Shankar Vedantam

Do other people feel this way?

Thank you.

So, Leslie, can you tell Tracy if she is normal?

I mean, I think this is also true at an organizational level.

There are things that sometimes an organization or a company is trying to do, and it might be a trade secret.

They might be working on something that is a joint project that the rest of the world doesn't know.

And clearly, those are the kinds of situations that draw people together.

So even if it's not an intimate relationship, a shared secret can bring people together.

Yeah, I've often thought that the people who are enjoying the surprise enjoy the surprise more than the person getting the surprise.

Leslie says the same pattern often holds in our personal relationships as well.

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.