I am by nature a sharer, and am delighted, for example, when people help themselves to food on my plate. As far as I’m concerned, few things are more enjoyable alone than in a group.

I am happy to be shared with too. Tell me your secrets, your deepest desires and longings, your worst regrets, your unscriptable shames and I will not flinch. I have also learned not to judge – though it’s taken twenty years of deep personal and spiritual work to get here. I have also made a career out of sharing – my mistakes, my personal failures, the errors of my heart – in writing, with tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people.

But then along came Facebook. And a whole new era of sharing has begun:

‘If you don’t copy and share this on your wall, it means you don’t care about me…’

‘I’ve just received the worst news but I can’t tell talk about it now…’

‘Tell me how we met otherwise you’re not a real friend…’

‘I just ate breakfast. Look, eggs benedict.’

What used to be a form of intimacy, a method of drawing people in and connecting, has become a form of exhibitionism and attention-seeking, over things that – let’s be real – don’t warrant our attention, or not the kind of attention someone scrolling through their Facebook feed is able to give. This kind of over-sharing does the opposite of what real sharing does – it pushes people away, when actually, what the sharer probably needs is a hug in flesh-‘n-blood arms.

When we ‘put ourselves out there’ – whether on social media or in our writing, we need to assess what we want to share, and more importantly, what is necessary to share. Necessary to what? To the story. To the purpose of our communication.

Sharing ought not to burden our reader. It should never make us more vulnerable than we can cope with (social media invites unsolicited and often uncaring feedback). It should always be in service to something larger than our own loneliness, sorrow or grief. It should be invitation to engage. It should offer our reader a bridge into his or her own experience.

When we share, we open our hearts. Self-indulgent misery is best kept private (on the pages in which we bare our soul). But as soon as we go public, we need to ensure it’s not an open invitation to every troll with nothing better to do than judge, condemn or feel sorry for us.