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Do you think your partner truly knows what’s on your mind—or are you just hoping they’ll pick up on your unspoken cues? The gap between what we feel and what we actually communicate can quietly sabotage intimacy, leading to misunderstandings and missed chances for genuine connection. Expecting our loved ones to read our minds often leaves both sides feeling unseen and disconnected.

In this episode, listeners will uncover why it feels so risky to open up and how sharing even small, vulnerable truths can transform relationships. Through behavioral research, personal stories, and actionable tips, this conversation offers a path to break the habit of holding back and encourages a new approach to creating authentic, lasting intimacy.

Leslie John is the James E. Burke Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a behavioral scientist fascinated by how people make decisions. Her award-winning research has been published in leading academic journals and featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. Born in Canada and trained internationally as a ballet dancer, she now calls Boston home, where she lives with her husband and two young sons.

Episode Highlights

03:39 The mind-reading trap in intimate relationships.

09:05 The everyday moments and deeper reasons people withhold thoughts and feelings.

14:25 Balancing mystery and openness in relationships.

16:57 Strategies for practicing disclosure in safe, manageable ways.

21:04 The challenges of intellectual living in a modern context.

23:08 Discernment in disclosure: When and why we choose to share.

27:15 The personality factor: Who shares and who holds back?

31:51 The upside of vulnerability and social risk.

35:29 Research-backed reflections on what people regret most at the end of life.

40:42 Repair, reciprocity, and calibrating connection.

43:29 Tools for more authentic relationships.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

• Conduct a Daily Disclosure Audit: Take a few minutes each day to jot down what you shared and what you withheld in conversations, increasing awareness of your sharing patterns.
• Start Small With Sharing: Begin by revealing minor thoughts or positive feedback, such as a specific praise for your partner or colleague, to build comfort with self-disclosure.
• Practice Reciprocity: Match the depth of your sharing with the other person, gradually increasing intimacy together through reciprocal disclosure.
• Use an Emotions Wheel: When unsure about your feelings, consult an emotions wheel to better identify and articulate your internal state before communicating it.
• Clarify Your Intention: Before revealing something personal, ask yourself why you want to share and what you hope to achieve, ensuring your disclosure serves your relationship goals.
• Challenge Mind-Reading Expectations: Notice when you expect your partner to just know how you feel and instead proactively communicate your thoughts and needs.
• Widen Your Perspective on Risks: Consider both the risks of sharing and of withholding information, including long-term impacts, rather than focusing only on the immediate discomfort.
• Practice Curiosity and Calibration: If unsure about someone’s reaction, check in with them and invite open dialogue, recognizing that building intimacy is a process of ongoing adjustment.

Mentioned

Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Brené Brown

Shifting Criticism For Connected Communication (free relationship guide)

Connect with Leslie John

Website: proflesliejohn.com

Instagram: instagram.com/proflesliejohn

YouTube: youtube.com/@ProfLeslieJohn

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/leslie-john-75928721

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Email: [email protected]

If you have a topic you would like to be discussed, please contact us by clicking on the “Ask Dr. Jessica Higgins” button here. 

Thank you so much for your interest in improving your relationship. 

Also, I would so appreciate your honest rating and review. Please leave a review by clicking here. 

Thank you!  

*With Amazon Affiliate Links, I may earn a few cents from Amazon if you purchase the book from this link.

Episode Transcript

Leslie, thank you for joining us. 

Thanks for having me. 

I'm really excited about all the research you've done. I know you're a professor and also an award-winning researcher and have a lot to share. I'm asking you to tailor this more specifically to intimate relationships, while you actually focus on a much wider audience, as it relates to disclosing, sharing, and the misconceptions people often associate with it that it's dangerous or somehow inappropriate to be in a place of sharing. Where would you like to start as far as this being a focus here? 

Oh, I mean, there are so many ways we could go, I think, like to me, I'm super excited to talk to you and your audience because I think the most important application of this idea that we don't share enough is in relationships, especially our most intimate ones. Right? 

Yes. 

And you see, like, one of the patterns that I see that other scholars have seen in their research is that 

“In long-term relationships, we've been with the person for a very long time, and we do know them better. The more we've been with them. We do know more of what their preferences are, their thoughts, their attitudes. But the tricky thing is that our confidence that we know them well massively outpaces our actual knowledge of them. And so we're massive. So, like, over time we become much more, even more overconfident that we know them and that we can kind of read their mind. And that, of course, is where the problem begins because we can't read their mind. And then we think we can, and then we have all these misunderstandings.” 

And it's something that I noticed in my own marriage as I was writing the book. I was using myself as a guinea pig and applying all this stuff, and I realized, wow, I am expecting him to read my mind. And that's a huge problem. But once I realized it, then I realized, oh, I have to share how I feel. And then, it was really transformative for my own relationship. But weird because it doesn't come naturally, right? You would think it does. It sounds so easy. 

But there are a number of cognitive things that get in the way of preventing us from sharing. And also, of course, not just cognitive, but emotional and self-awareness. You even need to understand yourself to share. Well, for example. 

Absolutely. I appreciate you mentioning our various variables that perhaps coincide with the experience of maybe not wanting to share, or even concealing, or even unconsciously just not thinking to be that explicit. 

Totally. 

Yes.

Exactly. 

And you're pointing to an intimate relationship. I think one of the things is, I'm sure maybe this is something that came out, or you've explored, but this- the way in which our brain functions wants to organize, almost automate. Right. Like if you think about driving to a place that we've driven many, many times, we can kind of be on autopilot, unfortunately. But like there's a bit of like, Oh, we're conserving energy, and that's a natural kind of thing that we do as humans. And yet, to automate our partner. Right. That is where you're saying not only are we likely going to be inaccurate. Right. We're maybe overconfident and maybe not so accurate about our knowing them, but also the relational experience of being interested in or just like emotionally discovered in the day. Like we're evolving humans. Right. Like  we're not the same person we were three years ago. And to have that querying, to have that deeper interest in being known and seen, we don't always slow down. Do that in a long-term relationship. 

Yeah, completely. And yeah, there's the component of kind of being inaccurate. And the evidence there is so striking. In one study, for example, they brought people into the lab who had loved each other for years. Like, I think the average relationship length was something like 13 years. And what they did is they had each partner, they had them talk about something conflictual and also write down what they were thinking and feeling. And then they had the other guess what the other was thinking and feeling. And people are wrong 80% of the time. 

Like, that's a high percentage. 

And yet they think even if you, but if you. They've done many variants of this. We social scientists, we kind of study things ad nauseam, but in another study, they ask people How accurate do you think you would be? And people think they'll be way more accurate. Right. So there's that piece, and then the second, which I think is super important, is what you're mentioning: the joy of it.

And if we don't open up more, then we don't get that. And I do think it's the kind of thing that you gotta do it to believe it, because it's not until you actually open up more with your partner or whoever it may be that you start experiencing how special it is to be really on the same page. And I've found that it's often that it's actually especially the stuff that maybe I'm ashamed of or feel negative about. That's actually the stuff we tend to withhold. But that's where the huge bang for your disclosure buck is. Sorry, I'm sounding like a B-school prof. But a business school professor. But it's true. And as I was writing the book, I realized I've studied this stuff for many years as a dispassionate researcher and so not getting. 

Meddling with getting to it, into it, emotional about it, I guess, for lack of a better way of saying it, is a virtue. But then when I wrote this book, I had a totally different angle where I was like, immersing myself in my own and others' research and using myself as a guinea pig and really applying everything. And so it wasn't really until I wrote the book and started doing the things that I really became almost evangelical about it. Doing is believing. And so one of the things I started doing for myself to help me realize this was disclosure audits. I know that sounds very unsexy and unglamorous, but total life changer for me. 

So what I would do is every day I would write down; I put a little notepad here and there, or I'd have it on my phone. I'd write down, like, I keep a tally of the things that I actually revealed. Thoughts, feelings, things that I said. And in another column, the things I did not say but I thought or felt. And what I did as I was doing this, I realized that the ratio- there's way more that goes unsaid than said. I don't know what the ideal ratio is. But my point is that before I started keeping track like this, I did not realize the depths of my suppression. Right? How the thought of sharing didn't even occur to me in all these situations. 

We're standing in front of the bathroom mirror brushing our teeth in the morning with my husband, and I think we make small talk. What I'm actually thinking to myself is, I feel older than I thought I would at this age. And like, how is that a zit? How come I have that? I'm in my 40s, right? These, I would never even think of saying them. And then I started keeping track, and I thought, wow, I should consider saying those things. And then those are perfect examples of things I absolutely should say because it's like my partner, like the person who I. 

And once I started opening up more about these things, it really did make us feel even more connected. Because it's one thing for calling my hubby to love me when I feel like a goddess, but it's another; it's even more meaningful if on the days when I feel like crap about myself, and I'm insecure that he loves me. Kind of like smelly feet and all, you know? Yeah, that's powerful. 

Absolutely. Thank you so much for just sharing a little bit about how this has shown up as you've applied it more personally in your life. And just the challenge of. And observation of looking at places in which you weren't sharing or disclosing areas where you were, and how revealing that was; it sounds like it was kind of eye-opening. And also, when we're grappling, while it might seem like a fleeting thought of noticing self and perhaps changes as one's aging, and you're not old by any stretch, but like, just the signs of. 

Yeah, exactly, right. 

It's part of life grappling with that. Those are that can be a bit existential. It can have a lot of nuance and dimensions to it, and to be in a place of openness, because where else are we going to share that grappling? 

I know, right? And then it's like. And it's also. We don't necessarily need to. We could get deep and existential, which is fascinating and bonding, or we could be funny about it and start joking about it. Right. Either way, it's good. Right? 

Yes, did you ever look at? I mean, it just rings a bell around Brené Brown's work, around how she set out to study and research love and belonging. Thought she was going to get all these, like, beautiful, sexy, like, pretty moments. And it was actually more of the places that people felt shame and unlovable, like that actually had a bigger impact on love and belonging. Did that bear out in what you were? 

Yeah, I mean, it totally jives with Brené Brown's work, I think. I love the way she does her research, which is so different than mine. She's super qualitative and really gets into the depth of people's stories. And for me, I'm kind of the opposite in that. I mean, I love storytelling and the book is full of stories. But as a behavioral scientist, we love surveys and numbers and scores and Manipulations and all these things. And so it's really cool that two people with kind of different methods have gone to similar conclusions. Just, it's that powerful. 

Yes. No kidding. Thank you. And I just appreciate that the methodology is so very different and operationalizes these very abstract constructs. Like it's not easy to put into science. And yet that is so important. Okay, so when you just kind of back up. I think my first question was like for people that do have a strong association with concealing, or that maybe it's like being a bit mysterious, or that like I don't want to give too much because then. Oh yeah. Or the, like, novel. 

Right. I love this. Yes, yes. 

Or just kind of patterns of, like, personality even. Like you have an introvert that maybe isn't so externally processing, or they come from a family where these types of emotional disclosures weren't the norm. And it's so foreign. 

Right. 

Like. Okay, so I guess there are two questions in that. One of which is counteracting some of the ways in which people associate sharing. Right. That's one of the things I think you challenge: these notions around sharing or oversharing. 

Yeah. 

Or the caution around that. And then two is for people who feel a level of discomfort. 

Yeah. 

Based on personality traits, or. 

Right. 

Lived experience. 

Right. Amazing. Yeah. All of the things. So the thing about mystery, I love mystery. 

I love allure. 

I love. Well, I was gonna say I love dating. I hated dating. I like the idea of dating. I think the idea of dating is better than the actual experience of dating. Right. But with dating, so, in terms of, like, what we reveal and what we don't. So when I was in my mid-30s, I found myself divorced and single again. And so I also, as you know, I'm a disclosure nerd. So I'd be navigating all these quandaries. Like, do I say this or not? Is ghosting good or bad? Like, what's the best way to turn someone down? Or, you know, all these things. All these things about how to share what to say. And I feel like on the first date. When we're early in a relationship, the key thing there is reciprocity. Right. 

The back and forth is starting small. A little flirty reveal, maybe. And then they will ideally reciprocate with something back, and then. And if they don't, you can ask them a question. And so you kind of go back and forth like this. You get deeper and deeper together. And that Dynamic plays out again and again. There have been many studies on it, fascinating studies. It's super powerful to create a bond with someone. And so, like, a little bit of mystery is like, you don't want to say all of the things on the first day you want to. It's a process. But it's not like you need to hold back the good stuff. It's more that, like, it's a process that takes time and reciprocity back and forth to unfold. 

But then, as we discussed already, once you're in a longer-term relationship, I think, it's these things that are on our mind. It's almost always not a question of whether to reveal, but when and how. But it is. So everything you said I resonate with because things change in generation, different generations. And I, like a lot of my peers, probably a lot of listeners, have grown up in an environment. I had a very happy childhood, but an environment that was really emotionally suppressive. There wasn't really a lot of talk about feelings. And I found again, as I was writing the book, that this idea of, like, opening up more share because I was actually trying to implement it. 

What I found is one of the core problems I had in trying to implement it is this, and this is going to sound maybe a little ridiculous. I didn't actually know how I felt. Like, yeah, I did not have the emotional literacy. Not even literacy. It's not even, it's like knowledge of how I felt. That's how much I had not really thought about how I felt. I'd felt emotions. I just, I hadn't been; I was not skilled in them. And so I was talking to my therapist once, and then finally he handed me because I was catching up on something. I don't even remember what it was. And he said, well, how do you feel? And of course, he said, because I kept saying cognitions or how other people felt. 

And then finally I said to him through story, what is a feeling? And then he gave me this amazing tool, which is also in my book, the Emotions Wheel. We there's lots of versions. You've probably given them to your clients. The one in my book is actually even more rudimentary than most out there because I needed that much remediation. So, that's like a- I hugely resonate with what you're saying. Like, how do you even begin? For me, it was a super foundational issue like that, but for a lot of people, they know how they feel. It's more the understandable reticence of, like, ooh, how do I say this? Do I say it? And we don't know what to do, and we're scared of it, understandably. And so we just don't. We default to silence. 

So one of the things I found to be helpful is, I guess, one of my mottos these days is that I think

“So it's not about saying a lot of things; it's not about saying negative things per se about yourself. It's about little bits here and there. And once you do that, you will start experiencing the benefits, and then you will do it more.” So what's an example? One that I've been doing is praise. So praise is such a lovely thing to reveal. Right? 

Yeah. 

I go around, and in academia we tend to be like really bad about giving. We're very. It's almost like the more negative you are, the smarter you are. It's kind of messed up. But I have been- I see someone in the hallway. I love that paper you wrote. I love the study paradigm. Chef's kiss. You know, like I give a really specific and honest piece of praise. “Something that, in the past, I would have thought as I read, but I wouldn't have thought to share. That's such low-hanging fruit. So low risk. Because when you do that, the person is going to feel good and love it, and also you're going to feel good, but you've got to do it. Like, it's one thing for me to say this; until you actually do it, you really don't.” 

You gotta feel the benefits. So start small in that way. That would be one little way you can start. I have lots of other tips, but I have a lot of thoughts on that too. 

But I want to hear that. Just a comment on set and setting. 

Yeah. 

Even though there's a feel-good nature to what you're describing with the praise, if the environment isn't part of the cultural norm, it can feel incredibly vulnerable to take a risk, like completely. 

Completely. Yes. Right, right. And the praise can even feel like a risk. Right. It can feel like you're diminishing your status at work, for example. So definitely. And work, I think 

But even there. So what would be an example? Here's an example. A friend was recently telling me that she did this because all of my friends are obsessed with disclosure now. They're good friends. And she said I was in the office the other day, and I was at a meeting, and it's one of those meetings where you never get anywhere. Everybody's talking in circles; there's no progress being made. It's super frustrating. 

And she said to me, you know, I felt super frustrated, and normally in the workplace, you would never express an emotion or, like, say something negative emotion like that. But she said I'm going to go for it. So she said I'm feeling really frustrated. She said the thing. “And that's a perfect example of something that you would think might be a little risky. It's a little edgy. And she said once I did, there was like this collective sigh of relief because everyone was feeling the same way, and then we actually got stuff done. So for sure there's risk, but also the. That's it's precisely because of the risk that there's the reward, and it's not something that we are always going to get. Right.” 

So I think self compassion that this is a skill, and to get better at it, you have to practice it. You have to do it. Do a little bit more than you think. You would go a little bit further than you think. You should see how people react if it doesn't go well; at least you know. At least you know where the line is. 

Exactly. 

But if people never. If you never like. If someone. You never feel like you've hit TMI- too much information-; you're not going far enough. Right. 

We're testing the boundaries, or boundaries sound like limits, pushing the development of intimacy. If we can't deepen in our shared. 

Yeah. 

Relating, whatever the venue, then we don't understand the limits of where we want to go or where we can go. And I love the developmental process of what you're saying. It's much more easily accessible when we can take smaller steps rather than this big leap. And I will say, too, it's possible, as you talked about this story with your friend and the collective psychology, that when you were talking about just the importance of self-awareness and kind of your experience and your upbringing and the kind of norms as they related to emotion. But I would say even in modern life, when we're intellectually engaged, it's not as much focused on the emotion. We're whole beings in modern living. So it could even bring a level of advancement in how we function that is. 

Oh, I love that. 

Bringing in more Comprehensive. I'm kind of thinking out loud here, but it just makes sense to me that it could elevate or help evolutionarily bring more of this into modern living. Like, I think a lot, myself included. 

I feel like I live in my head, and then it's like I'm now a person, and I can now go for a hike or be relational. And I use my heart and empathy. 

Obviously, but I like it. 

There's a lot of, I think, preference for the intellect. Totally in the Western world. 

Yeah, it's completely resonating with me. So I have that experience where, like, I'll be at work, or there'll be something that I'm processing cognitively, but it's not quite sitting well, and I don't know why. And then the next day I'm like, oh, that's what that was all about. And you kind of realize. And it's really the emotional level that is giving you all the information, but that we're trained to kind of ignore. But 

and so I love this idea that if you do this more, I think, well, at least this has been my experience. I have become more attentive to the information value of emotions. And yet we, intellect, cognition, have. This is higher status in a way, which is weird because, like, when you think about it, here's an example of emotions. You can't.

So emotions are actually. They should be super, and they are persuasive, but yet we think of them so often, so often less persuasive. One thing that went through my mind is when I was dating my husband, and you know, still trying to be restrained in some ways, which maybe is that maybe is a problem. Well, so I'll tell you; tell me if there's a problem. But we were dating. And went away on a trip together, and I didn't sleep all night because there was blaring music. And so I. And when I don't sleep, I'm just like a complete emotional wreck. So I go to the front desk to complain, to ask for a room switch. 

And I'm trying to be composed and professional. My hubby-to-be is kind of standing by me, and they were not listening to me. They were interrupting me. And then I just, again, as I said, I can't regulate my emotions when I'm so sleep-deprived. It's hard enough on a good day. And so I just started bawling. I just completely lost it. And that's when they started paying attention to me, and they said. And meanwhile, Colin's like, I don't know what this woman. And they also, they upgraded us to their most beautiful. It's to this day the most beautiful suite I've ever been in. Right. 

Wow. 

So, like it was. I didn't have an instrumental goal as I did, in the sense that it was more modest. I just wanted to get away from the noise. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. And they weren't. When I was giving them all the facts and reasons, we paid this money, and they wouldn't listen. But as soon as I showed emotion, genuine emotion, they're like, oh, wait, this is real. 

Yes, I mean, this maps beautifully onto the emotionally focused therapy research and just the understanding of how we, as social animals, get information. And it's largely through emotion, through nonverbals, facial expressions, the neuroception of tone of voice. This is how we track and we get information. And so it makes sense that this is part of our relating. And when we try to divorce ourselves from it, that can be. 

Why, in your view, do we? I feel like societally, yes. But also to me at least, I just feel like I can't do both things at the same time. Like, cognition and recognizing my feelings. Maybe that's a me issue, but I guess broadly, like, why do you think it's that way that these things are often divorced from each other? 

I largely. This is just my first blink on it. I haven't necessarily, like, yeah. Contemplated this response, but I think historically there has been a lot. And I won't go into all the layers. 

I love psychology. 

I'm obsessed with just the body and the mind. Right. Like, even though there was a separation around the field of study. Right. So it's been a long, polarizing, I think, thing. And it shows up culturally too. Right. That we tend to praise all the accolades and achievements. There's this intellectual priority, and yet I think we're slowly shifting that, and yeah. Bringing in more of the mind, body, or this emotional intelligence, as you're saying, that I think is very much a practice, and how. The discernment of how to use it. Because I think that's probably one of the other questions here. 

Discernment. That's such a good word. That's so spot on. 

We could be dysregulatedly dumping, or we could actually have, like, an emotional trigger that we're speaking. Yeah. Without really being clear about what the intention is. Or we're trying to get reassurance, but we're not just saying simply, I'm feeling totally or and making it visible. 

Totally. And I think that's super important. And I think it's really relevant to the question of, like, how fundamentally do you decide whether to share or not to share? The question I've been obsessed with for years is knowing your North Star, so to speak, your purpose: why are you considering? And one, here's an example of me getting it wrong to help us understand how to get it right, which is when I was early pregnant with our first child. It was the dark days of COVID, and I just, like, I was feeling isolated, and I really wanted to tell someone. And so I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and tell our landlord that I was pregnant. And well, that triggered a series of chain reactions that ultimately caused us to move out. 

It ended up okay in the end, but it was like a bit of a shit show in hindsight. I thought, oh, well, that was that. If I just thought of my why. What's my purpose in revealing? It's: I want to have kinship, I want coups, I want excitement. Well, then I should tell my bestie, not my landlord. So 

Yes. And that seems to hearken back to what you were just saying too, about awareness. That I can actually understand what's driving this too. Right. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

That speaks to what am I hoping to achieve? What's my goal? For sure, that gives so much more information and the ability to make better decisions when it's aligned. 

Yeah, definitely. 

Okay. So did you want to respond to kind of what my comment was about? You were asking about the divorcing of head and, oh, yeah. Emotion. I know, I kind of moved on. 

Yeah. I just think that. I think it's spot on, and it makes me hopeful that generationally we are shifting to the union of these things because mind, body, it really is. We've seen it again and again. So let's stop ignoring that and let's begin. Fully embodied creatures that we are. 

Yeah. Yes. And what our capacity is for making decisions, or how we're orienting relationally. 

Yeah. 

What our intention is, how we're in service of our values or our goals. It seems incredibly important. Okay. So I would love to go back, if you're willing, to talk about the personality piece. 

Oh, yeah. Great. 

Aren't as comfortable, right? 

Yes. So this is a question that I'm also obsessed with, which is: are there personalities? Some more revealing personalities are less revealing. And we did some research on the Big Five. Those Big Five personality traits– OCEAN, if I can remember them off the top of my head. Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. And we found that one of these is super predictive of the willingness to open up. And it's not the one that I thought. So I thought, going in, listeners, you may have a guess; I'll let you lock in your votes. My thought going in was extroversion. So I thought that extroverts are more comfortable opening up. But then I did this research, and I found that nope; instead, “Extraversion is an Introversion is not really related to opening up. It's, of course, related to talkativeness.” 

But

and right, you're nodding. You're like, I knew this. And you're not nodding in a smug way. You're nodding in a very thoughtful way. You probably see this in your practice, maybe, or just when people say the. 

Introverts are often commenting about. Oh, I think before I speak. Right. I'm not processed the external processor. I don't think out loud. So I'm actually, when I speak, it's more intentional. 

Yeah, for sure. So the trait that is, drumroll, is agreeableness. So a central component of agreeableness. Agreeableness, of course, is getting along, playing well with others. And so a central facet of agreeableness is that you're trusting. So super agreeable people tend to be really trusting of others. I am very agreeable. I'm Canadian. How can I not be? And so that, like me, that oversharing of the landlord is, again, me kind of overtrusting in some sense, partly because of my agreeableness, which makes me feel comfortable opening up sometimes in situations when I should not. So it's agreeableness that is most strongly predictive. That being said, even people who are super agreeable still, I have found often, most of the time, even stand to benefit from being more open. 

So again, if I just look inward, as I did when I wrote this book, I'm very agreeable. But then I realized, wow, there are so many things I'm holding back on that I should not be holding back on. In fact, I call myself an oversharer, but when I really thought about it, I thought it felt like a performative kind of oversharing, like I'm really good at telling funny, self-deprecating jokes about myself, but when it came to, like, sharing deep feelings about, hey, I feel older than I thought I would at this age, I was not doing that. And so even if you kind of have a natural tendency to be really trusting, it doesn't mean you're well calibrated all the time per se. 

Thank you for acknowledging that. I think that's something very common that perhaps most of us are doing to some extent or another: that there's an editorial process. 

Yeah, yeah, it's happening. 

Some filter of what we're saying, conscientious of how we're going to be received. Maybe some people again are a little bit more aware of this, but I do think it's operating. And it sounds like you're presenting perhaps a different way of organizing or a paradigm shift that there's so much to be gained from sharing more depth that's genuine and aligned. Tell me how you would phrase this. 

Yes, no, totally. So I think one of the core problems is that we really beat ourselves up when we maybe say something a little that we shouldn't. Right. So we treat TMI: too much information, as if it's the greatest social sin. And when I was reflecting on the research on experiences, I realized that even those moments that I thought in my life, “This is TMI,” it's like I just poured gasoline all over my body and lit a match. Even in those moments, I didn't see it in the moment; I just felt shame. But over time, the long game, even those moments had an upside to them. And yet we don't appreciate that upside. 

So here's an example where, you know, I said something; I told some very senior people, grand poobas in academia, my most embarrassing story. It was like late at night at a conference, and people were like, “Let's go around the room.” And I shared my actually most embarrassing story. And I had a big disclosure hangover. Afterwards I thought, oh my goodness, that's career suicide. I am an idiot. What will they think of me? Because the social feedback was like shock. So again, I thought tmi, but then the people that I shared this with became some of my closest mentors. Over time, they opened doors I didn't even know existed. And we're very close now. And they said, you know, when you said that, you were real. Yeah, it was edgy, but also we admired you. 

So people can, like, cringe and admire the heck out of you, but you just see the cringe, and you don't factor in the good side of it too. So, and I think this also requires some, like, self-compassion too. I know it's a bit of a buzzy word, but really, like, okay, maybe I embarrassed myself, but also people, when they need to trust someone, they're going to come to me. So we've done work where we've asked people to. When you think about revealing something. So if you think about, like, real dilemmas, do you tell your boss you have ADHD? Okay, maybe that will give you accommodation, but you could get fired. Do you tell your partner about that old fling? These are real dilemmas, and the answer is not obvious. 

When we ask people to think these through, they immediately go to the risks of revealing. Right. So do you speak up if a colleague doesn't credit you for your idea at work? You think, oh, I would never even think of speaking up because they're going to think I'm petty. It will ruin our relationship, whatever. Those risks are very real and valid. But the problem is that's one side of the decision.

Yet we tend to just look at that; if we're left to our own devices, that narrows. And so we need to widen the aperture. 

And in that specific example, if you think of, okay, the risks of holding back, well, if I don't say the thing, if I don't tell my colleague,  I was kind of disappointed, it was my idea or whatever. If you could find the right way to say it, which you can with a little bit of thought. But if you don't say that, I know myself, I'm going to ruminate; I might get passive-aggressive. That may be bad for our relationship. So there are risks either way. Similarly, you can do the benefits of revealing and the benefits of holding back. Like it's. You want to think about the risks and the benefits of both revealing and not revealing. And yet we do. We usually hone in on just the risks of revealing. 

I am so grateful that you brought this up. “I think it's so human for us to want to avoid the short-term pain.” Right. That's just, again, this way of mitigating threats is where the brain is trying to avoid pain. And if we're looking at what's most immediate, what's next, that short-term initial, and what you're bringing attention to with this widening the aperture is like, okay, what's more of the long term of this? And if we fast-forward and look at perhaps the benefits or the costs of not speaking up or speaking up. It can become a little bit more informative and helpful around the benefits of sharing. 

Right. 

And might ask us to do some hard work. The initial pain of overcoming that in service of this greater benefit. 

Yeah. 

“So important. I think this maps really beautifully on intimate relationships because a lot of times people are afraid to speak about something that could bring pain, conflict, or be difficult to hear. Like they don't want their partner to be hurt. So it's almost a protective move. Like, I don't want to cause you pain. But yeah, the long-term of that is, as you said, it can bring withholding; it can bring misunderstandings; it can bring us not preventing an opportunity to create resolution around something that we could have a better way of functioning together. There's so much to this.” 

Yes, totally. And one thing that really struck me in doing research for the book was this point: 

Like those TMI moments, the things we said that we maybe shouldn't have said. But the tricky thing is, over time, the pattern completely flips such that we're way more apt to regret the things we did not do that we wish we had done, as opposed to the maybe silly things that we said. And so powerful is this finding that there is a palliative care nurse who actually wrote a book on the things that people regret as they are dying.

“And the top five regrets: four out of the top five regrets are regrets over things they did not do.” 

Wow. 

“And I think it's like the second or third most common regret is I wish I had shared my feelings more.” Like, I mean, if that's not persuasive, what is? Right. People who have are passing. That's what they regret. They don't regret telling. Telling their high school crush that they had a crush on them and got rejected. Rejected. Yeah, exactly. They don't regret that. They regret not having told the love of their life how they actually feel. 

Wow. I mean, that again puts it into perspective. Widening the aperture and looking at the significance of these choices of sharing or not sharing. And it sounds like it's being more visible or engaging more fully. Yeah. “So that again, in relationships we can have a greater opportunity to cultivate intimacy, but also in other arenas that it perhaps, as you said, even with your story about mentors, it could open up possibilities because you're being more. You're more visible, you're being more seen, and people can access and connect with.” 

“You and wanna engage. Yeah, exactly. And it makes you more so, very.” 

“Very uncomfortable and scary oftentimes, or feels shameful.” 

“Yes, both are true. And yeah, we often evaluate these decisions in a one-shot, binary way. Right. That it's either good or bad; it's TMI or not. But you can, again, you can make them cringe, and they can also admire the heck out of you for it. So appreciate that it's not black or white. We also often tend to view these things as really one shot. As in, this is like your one opportunity to tell a person you love them or whatever.” Which makes it incredibly high stakes. But it's not. Right. So if you maybe say something a little edgy at work and you see someone, maybe you think you offended them. Like, oftentimes the answer to feeling like you did TMI is to reveal more, not less. Right. 

You can stop by their office and say, “How do you feel? I sense that I maybe made you feel uncomfortable.” You could share more. It's not that you piss them off. TMI, and that's it; you're done for. 

Right. It's like I'm never doing that again. 

Right, right, exactly. 

And this goes back to what I think you were saying initially. It was this back-and-forth, the reciprocity, that we can start somewhere. And maybe we started not with. On a scale from 1 to 10, we didn't start with a 1 or a 2. 

We started maybe with a 5 or 6, and, like, that was a bit of a leap. 

And how is that for you? So we can kind of check in. And I love this too. Not only recognizing if you took a risk that was beyond the norms of that relationship or what is typically done. 

Right. 

You'll feel a bit of a rattle or uncomfortable. We can check it out. We can kind of recalibrate. 

Yeah. 

And also, what I'm hearing, potentially, you were saying this earlier, it doesn't have to be these big leaps. It could be. 

Right. 

Moving just from a 1 to a 2 or a 2 to a 3, like what would that be? And the self-awareness around what that would be, even. 

Right. 

And right. What if. Because I mean, for me, if I'm more clear and in touch with some of these deeper layers, because this is the other thing I find more in my field is that, as humans, we get so caught up in the story and feeling validated or justified to feel the way we feel, but we don't always know what we're feeling. So kind of getting the story and then, okay, what is this for me? I feel embarrassed, or I feel this, or I feel scared. And once I have that, then I feel like I'm much more able to show that because I've at least connected and found my alignment or place with it. 

Right. 

And I can't find my way to bring that in. And it's a bit more intentional, and yeah, discerning, than it is just to be. There's something here, and it's driving me, but I'm just not getting to it, or the person's confused. Like I can tell there's something here. 

But what is it? Right, right, totally. And being more like listening to your gut on that. Right. I mean, this comes back to the mind-body. I found that. And a lot of people have shared similar things with me where they realize when they start doing this, just how often they assume what other people are thinking and feeling. Right. And so this has been like, if someone makes a face when I'm saying something, the old me would have been like, oh, I did some like total internalizing. The new me recognizes this and then tries to, with safe people- you don't want to ask everyone, but if the person is like very close with you, you could say, ” Well, what are you actually feeling? Right. And then you kind of teach yourself, oh, wow. 

“The biggest thing it's taught me is simply that I can't read people's minds, and how much assuming I do, and how. Because for me, my brand of that is more like self-castigation or self.” That I'm wrong. And I realized, oh, it's not necessarily that I'm wrong; it's that this person saw this differently, or I didn't necessarily offend them. They just had a bad day for some other reason. And so it's. In addition, I guess revealing more has also helped me to ask more and to learn more and to be more curious. And then I may become really curious because you're like, ooh, I don't know what they're thinking, but I would love to know. 

“Absolutely. And then if we look at a longer-term relationship, be it in a work environment or personal, what we can accomplish if we're assessing and calibrating versus, like, going down a train Track that, like, was a misunderstanding.” 

“Oh, yeah.” 

“That might create a bit of a rupture. And you don't even realize.” 

“You don't totally. You don't even realize you've gone down that track. Our brains just so naturally create this narrative.” We're like on the train. And then I'm like, wait a minute. If I just ask Colin why he's upset, I'll realize, oh, it's something that happened in the day that I have no idea about. It's not because I packed the lunches wrong. Right. But some. And so totally, like just stopping and saying, wait, am I actually in tune with how they're feeling, or have I gone off on this wild narrative? 

Exactly. 

Oh my goodness. 

I can tell there are so many more applications of this. I know you recently wrote a book, and would you say the name of your book again? 

Yes. It's called Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. And folks can go to my website, proflesliejohn.com; you can get the book there. But there are also some tools so that this idea of mind reading- it turns out, we psychologists love measuring traits, and that is a pretty stable individual difference. Some people have higher mind-reading expectations than others. And by that I mean. So the items on the scale are things like: it's largely in romantic relationships, that kind of belief, this implicit belief that your partner should just know how you think and feel and anticipate your needs. And when I say it overtly like that, it does sound a little like, I don't do that. That's crazy. But these are really deeply seated beliefs. And so I have this scale on my website. 

There's a bunch of other quizzes and the mind-reading scale because when I did it myself, I realized that I have off-the-charts mind-reading expectations. And once I learned that about myself, I was like, oh, wow, how toxic they are for relationships. Right. Because if I think my husband needs to know that I want flowers today or know that I feel a little down or know that I slept badly, I was assuming that. And by assuming that because he couldn't, didn't, can't read my mind, I would view him as like, oh, he doesn't love me because he doesn't know. And now that I'm aware that I do this, I realize, oh, I need to ask; I need to reveal. So that was a long way to do it. I say cut; obviously, edit a ton of that. 

But you can go to my website to find the book and tools. 

I so appreciate that skill. And that questionnaire, it sounds like that helps people look at and make this tendency a little bit more explicit. I do think it's actually pretty prominent. 

It feels really sweet to say, “Oh.” 

Like, you know, people say, oh, they know how I like my coffee in the morning, or they bring me. 

I mean, it feels really sweet. I love that. It feels wonderful. 

And we can apply that to, oh, they should know how I feel, or, you know, all these other layers. 

And it's like, it's a real setup for discipline. I mean, I had a moment like that a few weeks ago where my husband, he made me this coffee, and it was so proud, but it was not the way I like coffee. And in my mind, I'm like, he doesn't love me. How does he not know this? But yeah, it's because I always make my own coffee. So. Totally great example. Yes. Okay. 

Say the name of your website one more time. 

Yes, proflesliejohn.com. 

Excellent. I'll have the link to your website as well as your book on today's shownotes. Is there anything else you want to share about how people can follow or get in touch with you? 

I'm on socials. Instagram: www.instagram.com/proflesliejohn/ and LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-john. Yeah, same thing. Thank you so much. I love chatting with you. I could talk to you forever. Let me know if, when you're in Boston, where you're based. 

So I'm in California. I'm in Central, by Cal Poly; it's called. Okay. 

It's awesome. 

Well, it's such a pleasure to meet you. I love what you're doing, and thank you so much. 

Thank you.