Too (Inter)Personal

Wow, we’re already more than halfway done with October. This year is just flying by. Less than three months until 2019? How?!

Anyway, don't let me get ahead of myself. We still have a ways to go. This week, we continued our discussion on interpersonal communication. On Wednesday, we did a group activity that explored how it plays out in our lives, focusing specifically on levels of self-disclosure.

Basically, we were given a list of things that we could potentially self-disclose to others. It was up to us to think about, consider, and decide who we would feel comfortable sharing this information with. Some examples on the list included our guilty pleasure TV show, our religion, our GPA, our weight, our worst first date, etc. We then had to determine would we only disclose our answers to our close friends, everyone, or no one at all. It was interesting to see how our individual answers in our group compared. Some of us felt much more comfortable with sharing some things, while others did not. Although, I would say generally, we were in consensus.

One example that stood out to me was religion. Personally, I wouldn’t mind sharing something like my religion, so for that I said I would share it with everyone. I thought about how I used to wear a necklace with a cross all of the time. I was always walking around with the symbol of my religion around my neck. However, some of my peers in my group thought more deeply into their answers. They expressed that they wouldn't mind telling their religion to others, but only because we live in the United States. That was interesting to me, as I hadn’t thought about it in that way. We might not disclose certain information for fear of prosecution. For something like a guilty pleasure TV show, the worst that could probably happen to someone is embarrassment or guilt- hence the name. But for things like religion, more thought has to be put in before sharing with others. Interestingly enough though, religion was the only one that the entire class or at least the groups agreed that we would feel comfortable sharing with everyone. No other example on the list had the class in agreement.

Overall, I found it to be an interesting exercise. I really tried to think about what I would do in each circumstance. However, I began to question whether or not what I say I would do is necessarily what I would actually do. In other words, I might think I would feel comfortable disclosing something to my friends, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather keep it to myself.

I find that something like peer pressure might make us share things that we don't really feel comfortable with. At other times, we also have to consider what the other person may think. Do they want to hear things that are personal or TMI? In any case, I think it's important to remember though that it's okay sometimes to just say: