do you allow any emotionally significant event to occur in your life without sharing your thoughts on said event with friends, possibly numerous friends?

I have a compulsive need to sort things out, but I hate talking on the phone, so it takes... uh... other forms.

i have this faith--which often proves naïve--that i can talk through most anything.

People who act upon this belief are truly civilized.

i don't have that many emotionally significant moments these days it seems so when i do have one i will almost certainly share it with one or two people, maybe mention it here tho i don't bother to do that generally as i do like to keep some things private. i'm not one of those all or nothing people i guess.

for as long as i can get away with it.

I don't know if it helps to share everything, or talk too much? Sometimes you just end up going over and over things.

(not that I tell him *everything*, but I do tell him a lot more than anyone else)

that's a nice thing to hear, honestly. my ex used to wonder why i voiced my anxieties about things so often, but then she seems to get herself into circumstances she can't bear by not thinking or talking them over beforehand. i think what she didn't understand was that my talking through things--my admitting my anxieties and doubts, even if they weren't flattering-- was not a way of avoiding things but of dealing with them. and that her not talking or not acknowledging her own anxieties and doubts didn't make them any lesser.

anyway i'm a bit off the subject. i know the role of my compulsion to personal revelation in the context of a romance: it can be both bracingly necessary and uncomfortably demanding. maybe i could stand to be more judicious about it.

but in the context of a friendship, it's odder because it is less of a dialogue than, at times, a monologue that i'm subjecting my friends to (even if, for the moment, they seem happy to listen to me; and even if, on most occasions, they interject with thoughts and stories of their own). and i don't want my friends to associate me exclusively with that. which was never a danger before now--or at least, it's a situation that's become much worse. because of a series of ups and downs and because i've been unusually self-absorbed this past year (i've even stopped reading the paper).

the global solution to this is probably the old "get out more" but i worry too about a tendency to start babbling about myself to near-strangers. i was chatting up a girl at an event recently and i gave unusually involved responses to what were fairly simple questions (i.e. "what school do you want to go do?"). to her credit and my surprise, she seemed to follow me without a hint of being restless, and responded in kind. but other times i can feel myself boring people. but i'm almost more enamored of my habit of loquaciousness (loggorhea?) than of actually making friends.

one thing i almost never do--with surprisingly few and mostly irrelevant exceptions--is discuss my personal life with anyone at work. i've always thought of that as a boundary it's very, very wise not to cross. perhaps this doesn't work for other people.

So I'll be damned before I give up this precious gift. My good friends, my real friends, are the people to whom I can talk about absolutely anything. And I do my best to reciprocate and be there as confidant or sounding board or advice or whatever whatever they need to talk through.

But I think that is the key. That it is a reciprocal exchange. If one person is always the sharer and the other is always the sharee, that is off balance. I've learned to avoid those situations.

I've stopped discussing personal problems as much as I've gotten older, not sure why this is maybe I would just like to spend more time with my friends having fun and being daft.

OTM except for the 'older' part, and I've kind of lost my knack for 'having fun and being daft' as well. I vent on the furniture and the machines now mostly.

I'm not uncomfortable talking about feelings, I just don't like it much. I also can't keep a journal, writing something down feels redundant to the constant internal monologue/dialogue I've got about feelings and events.

i tend to be much, much more reluctant to share good news. perhaps it's a bit dishonest, but i enjoy friends simply picking up on the fact that you're in good spirits and then teasing the reason out of you. sometimes i'll refrain from telling altogether. so i guess what i had uppermost in my mind when i made this thread was, in fact, bad news.

i'm fundamentally not comfortable using ilx for the aforementioned purposes, though. which is why on threads like this i persist in being cagey about anything actually happening to me.

but the compulsion is often there and i find there are only a few things i can do to successfully resist it: watch a movie that i find familiar and comforting (even if it's not a happy film, in fact, it seems to work best if the film has some cathartic, unhappy element) or listen to a piece of music i find familiar and comforting. i can lose myself in contemplation of the film or music (this doesn't work with novels, for some reason). i guess this is a basic function of art which just becomes clearer in moments of heightened emotions--of greater need.

but whatever method i choose of preventing myself from being left alone with my anxieties, i'm not getting any sleep. so this anxiety does prove harmful in that -- in times of emotional stress -- i'm always tired.

i should add that i'm not usually so compulsive, or so ruminative about being compulsive. i have a tremendous amount of anxiety right now about my future (again: i'm being cagey, sorry) which i think is what's really keeping me up nights, even if my thoughts tend to circle around other issues (dating, basically). that anxiety should be resolved within two months. i'm looking forward to it, one way or another.

-- The Obligatory Sourpuss (expresso222...), February 18th, 2005 7:17 AM.

Is precisely my plight. On the (very) few attempts I've made to talk about deep/meaningful issues I realize that in issues of the heart I'm woefully inadequate or out of practice at communicating. So I don't bother, and, frankly, am not bothered by this inability. Furthermore - when I do articulate real botherances they're incredibly insubstantial and I sound flaky and self-occupied. I've got a pretty good life, and I don't want to foist my neuroses onto somebody else. And I don't like being told that this is unhealthy, because psychologically speaking I feel I'm one of the healthiest people I know.

I've also had my share of problems of being grist for the rumour mill due to my frank attitude towards my own life. However, I've found that the solution is to be as honest as possible about what *is* going on with you, and that cuts off a great deal more of the speculation about what you *might* be doing, that the rumour mill tends to focus on.

It's harder for people to believe outrageous lies and BS when they've heard the actual story in first person. I hope.

a) all talked out about it and can continue to sort it out in my head,

or

b) over it completely.

I also do my best to be there for them in kind.