How Much to Share?

“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” - Prentis Hemphill

Whether in therapy or writing, an important question that comes across is how much to share of oneself. Sharing oneself can happen in many ways, for example through our time, our energy, or self-disclosures.

Self-disclosure in the therapy world has two meanings. One meaning is sharing feedback and opinions in session. Another meaning is the therapist sharing about themselves to the client.

Writing has a similar notion with how much you would like your work to stand at the forefront with the author falling to the background. Ted Kooser explains this well in The Poetry Home Repair Manual, which I highly recommend to poets. Use of “I” and “me” in poetry for example makes the author more noticeable while avoiding the 1st person pronouns in cases where the writing is personal can both make the writing more relatable and allow the writing itself, not the poet, to become the primary focal point.

I’ve found it can be a challenge to decide how much or how little to share in both fields. A rule of thumb is, it depends. Sharing as a therapist is on a case-by-case basis. It is informed by ethics, theoretical orientation, and beneficence to the client. The decision about sharing is usually made in the moment. Writing, however, allows for much more time to process.

Writing Becoming Mister Ross, I was confronted with this question, even within the month of publishing. It’s easy enough to put words on a page. It’s another consideration entirely as to whether you want the general public to read about it. Memoirs by their nature do put the writer front and center. The writer is the primary subject matter. Yes, from time to time the writing style and voices used can become more prominent, but soon enough it returns to I. Whatever I wrote from the first person perspective can be placed back to me, the person whose face is on the cover.

As more people have approached me at poetry nights or messaged me on social media, I realized my book was gaining more traction outside my small inner circle of loved ones and close friends. Friends, acquaintances, people in my community, people who watched me grow up, and friends from my past wanted a copy.

While one of my purposes is to be an advocate for mental health as both a counselor and one who has struggled with mental health at times, I had to choose how much I wanted to share about my mental health journey. To be an advocate, to return to the quote at the top, I didn’t need to spill every detail. For people to buy my book or for people to like me, I didn’t have to share every problem. I could choose which stories and details I wanted the public to know.

So much of the book is about what I dealt with, how I was affected, or who I became. It feels poetic to me that one of the final steps to publishing the book was loving myself through setting boundaries.