The problem is, often we don't even realize all that we're keeping to ourselves.

Leslie wasn't fully aware of the extent to which she was holding back until she started paying attention and documenting this behavior in herself.

She now keeps a list of the times she has revealed secrets and the times she has not.

We can't read each other's minds.

So should we follow Leslie's advice and share more of those bathroom mirror thoughts that we usually keep to ourselves?

Next week, listeners share their stories of self-disclosure and how other people responded when they revealed more about themselves.

Leslie John is a psychologist at Harvard University.

She's the author of Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing.

Leslie, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.

Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media.

Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury.

Tara Boyle is our executive producer.

I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor.

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I'm Shankar Vedantam.

See you soon.

This is Hidden Brain.