Why do I feel the need to be an open book?

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I feel this urge to tell everyone, even strangers, my deepest secrets, everything about me. I cannot keep a private journal because I must let others know how I am feeling. Is this a normal part of Aspergers? Am I crying out? I am curious to hear your thoughts.

Hello Caseyfritz,

Besides the Asperger's talkative aspect (if you're the kind of being that way)), I think that maybe it's part of the "internet culture": the need and the urge to let people know everything about anything, even the most secretive and personal.

You'll always have someone to listen or read: people really love gossips, that's a fact.


But also, if you're read from another part of the world (with internet for example), it's a broader way of sharing little and bing things of your culture, the one you're living in and how you perceive it.

For me it's a desire to be understood instead of isolated. If nobody knows my deepest secrets I feel alone in them and I suffer. The problem is I am always tempted to say things too early.

Here is my guess based on my own experience. You feel disconnected from people and are painfully aware of the difficulty (impossibility?) of bridging that gap. Confessing your most personal secrets is a way of tricking yourself into feeling like you are making real connections. It's like a last ditch effort, the most extreme because everything else has failed.

That is how it was for me anyway.

Over scrupulous about honesty?

It's OK to have privacy and secrets. Doesn't make you a dishonest person.

Autists tend to be extremely honest.

I just don't remember which things should be kept secret, which things I mean to keep secret, which things people don't want to hear about. It's too much thinking. So... I don't have secrets. It's much simpler that way.

I think I have less boundary between me and strangers than the average person has. This makes me a better writer which is important to me, but it does cause social difficulties. TMI (Too Much Information)

I tell myself, medium step by medium step. Maybe the other person isn't always able to reciprocate, which is okay.

So the question becomes, How do I feel about what I revealed several hours later or the next day?

i am also horrible with this. i mean to tell people nothing, and i end up giving out my life story.
it drives me nuts

Interesting replies. The upside to being an open book is that some people also open up to you in return, and admit insecurities that help you not feel alone. The downside is that it is too much information, even your weaknesses, and there are many predators and bullies out there and even friends who can use those weaknesses against you whenever they want in order to hurt you. On the other hand, if you are private, people may or may not open more (I've never been so I don't know) but at least nobody would ever know your weaknesses.

I'm like this as well.

I'm also like this. One comment summed me up;

That is almost the polar opposite of me, so it's not a normal part of AS for me.
I have never revealed anything I didn't mean to and I sure don't have any need to blab my or other's secrets to anyone.
Not telling is my natural inclination, and I don't feel the need to tell people how I feel or what I think about anything. It's a private matter and none of their business. My journal is private and I would not take it kindly if anyone read it. I even go to lengths to put it where no-one will accidentally come across it (and I don't have snoopy siblings).

When I was younger I used to write stories, completely made up, so nothing actually personal in them. Once my father picked up one of them and read it and that felt like a terrible violation to me. It still would. Private is private.

I do this as well. I think, for me at least, it is mostly that I would rather disclose all of my dark stuff up front... that way, if they're the sort of person to take issue with it, I don't waste a bunch of time only to have them ditch me when they find out.

Also, I like being honest and being an open book. I wish more people were like that. Not in a non-stop chattering about oneself sort of way, but in an I don't need to hide who I am sort of way.

There may also be some merit to the previous poster's theory: a last effort at trying to make a connection. I think I have probably disclosed private things for that reason before.

Either that or you scare people away by revealing too much.