How to Be More Open with People

Opening up to people is difficult for many.

Being more open with people means letting them see your inner world: your fears, mistakes, and desires. Doing that means embracing vulnerability and letting go of fear and shame, the painful sense that you are bad rather than that you did something bad. That’s easier said than done.

Psychologists call this act of revealing your inner world to someone else self-disclosure. This article covers why it feels so scary, and five practical ways to get better at it.

Being closed off and avoiding vulnerability by opening up is often a deeply entrenched way of thinking and being. 

That means it isn’t something you can switch on and off. It’s a journey: learning to trust, growing comfortable with vulnerability, and building your self-worth.

Approach opening up slowly. Small, gradual steps cause far less anxiety than diving in all at once. It helps to understand why opening up is worth it, because part of you may believe staying closed off is safer.

1. Focus on The Benefits of Vulnerability

Connection is what gives life meaning and purpose. From working in the mental health sector for many years, I know that feeling connected and cared for is one of the best antidotes for suffering.

Learning to be vulnerable and open is therefore not just important for your social life, it’s imperative to your well-being.

Being closed off stops real connection. Even surrounded by friends and family, you can still feel like you are not truly connecting with any of them.

That gap leaves a deep sense that you don’t belong, that no one really cares. Left unaddressed, it curdles into loneliness.

Loneliness carries a real health cost. A meta-analysis pooled 148 studies and more than 300,000 participants. It found that weak social ties predict a health risk on par with smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).

The hard part is letting go of the fear and shame that keep you closed off; doing that makes it easier to open up.

2. Lean Into Vulnerability

Vulnerability is uncomfortable for most people. It feels especially risky if your vulnerability has been abused before.

Staying strong and hiding any “weakness” can feel safer than opening up. Many people numb that vulnerability instead, turning to drugs, excessive drinking, extreme behavior, or workaholism.

As researcher Brené Brown explains, numbing shows up subtly too. It can look like blame, offloading your own negativity and shame onto someone else. Or perfectionism, hiding behind a façade of being flawless, or acting as though your choices don’t affect other people.

The catch: you can’t selectively numb negative emotions. Numbing your vulnerability also numbs joy, gratitude, and happiness.

Allowing yourself to be vulnerable invites connection back in. Brown’s research and writing describe vulnerability as the birthplace of shame and fear, but also of joy, creativity, belonging, love, and empathy.

Her original academic study, though, was a smaller, qualitative look at shame in women; her much wider popular writing has expanded on those themes since (Brown, 2006).

That’s why leaning into vulnerability matters.

Action Steps:

• Write It Down: Note how being closed off has limited your connections and joy, and revisit it when you feel afraid to open up.
• Start Small: Identify one or two trusted people to practice small self-disclosures with, to build confidence.
• Ask Open Questions: Practice open-ended questions that invite the other person to share more.
• Remember the Reward: When fear or shame arises as you reveal more, remind yourself of the deeper connection waiting on the other side.

3. Build Self-Worth

Part of you believes that letting others see your true and whole self will lead to judgment and rejection. Something within you tells you that you are not good enough, that you’re not worthy.

In a world of “perfect” Instagram lives and Snapchat filters, it’s hard to feel like you’re enough.

However, people with high self-worth believe that they are worthy of love and connection regardless of their achievements, flaws, and failures.

Action Steps:

• Track Your Wins: Write down and revisit your strengths and achievements daily.
• Personal Affirmations: Practice affirmations specific to your life, like “I am a good enough mother” or “I am good enough at my job,” rather than generic ones.
• Question the Flaw: Ask why a perceived flaw or shortcoming should mean you’re not worthy. No one is perfect.
• Address the Root: Where relational wounds or trauma sit underneath, consider therapy or other structured support.

4. Give People the Benefit of the Doubt

Opening up means being generous in your assumptions about people, rather than assuming the worst. Test that in real life.

You might expect ridicule, dismissal, or scolding if you say how you feel. But what if the other person listens, and offers empathy instead? That fear is common.

Choose someone you already trust, at least somewhat, and share something you wouldn’t normally say. Start small: something that carries real weight but won’t send your anxiety through the roof.

Psychologists call this perceived partner responsiveness. It isn’t the disclosure itself that builds closeness, but whether you come away feeling understood, validated, and cared for (Reis & Shaver, 1988).

Not all disclosures carry equal risk. A disclosure that’s specific and directly involves the other person feels riskiest to share. It’s also the hardest for a partner to receive well, even though it often matters most for the relationship (Khalifian & Barry, 2020).

Pick a good moment. Speak from the heart, and notice what actually happens.

You don’t need to open up to everyone. Having even one or two people you can be open with is enough.

As relationship therapist Jenna Nielsen puts it, “look at your own values and find a person who shares similar ones,” since shared values tend to make opening up easier.

Most people like being confided in and asked for help. A trusted friend or family member is more often receptive and empathetic than fear predicts, a pattern the research literature on disclosure and liking documents (Collins & Miller, 1994).

Brené Brown’s research found that people who felt connected and loved lived from a sense of worthiness, captured in her words: “that which makes me vulnerable also makes me beautiful.”

Action Steps:

• Pick Someone You Trust: Choose someone you trust and test opening up on a minor issue.
• Notice Their Response: Were they empathetic? Did sharing feel freeing, even a little?
• Accept Any Reaction: Remind yourself it’s okay if the response doesn’t match your expectations.
• Reframe the Reaction: Each person’s reaction reflects their own experiences and perspective, not a verdict on you.
• Build Gradually: Let each small experiment inform the next, sharing a little more based on how people respond.

5. Throw Yourself Into Heartbreak

We all want to avoid being hurt. But as the Buddhist teaching goes, “human life is one of suffering,” and you cannot avoid life’s ups and downs.

Throwing yourself into heartbreak means facing it as it comes. Rather than bracing against it forever, you open yourself to the beauty of life, connection, and relationships.

Vulnerability can feel unsafe. It means giving up the illusion of control, of being able to predict how someone will respond.

Let go of that need to control every interaction, little by little. Do things that scare you, including sharing more of your inner world with others.

Living in fear stunts your growth. It limits how fully you can enjoy life.

Living instead from compassion and empathy, toward yourself and others, lets you and your relationships grow.

Receiving care is its own, often harder, form of vulnerability.

As psychotherapist Esther Perel explains, relationships run on asking, giving, receiving, and refusing, and letting someone give to you is often the hardest of the four.

One caller on Perel’s podcast Where Should We Begin? described always being the dependable one. In his words: “I make sure to be in relationships where other people need me, so I never need to need them.”

Action Steps:

• Face Avoidance: Identify situations you avoid specifically because of fear of rejection, and take small steps toward them rather than avoiding them indefinitely.
• Let Go of Control: Practice releasing the need to control how an interaction or relationship will unfold.
• Push Through Discomfort: Share more of your real thoughts and feelings with trusted people, a little at a time.

Why Is Opening Up So Hard?

Pain usually built the wall. If you’re closed off, it’s most likely because you were hurt before after letting someone in, and the wall still protects you from being hurt again.

Whatever forced you to build it left behind fear and shame, and that’s what keeps you from being vulnerable now.

Underneath, there’s often a script that runs like this. “If I open up and let people know my fears, dreams, mistakes, or desires, then they will judge me as being weird or bad, and reject me.”

This shame comes from feeling unworthy, not good enough. So you hide behind the wall, making sure no one gets the chance to judge, ostracize, or reject you.

Here are some reasons why opening up can be difficult for people:

1. Trauma

Traumatic experiences, especially of the relational kind, often lead people to feel shame about who they are. They develop a strong fear of others seeing their “flawed” self, and consequently, they close off and avoid people and sharing their thoughts, feelings, and inner world.

Being abused, neglected, stalked, mistreated, assaulted, or bullied (to name a few) can be significant traumas that can make you feel extremely vulnerable.

Naturally, you want to avoid feeling vulnerable again, so you build that wall and let no one in.

2. Avoidant or Disorganized Attachment Styles

Children whose feelings and needs weren’t consistently validated and met can develop an insecure attachment style. Two of the insecure styles, avoidant and disorganized, are linked to difficulty opening up, each for different reasons.

People with an avoidant attachment style value independence. They avoid intimacy and sharing because they don’t feel much need for it.

That’s fine by them. Being closed off isn’t uncomfortable for them, and they often stay contentedly on the shallow end of emotional expression.

People with a disorganized attachment style want closeness, but fear it, usually rooted in early trauma. They want to be understood and comforted, yet push people away the moment anyone gets close.

It’s a mental battle. A deep sense of insecurity and vulnerability, often masked by anger, indifference, and a fierce insistence on independence.

This isn’t just a clinical impression. A study of 352 undergraduates found that avoidantly attached people disclosed less, and less intimate, information than securely attached people (Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991).

Anxiously attached people disclosed just as much overall, but struggled to match the depth of what they shared to the relationship.

3. Fear of Rejection

“If I open up, others will reject me”.

Trauma and insecure attachment can cause fear of rejection. Maybe you were rejected by caregivers, peers, or society, and this fear has followed you through life and made you close off.

You expect rejection, so you look for signs of it. Mid-conversation, you might feel the other person isn’t interested, or that a moment of vulnerability wasn’t met with enough empathy.

Your expectations of how someone should react can run very high. Anything that falls short gets read as a rejection, even when it wasn’t intended as one.

4. Fear of Judgement

“If I open up, others will judge me and think less of me.”

Fear of being judged, too, often traces back to trauma or insecure attachment. Maybe you were bullied or humiliated at home or school. There may have been real situations where being visibly yourself led to judgment; the fear isn’t random.

You might judge your own thoughts and feelings harshly. That harsh voice can echo your parents or childhood bullies telling you it’s never good enough.

Harsh self-judgment tends to generalize outward. If you judge yourself severely, you may assume others are judging you too, meaning the judgment you perceive is sometimes your own, projected.

5. Low Self-Worth

Big or many little traumas can cause low self-worth: the sense of not being good enough, of being deeply flawed and unworthy of people’s affection and time.

Low self-worth causes shame of who you are and that can lead to fear of rejection and judgment.

So, low self-worth is usually what underpins having difficulties opening up, but it could also be your personality if you’re, for example, introverted. 

6. Introversion

Introversion is a relatively stable personality trait. It describes someone who has less need for social interaction, enjoys and needs solitude, feels comfortable with silence, and doesn’t feel the need to share constantly.

Introversion itself isn’t a problem. Society, though, tends to make more room for extroverts.

If you’re less open than others but still feel secure and confident, that’s okay. But address it if you believe you’re a burden, doubt your own feelings are valid, or don’t trust the people around you.

Sources

Brown, B. (2006). Shame resilience theory: A grounded theory study on women and shame. Families in Society, 87(1), 43–52. https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.3483

Brown, B. (2010, June). The power of vulnerability [Video]. TED Conferences. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability?language=en

Collins, N. L., & Miller, L. C. (1994). Self-disclosure and liking: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 116(3), 457–475. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.116.3.457

Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Khalifian, C. E., & Barry, R. A. (2020). Expanding intimacy theory: Vulnerable disclosures and partner responding. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 37(1), 58–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519853047

Mikulincer, M., & Nachshon, O. (1991). Attachment styles and patterns of self-disclosure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61(2), 321–331. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.61.2.321

Reis, H. T., & Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck (Ed.), Handbook of personal relationships (pp. 367–389). Wiley.