Ghent University Researcher Reveals The Double-Edged Nature Of Sharing Emotions

Researchers Laura Sels, Yasemin Erbas, Sarah O'Brien, Lesley Verhofstadt, Margaret Clark and Elise Kalokerinos explain why you should be careful when sharing your emotions with others.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | September 20, 2024

A new study published in Psychological Science suggests that sharing emotional experiences can enhance emotional understanding, but this benefit only occurs when people do not dwell on or ruminate excessively about those experiences.

I recently spoke to lead author Laura Sels, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at Ghent University, to discuss the effects of sharing your emotions with others. Here is a summary of our conversation.

What is social sharing, and how can it both improve and hinder emotional understanding?

Social sharing is when people talk to others about their emotions after an emotional event. They do so for various reasons: to process the experience, to vent or to seek comfort. Many believe that sharing will help them better understand their emotions—a view supported by certain psychological theories.

Despite its support, this idea has not been directly tested until now. In a series of four studies, we found that social sharing is a double-edged sword. Social sharing seems helpful when people aren't ruminating or dwelling on their emotions. In these cases, talking about their feelings helps them label and understand their emotions with more clarity.

However, when someone is caught up in constantly rehashing their emotions, sharing might actually make it harder for them to make sense of what they're feeling.

How can someone recognize when social sharing might lead to emotional turmoil rather than relief?

When people share their emotions to find emotional relief and thus to feel better afterward, this is something else than sharing your emotions to obtain clarity about them. However, also in terms of emotional relief, research suggests that just sharing your emotions with others does not help.

People often look for validation and support from others when they encounter something distressing. While receiving such empathic responses helps them to feel closer to the listener, it does not necessarily make them feel better.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with reaching out to people to talk about negative events—it is only human. But it is good to realize that it does not necessarily provide emotional relief.

One sign that social sharing might cause more harm than good is if you find yourself repeating the same negative thoughts without feeling any clearer or calmer.

This can lead to co-rumination—when both people keep dwelling on the negative event without finding solutions. If sharing your feelings leads to rehashing the problem without progress, it could result in emotional turmoil instead of relief.

Before sharing, check in with yourself. If you're very focused on the distress, it might help to pause and ground yourself first. You can try mindfulness exercises or deep breathing, which have been shown to reduce negative overthinking.

You can also ask yourself concrete questions like "How did this happen?" rather than more global abstract questions like "Why did this happen?"

What practical steps can people take to ensure that social sharing helps them gain emotional clarity without leading to rumination or co-rumination?

Here are some practical steps to ensure that social sharing is helpful and doesn't lead to overthinking:

• First, choose the right person to talk to. Share with someone who can listen and offer different perspectives. Ideally, they should empathize with you first (so that you become open to alternative viewpoints) but also help you reflect on your emotions afterward.

• Second, ask for alternative viewpoints. After sharing, ask your listener open-ended questions. For example, "How would you feel in my situation?" or "Do you see any other ways to look at what happened?" This helps you explore your feelings without getting stuck on the same negative thoughts.

• Third, be mindful of the conversation. If you notice the conversation is focusing only on the negative aspects or repeatedly going over the same points, gently steer it toward problem-solving or reflection on emotions.

In your experience, which do you think is more beneficial overall—social sharing or journaling—when it comes to understanding your emotions better and making sense of the events?

Both social sharing and journaling have their benefits, but when it comes to understanding your emotions better, expressive writing (journaling) may be more effective. Research shows that writing about your emotions helps people gain clarity and has long-term mental and physical health benefits.

It's also something you can do on your own, making it easy to integrate into your daily life. That said, journaling doesn't work for everyone. Some people might find mindfulness, physical activity or therapy more helpful.

I also don't want to disregard the important role of social sharing in our lives. While it might not always help you to understand your emotions better, it might help you to feel more connected with the people around you. We are all social beings who want to connect with others and often do that through communication.

In fact, disclosing personal information about yourself, such as the emotions you feel, is one of the critical ways to form a more intimate relationship with others. On top of that, we also do not experience our emotions in isolation, but most often experience them in interaction with or in the presence of others and deal with them together.