Why Should I Tell You?

Self-disclosure can be extremely tricky. There are many risks involved. When you tell a person something you are giving them some sort of power over you. They can now use that information against you to harm you. I feel I am a pretty moderate self-discloser. I definitely don't mind telling just about everything to my best friends, boyfriend, and most my family. Then there are some people I tell most to, but not everything. I am not afraid to self-disclose or share my feelings, but I am definitely more careful about who I chose to self-disclose to. When I was in high school, young and naive, I didn't care. I was such a people person and "friends" (if you can call it that) with a lot of people and shared my life openly. I was constantly changing groups and "best friends" so I realize I probably shouldn't have been telling people as much as I did. I guess at that age I did not have much to disclose or worry about though. Now, I have much more to disclose and choose more wisely. It seems like I disclose a lot because I have quite a few friends that I am very close with and comfortable disclosing to, but they are selected very carefully over many years. Also, I like having various people to disclose to because when I have a problem I want to discuss I can get different opinions and advice. I find that I will share different degrees of different aspects of my life to different people. I may share more information about my family with my best friend and I will also share information about my family with a friend, but maybe not as much as I shared with my best friend. School, work, hobbies, taste in movies, music, food, etc. are pretty generic things that I would disclose to just about anyone. Family life I share with just about anyone to the degree of our lifestyle, how we were raised, my relationship with my parents and siblings, and things of that sort but I won't get into family issues. Overall, we need to disclose to some degree because it helps us shape our identity. It also is not healthy to keep stuff in and never discuss it, so try to find at least one person you can disclose to.