The Cost of Over-Explaining

Many people respond to difficult or confusing interactions by explaining themselves more carefully. They add context. They clarify tone. They offer background, rationale, and reassurance. Often, this impulse is described as anxiety, people-pleasing, or lack of confidence. Yet research suggests that over-explaining is frequently a rational response to ambiguity rather than a personal deficit (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014; Williams & Dempsey, 2018). In clinical contexts, people rarely describe over-explaining as relieving. Instead, it is experienced as exhausting, destabilising, and strangely ineffective.

Over-explaining as a sense-making strategy

Psychological and organisational research shows that when individuals encounter unclear expectations, inconsistent feedback, or mixed messages, they naturally attempt to restore coherence through sense-making behaviours (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014).

Over-explaining can be understood as one such strategy. It is an attempt to:

• reduce ambiguity

• prevent misinterpretation

• re-establish shared understanding

Studies of communication in professional and institutional settings indicate that people are more likely to over-explain when they perceive that meaning is unstable or that their position is insecure (Ashforth et al., 2016).

In this sense, over-explaining is not excessive communication — it is communication under conditions of uncertainty.

When clarity does not restore safety

However, research also suggests that in certain relational or organisational contexts, additional explanation does not resolve uncertainty. Instead, it can increase vulnerability.

Work on power and communication indicates that when ambiguity functions as a form of control — for example, when expectations are deliberately or implicitly left unclear — efforts to clarify may be interpreted as defensiveness, neediness, or lack of authority.

As a result:

• explanations are not met with clarification

• reassurance is not reciprocated

• the individual feels compelled to explain further

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle in which the burden of coherence falls increasingly on one person.

Over-explaining and epistemic asymmetry

Contemporary psychological theory highlights the importance of epistemic trust — the expectation that one’s contributions will be received as relevant, meaningful, and taken seriously (Fonagy & Allison, 2014). When epistemic trust is compromised, individuals often compensate by increasing detail, justification, and self-monitoring. Research suggests that this response is especially common among conscientious or highly engaged individuals who are motivated to maintain relational or professional integrity (Fonagy et al., 2017).

However, when only one party is working to maintain mutual understanding, an epistemic asymmetry develops:

• one person explains

• the other evaluates

• meaning flows in one direction

Over time, this asymmetry can undermine confidence and reinforce self-doubt.

The hidden psychological cost

Empirical studies link chronic self-monitoring and excessive explanatory effort to increased cognitive load, emotional exhaustion, and reduced sense of agency (Petrides et al., 2016; Prilleltensky, 2014).

Clinically, people often describe:

• replaying conversations to improve future explanations

• anticipating misunderstanding before it occurs

• feeling responsible for how others interpret them

• experiencing relief only when interactions end

Research on emotional labour suggests that this form of communicative work is often invisible, unevenly distributed, and gendered, particularly in professional settings (Williams & Dempsey, 2018).

Why stopping can feel dangerous

Importantly, research indicates that people do not over-explain because they lack boundaries, but because not explaining has previously carried a cost — misunderstanding, exclusion, or negative evaluation (Freyd, 2018).

In contexts where ambiguity has functioned punitively, withdrawing explanation can feel risky. Silence may be interpreted as non-cooperation, lack of insight, or incompetence. As a result, individuals continue to explain even when it is no longer effective.

This helps explain why advice to “just say less” often feels unrealistic or unsafe.

A note on containment

From a psychological perspective, reducing over-explanation is not primarily a communication skill. It is a relational judgement.

Research on psychological safety suggests that people explain less not when they become more confident, but when the environment becomes more containing — when clarity is shared rather than extracted (Kahn, 2017).

If an interaction consistently requires you to explain yourself in order to be understood, the issue may not be how you communicate, but where the responsibility for meaning has been placed. Noticing that shift — without immediately correcting it — can be an important first step in restoring self-trust.