To tell someone your worries, your troubles, or a secret you have been carrying, so that you feel lighter afterwards. The picture inside the word is a load on your back that you finally set down. Look carefully at how it is built, because this is where students slip. The usual shape is unburden yourself — you unburden yourself to a friend, or unburden yourself of a secret you have kept for years. You do not unburden your friend, and you do not unburden your problem. The one you set free is you. It is a slightly formal, slightly literary word. In real conversation a Taiwanese student is far more likely to hear "get it off your chest" or "open up to someone" or just "talk to someone about it." You will meet unburden in novels, in newspaper writing, in a serious speech — a place where the writer wants the moment to feel weighty. Two things travel with it. First, what you unburden is usually heavy: grief, guilt, a long silence — not a small complaint about the weather. Second, there is a hint of relief at the end; the word carries its own happy ending. There is also a rarer, plainer use — to take a load off an animal or a vehicle — but you will almost never see it, and if you do, the writer is reaching for an old-fashioned sound on purpose.

傾訴、吐露心事（把積壓的煩惱說出來而覺得輕鬆）。注意語感偏書面，日常口語台灣學生更常聽到的是 open up 或 get it off your chest。