Honest Sharing - Understanding the Practice
When I first encountered Honest Sharing, what struck me the most wasn’t the technique itself but how rare it is to actually share what’s genuinely happening inside us in the present moment. Usually, we talk about our days, exchange stories, discuss ideas… but how often do we simply express what we’re feeling and sensing right now, without any agenda?
Why We Don’t Share Authentically
Most of us learned early on that openly expressing certain emotions wasn’t safe. Maybe showing anger led to punishment or humiliation. Maybe expressing sadness meant being left alone or ignored or manipulated. As children, our survival literally depended on our caregivers, so we developed sophisticated strategies to suppress whatever feelings might threaten those relationships. And later we picked up other people’s suppression strategies as well.
The problem is that our nervous systems still operate as if expressing vulnerability will lead to abandonment or attack even when we’re with people who genuinely want to hear us. We’ve largely lost the ability to make real contact.
About Honest Sharing
The core of Honest Sharing is providing a safe container for practicing the authentic sharing of one’s present moment experience. Only one person expresses themselves at a time for a fixed time ranging from 5 to 10 minutes (you can always stop early!) while the others listen with full attention. Then you switch. There’s no talking about the expressed contents unless you openly and explicitely invite it after the practice. But in general, the expressed contents are of no importance. What matters is the act of sharing and the experience of safety.
Each sentence begins with on of three sentence starters:
- “I sense [sensation] in [body part]”
- “I feel [feeling]”
- “My head thinks that [thought]”
By seperating sensations, emotions and thoughts into distinct levels, a certain inner distance is created in order to not identify with what is going on, but approach it with curiosity and calmness. For example, notice the difference between saying “I hate this pointless practice!” compared to “I feel anger. My head thinks that this practice is pointless.”
The magic lies in consistently experiencing nervous system safety while expressing whatever is present including supposedly taboo stuff like shame, hatred, jealousy, anger, repeating yourself or even not saying anything. The more often you have the experience of sharing something vulnerable and the feared response not happening (no judgement, no attack, no abandonment, no manipulation, no being ignored), in time your nervous system starts to update its outdated models of what is safe to express and what isn’t.
With practice and growing relational safety, increasingly vulnerable material may naturally surface to be expressed and released. But there’s never any pressure to force anything.
The structure (the sentence starters, the time limits, the focus on present moment experience rather than stories) is all about creating a reliable and safe container for expression without judgement.
There’s a number of “levels” to the practice, of which for the time being only the first two are relevant:
- “Level 1” means to not refer to other participants but to stay with your own experience. So, we wouldn’t note something like “My head thinks, that Peter looks happy today.” but keep the focus on ourselves. If Peter’s supposed happiness does something to us, this could be expressed, for example “My head thinks, that I feel safe and in good company.”
- “Level 2” means that we can reference other participants
The potential Benefits
- Internalizing relational safety in one’s authentic, vulnerable self-expression
- Releasing of shame and fear with regard to whatever one is afraid to share and express
- Learning a way of connecting and communicating that centers around present moment experience instead of stories about the past and future
- Growing self-awareness (comparable to other noting practices)
- Learning to better differentiate between thoughts, feelings and sensations
- Emotional regulation
Learn more here if interested!