Information Compulsion: Excessive Self-Disclosure.

Self-disclosure is a process of communication by which one person reveals information about themselves to another. The information can be descriptive or evaluative, and can include thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams, as well as one’s likes, dislikes, and favorites. 1. One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self-disclosure (Arthur Aron et al 1987). ² There is a very thin line with the appropriate self-disclosure needed at the beginning of nurturing an intimate relationship and oversharing.

I am very passionate about most things I am engaged in, which always gives me joy to want to share. I always want to share what I am learning, strategies that are working for me, like my fitness regimen, meditation practice, self-discipline identity, books I am reading and goals I am trying to achieve. After reading up and connecting some dots from personal experience, I have concluded that I need to reduce this tendency to overshare or become vulnerable with people who have not earned that trust or reciprocated that vulnerability. When I share some of these so-called insights of mine or goals achieved, like running multiple marathons a year or reading 100 books a year, I usually feel that my intentions are not understood. I am beginning to feel that most people might feel I am bragging or think I am claiming moral righteousness when I say I don’t use social media anymore.

It is tough to admit and try to change some of these flaws as they might be a strength sometimes. There is a joke I once saw in one of John C. Maxwell’s books that goes something like: How do you know a vegetarian? They will tell you. Like the vegetarian, I tell almost everyone about my marathon adventure, reading 100 books a year, meditating for 800+ days, and my self-discipline approach, among others. I share most of the time to try to inspire but I kind of feel most people don’t get it. Instead of inspiration, I am beginning to get the vibe of being seen as boastful. It is a habit that I am constantly looking to reduce.

Information Compulsion ²

The journalist/novelist Tom Wolfe has a theory he calls information compulsion. He says that people have an overwhelming need to tell you something that you don’t know, even when it’s not in their best interest. Journalists would have a hard time surviving without information compulsion. People wouldn’t call them with tips on a good story, or agree to be interviewed, or spill secrets about their company, or hand out delicious quotes.

The same compulsion blossoms into full flower in our daily lives. It’s the reason we like to dazzle our friends at dinner parties with the esoterica we know (even when we suspect we may be overstaying our welcome), or why coworkers like to gossip

around the water cooler (even when they know that their chatter may get back to the people they’re prattling about), or why friends tell us in excessive detail about their health or their love lives (even though they close their ears when the tables are turned). It’s the reason “that’s too much information” has entered everyday speech. We all have an overwhelming need to display and share what we know. And we do it excessively.

Disclosure Porn ³

Any behavior that leads to an increase in dopamine has the potential to be exploited. What I’m referring to is a kind of “disclosure porn” that has become prevalent in modern culture, where revealing intimate aspects of our lives becomes a way to manipulate others for a certain type of selfish gratification rather than to foster intimacy through a moment of shared humanity.

There is a well-known phenomenon in AA called “drunkalogues,” referring to tales of intoxicated exploits that are shared to entertain and show off rather than teach and learn. Drunkalogues tend to trigger craving rather than promote recovery. The line between honest self-disclosure and a manipulative drunkalogue is a fine one, including subtle differences in content, tone, cadence, and affect, but you know it when you see it.

Disclosure Porn: Revealing intimate aspects of our lives becomes a way to manipulate others for a certain type of selfish gratification rather than to foster intimacy

Meditations

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Karma

Karma is the recognition that causes have effects, actions produces outcomes, either good or bad. A person’s karma is the total of their momentum and direction in life. All of it is caused by a vast accumulation of prior circumstances, choices, actions, desires, thoughts and feelings. As our positive actions creates momentum, so those our negative ones. Overtime, our poor decisions and negative thoughts becomes habits and tendencies. Meditation is an opportunity to create new karma.

Every time we ponder a thought, act on an impulse, or dwell on a desire, we set a cause in motion that will have a future effect. At any given moment, we can reshape our karma by calming those thoughts, taming those impulses and quieting those desires. Anytime we meditate, we direct karma in a new and positive direction.

Herein lies the root of change, the turning point of a life lived. The very act of stopping, of nurturing moments of non-doing, of simply watching, puts you on an entirely different footing vis-à-vis the future.- Jon Kabat-Zinn Explains – Tricycle

Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Accentuate the Positive

What we often hang on to is the negative, the things that bring us down. Our brain keeps track of the unpleasant rather than the pleasant. Accentuate the positive, when something good happens, no matter how small; make a special note of it. When we verbalize our experiences, we secure them more firmly in our memory. It is easy to maximize the bad and minimize the good. But when you consciously emphasize the positive, you are telling your brain; these things that I want you to hold on to.