Personalistic Self-disclosure

The amount a person discloses largely depends on whether the disclosure is personalistic or general. For the former, I am comfortable with my close friends and there is little they don’t know about me. General self-disclosure is information available to anyone. What interests me is the process, or evolution, from general to personal self-disclosure. For instance, you might start a new job and you would be involved in general disclosure, but over time some co-workers might become your friends. I think this is the hard part--negotiating self-disclosure when the context doesn’t pre-determine for you the path the relationship might take. For example, you might think that you’re good friends with your co-worker after working together for a couple of years and engage in high self-disclosure, but they might have a different outlook and see you purely as a work colleague, and not a friend. So in this case, there might be an awkward situation in which you divulge personal information and the co-worker tells everyone in the office. Seeing eye to eye on the level of intimacy, sometimes, is not clear.

The last point I want to make is that sometimes, even when you’re very close to a friend or family member, you will consciously not disclose information for fear of hurting or disappointing them. This is very ironic because theoretically, you should be able to self-disclose to the greatest degree with close friends and family. My brothers used to intercept the mail so my parents would not see their bad grades!