I've learned to hide negative emotions very well and for most of my life i used to either keep them to myself, or channel them into anger or self-destructive behavior. But in the past couple of years i've grown to be much more comfortable sharing my emotions and vulnerability. At least, i try; i sometimes have a hard time determining exactly what it is i'm feeling. I've repressed my feelings for a long time and i'm still in the process of learning to recognize them. Obviously this means that what i say may not always be a proper representation of what's really going on inside, which can be frustrating, but i'm getting better at it and it's something i want to be able to do as well as possible. Some things i do find much more difficult to share than others, but i suspect this has a lot to do with my own reluctance to acknowledge these issues and/or my inability to deal with them... i feel this is a bigger obstacle than my shame towards others, but i might be wrong.
How much i share is not just a matter of trust, it's also based on (my perception of) whether people are comfortable talking about emotions themselves. I'm reluctant to open up unless i get strong signals that people are willing to listen and empathize and even then i tend to need a nudge. This is a major reason why many of my (male) friends don't know much about my emotional life, including my best friend whom i've known since kindergarten. We've never talked about feelings except for the occasional heartache peptalks, so who am i to start babbling about things like insecurity all of a sudden? It's ridiculous, because we're on the same wavelength in many ways and he most likely has dealt with similar feelings himself at some point in his life, we just never talk about things like that. I guess i don't want to be a burden by making people uncomfortable, even when i know they would support me. Perhaps some of them would even be relieved because they feel a similar reluctance in sharing their own feelings, who knows...