Mel Robbins explains undersharing: holding back thoughts and feelings that damages friendships, work, and romance. She distinguishes it from introversion and argues that sharing moment-to-moment emotions, not just stable traits, builds real connection and trust.
The life of an undersharer is a life of missed opportunities.
Hmm.
It's a life of friendships that never blossom. It's a life of colleagues that never quite trust you. It's a life of romances that don't spark or don't deepen. I know. It's so sad. It is.
How do you know if you're an undersharer versus somebody who is just very much shy or introverted or just a little bit more of an observer? What's the difference, or is there a difference?
That's a great question. I think that you need to look to yourself first and do a kind of audit of— I think a place where this shows up very saliently is in one's relationships, right? Like your spouse, your relationship with your spouse. The longer we're with that person, the more we know them. But also—
Or is it that we observe them?
Well, so we observe them.
Speaking from experience here.
We observe them, we talk about logistics, we know their stable traits, like we know their personality, we know they're an introvert, extrovert, right? But what we don't realize we don't know is their thoughts and feelings momentarily, those change all the time, right? And so our confidence that we know them massively outpaces our actual knowledge of them, right? And that's where the problem begins because we're overconfident that we actually know our partners. We think we know them better than we actually do. Do you really feel like they know you? Do you feel like you know them? You do kind of an audit like that. I'm wanting you to ask yourselves, what might I be missing by holding back? I think that's what I want for people. Not reckless oversharing, but wise revealing.
Oprah Winfrey: How to Find Your Unique Purpose, Authentic Power, and Calling in Life
