I’m currently writing a guide for people seeking to provide a listening ear in the bar space, and the following paragraphs are an excerpt from a larger section on active listening.

One of the biggest mistakes I see new chaplains make (and one I have made more times than I can count as well) is oversharing. There are times where sharing an element of your own story can create a feeling of camaraderie, but these are far more seldom than we imagine. Oversharing personal information can give people the impression you’re projecting onto them, and it can shift the relationship so the would-be confidant is now the person doing the confiding. Additionally, simply sharing your experience and the answers you’ve found in your journey rarely (if ever) helps people arrive at their own answers. In the spirit of oversharing, maybe an example will help.

I once visited a patient whose 14-year-old granddaughter had died several years before, and the patient’s caregivers were concerned by how often he still talked about the loss. During our conversation, as he described his situation, it resonated with me on a personal level. A little over two decades ago, my teenaged sister passed away, and seeing as there were a handful of similarities between our cases, I decided to share my family’s experience with this patient in far too much detail. At the time, it felt like a great conversation to me. I perceived my actions as “establishing rapport,” and I processed a lot of my own feelings during the ninety minutes I was in his room. It was only later, in reflecting on the conversation with my supervisor, when I realized I had done almost nothing to help the patient explore his feelings about his loss. Clearly, sharing all those experiences hadn’t been the right course of action, but how could I establish the same level of rapport without disclosing all that information from my past? My supervisor, a chaplain of almost three decades, responded simply, “Let your experiences inform your questions.” It turns out you don’t have to share all your experiences to prove you have empathy, and in fact, leaving some of those experiences unvoiced may be more helpful. Check out the difference between these two approaches:

1. 1. “I know it’s hard still seeing her photos all the time, but it gets easier with time; my family keeps photos up to this day, and they help us remember good times.”
   2. “You mentioned still having her photos up around the house. What sorts of memories do those photos bring up for you when you see them?”

The first approach sounds like a person seeking sympathy;
the second approach sounds like someone offering sympathy.
The first voices a personal experience;
the second draws on a personal experience.
The first makes assumptions about the patient’s pain, dismissing it as something that will get easier with time;
the second makes no assumptions, instead inviting the patient to share any sort of memory—happy, sad, painful, or otherwise.
The first contains only statements;
the second is a question.

There may be times where sharing bits and pieces of your own journey is appropriate, but it’s not all the time, and it should never be done in a way that overwhelms or silences someone else’s feelings. If you’re not sure whether it’s the appropriate time to share a personal experience, stick to questions instead. Sharing experiences may sometimes be helpful, but asking good questions will always be helpful.