How Do I Stop Oversharing When I Have ADHD?

hi friends I'm Caroline Maguire and I am here to talk about all things friendship and ADHD so if you have ADHD do you tend to overshare do you sometimes find yourself sharing your past medical history your romantic history everything about your childhood with people that you barely know or you just met in line at the post office it's so easy to go down the rabbit hole and then you realize wow that was a lot of information now what do I do how do I pivot how do I get out of this or you get back in your car or home at night and you realize oh my gosh today I over shared so much I have ADHD so I overshare I have been working on this for a long time and that's partly how I came to be investigating this and to help my clients with it so before I get into it please subscribe and click all the things find my other social media and my website in the links down below and hit the Bell so you are notified every time I do a new video in different communities and in different environments there are different social norms and in some communities oversharing is okay maybe you get to be part of those places I know in the neurod Divergent Community people often do overshare for instance at our International Conference people will help each other out talk share life stories and their own Journey with ADHD and it's not that in every environment oversharing is again social norms but we have to figure out the Norms of the community we're in who we're talking to and figure those things out before we overshare which I know is easier said than done I'm not delusional I completely get it why why do we overshare so first I'm going to talk about the problem and then how to practice and work on it and I'm I'm going to talk about how to work on this in a neurod Divergent friendly way because a lot of times when people talk about oversharing they say things like just stop doing it and like if we could just stop doing that don't you think we would just stop doing that like I'm I'm not looking to be a glutton for punishment I would like this to get better whenever I share things I am testing these I used a lot of these techniques for oversharing and how to curtail it with um adult social skills groups over the past 18 years so I try to make things very neurod Divergent friendly if you have questions about something in a video and how you can apply it to your life I answer everything so I will totally reply I want to set expectations that oversharing will get better but oversharing is not going to disappear in other words it's not going to be something that you just put your attention on and it's really going to just stop we don't really stop we do it less and we get better at it I don't know about you but when I go down the rabbit hole and I start oversharing sometimes I even feel like all time stops and I'm not aware of anyone else around me and I just add to it not only do I overshare but I tell things that are detailed to try to explain my overshare I don't know if you've ever had that experience and it just feels like you're going down this Wormhole or rabbit hole and people have described to me that they literally aren't aware that they're doing this until after the conversation's over and I think this Rings true for me because I've watched so many people and I myself have been in this situation and it feels like we don't realize how much we're [Music] oversharing there are a few reasons why we overshare the first is because of emotional and self-regulation we lose control because we're passionate or hyped up maybe we're late for something and we run in and we tell the receptionist at the doctor's office like our life story trying to explain things because we're emotional or maybe we are just so excited about something and so we just tell all these details the second is that we forget to notice who we're talking to and that and maybe we don't even know this sometimes that the level of intimacy the level of closeness and trust you have with someone dictates what you share with them and how much you share with them and often we don't even notice or think about the fact that what we share is really about who we are talking to our audience as I call it who is your audience who are you talking to and what's your history of trust with them what's your closeness to them how well do you know them and that kind of filtering and information is often something we have a really hard time time with because of the third reason which is executive function weakness executive functions are the management system of the brain and they help us organize information whether we are aware organizing our story filtering information it all comes down to Executive function so part of having a conversation is organizing our information your attention your working memory your listening being present all of that is affected by executive function so when you go to share there's a lot of organization to that and making sure you share the right information with the right people and that kind of all goes back to Executive function the fourth reason we overshare is reading social cues sometimes we miss a queue or we aren't even paying attention to Zone in and actually read cues so we're not noticing that the other person is sort of trying to leave or not responding well to what we're saying we miss those cues and therefore we just keep going another thing is we may not have had parent models who showed us how to share they may not have been self-regulated they may have been neurod Divergent they may not had great executive function and they may have been oversharing and they may not have demonstrated to us how much you share and when and so with those models in our background it's really hard for us to start out knowing how much to share and how much not to share so what do we do about changing this oversharing problem let's talk about trust and intimacy we have different levels of trust with different people what we share is meant to line up with the trust and risk and vulnerability of the people we're talking to oversharing is more risky when you don't know someone and you don't have a history of trust with them it makes you more vulnerable the level of sharing should be in line with the person you're talking to and how much they're sharing for instance when I'm talking to someone in a doctor's office and I don't know them I don't have a history of trust with them I don't know what they're going to do with information and they're probably not sharing much so a good hack is if they're not sharing much then you don't share a lot there's an imbalance when we share more and it makes us a little vulnerable it's better to feel someone out and it's better if you wait to see what they do with the information build trust with them at each level of relationship we share different things and trust is built we have this overwhelming urgency to share and desire to share having some policies about sharing can be a good idea it all goes back to if I don't know them and they aren't a friend and I don't know my history of trust with them then I'm going to hold back things that would be vulnerable and I'm not going to talk about body fluids in the first 5 minutes minutes not that I haven't done that but just as a policy the first step forward is to identify topics or situations when you tend to overshare is it self-regulation are there certain circumstances are there certain topics that make you go down the rabbit hole or maybe trigger you are there C situations where you're more emotional and you tend to overshare that's the first thing let's diagnose when you tend to overshare second check out your self-regulation is this an emotional reaction how is my self-regulation do I feel like I need to bring myself from very activated back to calm and self-regulation is a whole another video but one of the things to think about is in certain circumstances do you have self-regulation issues that come up and if so then what can you do to be calmer and More Level in those situations this isn't easy for us as Nar Divergent people but have some quick exercises that you can do that bring you from very agitated or excited down to calm my favorite is something called havening it's like this with your hands and you can do it anywhere the full havening technique is longer than this but you can just do this and it uses the electromagnetic waves in your brain and it brings you back to homostasis or calm third thing to think about is who are you talking to do you know them who's your audience so if you know them well and you have a history of trust with them you share more if they are a new person you don't know their last name and you don't have a history of trust with them you share less I have more about this on my website and I'll put the links down below but that's a good kind of hack or rule fourth thing is practice this is not something that comes easily it's something that you have to practice and really practice involves you noticing your self-regulation state noticing your level of intimacy with someone and doing some self-editing practice saying things in a neutral way or saying things more briefly more to the point people say things like wait why am I talking and I think some people find that helpful I myself have not found enough to be very helpful think about how this might sound you could say to a stranger I had a boyfriend like that once or I knew someone like that once versus I had a boyfriend who ran out my credit cards and my mother had to bail me out that's like a lot of information and you don't necessarily know the person so if you know them well you share more if you know them less you share less everyone kind of needs an oversharing recovery plan because some sometimes you go down that rabbit hole even when you're working on things and you're like wow that was a lot I'm oversharing or you're down the rabbit hole and you realize suddenly like oh my gosh I'm oversharing and you need a way to Pivot so here's a couple phrases that I like to use wow I had a lot of coffee today where am I going with this story sorry I went down the rabbit hole well I have said enough tell me about your weekend I try to change the conversation and sort of pivot away from what I've been saying even if you've been in a conversation and you've shared a lot of vulnerable information and you realize that's okay that's when you implement your pivot plan because you're trying to Pivot away from oversharing which means that even catching yourself like that is amazing that's part of what happens right you start to practice sometimes you're caught off guard and you start oversharing but then if you implement your recovery plan and you pivot it that's amazing maybe next time you won't need that if you don't have a recovery plan or if you beat yourself up for recovering then that's really tough on you and I don't want that for you so like if you implement the recovery plan that's amazing I love it I know that there are a lot of pieces to this there's self-regulation there's sharing there's executive function there's editing social executive functions are so important and they are sort of tough and they are something that barely anyone talks about so I am going to continue to make videos about these different pieces that can help you with the larger goal of oversharing less or oversharing only occasionally and if you want other videos about different social topics please check out the other videos on my channel I make a lot of videos about all the things that we struggle with as neurod virgin people thanks to those who watch to the end and I will link other videos in the comments and other resources that can help thanks friends I'll see you next time

Channel: Caroline Maguire

Views: 2,663

Keywords:

Id: fsEEMvsMrKA

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 06 2024