Why I write about my personal stuff on social media
I put a lot of my own personal stuff out there when I write and I’m wondering if this is oversharing. I’ve seen this question come up over and over again from other people who write and here are my two cents.
Oversharing is when you share something that makes others uncomfortable or bored. So oversharing would be if I shared what I ate for breakfast and then for lunch blah blah or if I shared something gross like….., well lets not even go there.
Sharing things that are relatable is not oversharing. I’ve learned in therapy and from my obsession with reading psychology books is that we are only as sick as the secrets that we keep and as a society we keep a lot of secrets. Double lives are surprisingly abundant.
As a nation, our insides don’t match our outsides. We have school shootings, terrorist attacks and celebrities who have looks, fame,wealth and talent killing themselves via suicide and substance abuse because we are in pain, we are hurting.
Official statistics say that 1 in 5 women report sexual assault.
I’m guessing that the number of women who have experienced objectification/harassment is probably close to 100%. Its no wonder that many women are obsessed with dieting, binging/purging, over exercising, plastic surgery etc in a vain attempt to control their bodies and their sexuality while others indulge in overeating to stuff their emotions and avoid intimacy.
Men have double lives too. My thirteen year old son expressed surprise when it came to his attention that men who are fathers view porn, he told me he thought only bachelors do that. I told him. “No honey, lots of dad’s view porn. Its really common”. My unscientific guess is that the percentage of dad’s viewing porn is 100% . This happens because we view sex as something to hide, something that is nasty, never mind that without sex none of us would even exist and that it feels good and under the right circumstances brings us closer together.
If we were a bit less ashamed than perhaps more men would have real sex with real women in equal relationships instead of using porn, prostitution etc. Needing to be one up/in control is always about fear. Its what we do when we are scared to be ourselves, ashamed to ask for our normal human needs to be met. This is how people get sucked into double lives.
I come from a culture where being yourself isn’t acceptable. My image really doesn’t measure up because I go to therapy, talk about my trauma including sexual trauma and to top it all off, I am divorced. In my culture the biggest shocker isn’t all this because nothing that happened to me is at all unusual, but rather its that I am being open about these things.
I am feeling a great deal of gratitude towards my parents who are supportive of me being honest about myself so publicly even though it is really not accepted in their culture. My parents are pretty brave.
I am obsessive. I am a human doing and its hard to stop and be a human being because its very tough for me to be still and feel my feelings. I understand the biology of my own PTSD for I have studied it obsessively and so I understand how this makes it hard for me to be still and do nothing.
I am obsessed with therapy because its had such a powerful positive impact on my life and sometimes I feel guilty because when a pan handler comes to me and asks for money or I see someone at work sabotaging themselves and I wonder why they didn’t get the help they needed. Why did I get to be so special? I have spent a long time being feeling sad for all my losses but now I am coming to understand how amazing it feels to be able to be myself without caring very much what people think.
Also, I am obsessed with writing and reading other people’s writing because this is therapeutic for me and perhaps because I am a little bit crazy but that’s okay. I’m not writing because I want approval or to appear successful or perfect, I am writing because I want to connect with and relate to the people who read my posts. Thank you for being part of my healing process and my truth.
