Dangers of Self-Disclosure

The many benefits of self-disclosure should not make us blind to the risks (Bochmer, 1984). Here we discuss some of the main dangers.

Personal and Social Rejection. When we do self-disclosures we normally do to people we trust. We perform self-disclosure to someone who we think will be supporting our self-disclosure. Of course, this person may turn out to reject us. Parents, who are usually the most supportive of us, often refused to reveal the nature of homosexual children, who are interested in getting married with people of different religions, who intends to move conviction. Friends of the most familiar probably also will reject us if we do a similar self-disclosure.

Material losses. Occasionally, self-disclosure resulted in material losses. Politicians who revealed that he had been treated psychiatrist might lose the support of his own political party and the people will be reluctant to vote for him. Teachers who revealed that he had alcoholism or indecent act upon students in the past may be sentenced by his peers, gets the assignment of teaching that "no fun", or dismissed by reason of cost savings. In the world of business, self-disclosure of alcohol or drug addiction is often followed by dismissal, demotion, or transfer.

Intrapersonal difficulties. When the reactions of others are not as expected, intrapersonal difficulties may occur. If you are rejected and not supported, if your parents are not even booed and caress you, and if your friends away from you and not your approach as before, you are on track toward intrapersonal difficulties. No one is happy to be rejected, and those with fragile egos need to think about the damage that can be caused by the rejection like this.

Remember that self-disclosure, like other forms of communication, is not reversible (see Unit 2). We can not self-disclose to someone and then pull it back. However hard we attempt to pull our self-disclosure, once something has been said, he can not be withdrawn. Also, we can not erase the conclusion drawn by the listener based on our self-disclosure.