Introduction
This paper considers the book Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships by Guerrero, Andersen and Afifi. The authors of the book look at interpersonal communication by adopting relational approach from Human Services (counseling) perspective.
They highlight how one can understand close relationships between families, romantic partners, and friends. They also emphasize the essence of communication in any relationship (Guerrero, Andersen and Afifi, 2011).
People have the desire to enhance their relationships as they socialize. This process depends on relationships with others. It presents challenges of needs for fulfillment and acceptance as we relate with others. These challenges provide opportunities for counselors to understand human relationships in a social context. Thus, understanding the concept of self-disclosure is necessary for professional counselors.
Understanding new relationships
Scholars like Mark Knapp have studied relationships and developed models for understanding various stages of developing new relationships. Knapp highlights concepts of “escalation” and “de-escalation” in stages of relationship development. These refer to “coming together” and “coming apart” (Welch and Rubin, 2002).
The insights into human relationship developments are useful in counseling because counselors must be able to understand and identify stages in relationships based on information people give them about their communication and relationship developments.
Studies have shown that developing interpersonal skills are necessary for self-confidence. Thus, it is necessary for counselors to understand scientific studies in personal relationships. It is also important for people to understand themselves first as they develop techniques of building relationships with others.
In this context, relationships people develop during infancy, childhood, adolescence stages, and as young adults are significant in developing relationships and personal developments (Reis et al, 2000).
These are important stages of life, which counselors must understand. They identify intimacy in life more than any other stage. Formations of relationships such as dating act as adaptive techniques people apply while coping with changes in life.
People seek for identities by using intimacy because of concerns for themselves since we begin to seek autonomy from infancy stage. At an adolescence stage, people seek individualism and acceptance from peers and people around them. As we become adults, we seek adulthood identity. It is important to understand that we can effectively manage these stages of life through developing relationships with others.
Self-Disclosure
People tend to protect their valuable personal information and attributes. Occasionally, we disclose such information to others during interactions. This leads to loss of privacy. In this sense, we must develop decision-making processes to enable us to understand whether disclosing personal information to other party is appropriate or not.
Both individuals and counselors must understand that self-disclosure leads to loss of privacy. However, the decision-making process should consider both advantages and disadvantages of doing so as we may not know the immediate benefits of self-disclosure. This implies that disclosure has a significant effect on determining people’s development. This reflects the normal situation of human relationships.
Dindia and Allen demonstrate that there are differences in ways people tend to disclosure personal information to other agents. They identified “decision-making mechanisms people use when disclosing personal information in stages of relationship developments” (Dindia and Allen, 1992). Their study showed that people who had adopted a decision-making mechanism lost less privacy than other people who had not.
Dindia and Allen observed that there were differences in the way men and women disclosed personal information and attributes. For instance, they noted that men were likely to disclose sensitive personal information to female counselors or interviewers. However, they did not establish whether the gender of the interviewer had effect on cases of sexual and mental behaviors (Dindia and Allen, 1992).
On the other hand, other studies also established that women were willing to disclosure personal information more than their male counterparts. In addition, studies also demonstrated that women were willing to engage in high-levels of self-exposure more than men, especially about their intimate relationships.
Espinosa, Garcia-Fornes, and Sierra note that some people have extensive personal information about each other. They observed that people tend to share intimate information more with their partners than other people. According to them, such self-disclosure and disclosure of information between partners play a significant role in developing an intimate relationship (Such et al, 2012).
In regards to the intimacy development and self-disclosure, Dindia and Allen note that women have ease and high rate of emotional expressiveness. These tendencies enhance their abilities to develop intimate relationships. Dindia and Allen argue that ‘fat talk’ among women may explain why women have tendencies to disclose their personal information.
In this sense, fat talk is a means of affirming female communication style, and a way of expressing female physique within a cultural context. This tendency also allows women to seek more for help and engage in emotional and private matters than men do.
Professional counselors must understand characteristics which define human behavior for effective counseling. Understanding characteristics of human behaviors will enable counselors to apply self-disclosure. Basically, they must communicate with their subjects in a specific manner to achieve intended objectives.
Self-disclosure can present challenges to counselors due to loss of privacy associated with it. Thus, counselor must learn how to facilitate the client’s disclosure through “modeling and the establishment of trust” (Such et al, 2012). This process requires counselors to disclose their personal information to establish a relationship with the client. It is a stage of establishing rapport, developing communication, and trust with the client.
Self-disclosure is ethical and a valuable approach as it enables counselors to understand their clients. It helps in obtaining useful information necessary for developing human relationships.
Counselors’ Self-Disclosure
Not all scholars in counseling agree on self-disclosure by counselors. The argument is that clients may avoid their own self-disclosure. However, counselors’ self-disclosure is suitable for facilitating the development of relationship with the client.
It is also a source of reassurance for clients during counseling. Counselors also view self-disclosure as a method of modeling to encourage clients to disclose personal information. In this process, clients observe counselors’ self-disclosure and do so themselves.
Counselors can only create intimacy or develop an intimate relationship with clients through sharing their own experiences. Counselor’s self-disclosure helps in establishing trust so that clients can also have trust in them. For instance, a counselor who looks burnt-out but denies it becomes a liar before a client.
Consequently, the client may not trust such a counselor. Therefore, counselor should also acknowledge accurate observation of clients. This makes a counselor a genuine partner in an intimate relationship.
However, we have to note that relationships are different. Therefore, counselors must make appropriate choices about disclosures. Self-disclosure and self-awareness are useful for counselors as they act as forms of supervision for counselors. They help in avoidance of emotional burnout.
Self-disclosure by both parties should serve the interest of a client in therapeutic situations. Counselor’s self-disclosure should not result into difficulties for the client. In addition, such disclosures should not be excessive in their nature.
Relationship Development
Reis, Collins, and Berscheid show how social relationships influence human behavior and development. As a result, psychologists have gained interests in the field. These authors note the importance of advancing studies in psychological knowledge so that we can understand human behaviors and relationship developments.
The initiation stage marks the initial point of developing a relationship (coming together). This is where the first impression is critical between people in a relationship because it is the first point of contact. People pay attention to the body languages and overall appearance of others when developing a relationship.
People in relationships have various ways of portraying themselves. The intention is to capture the attention of the other party. As the relationship progresses, people will try to find common factors between them. These may include hobbies and general preferences and interests.
Exchange of information plays a significant role as people probe each other so that they can enhance their social relationship. This is a crucial stage as people not interested in divulging personal information lose interests. Psychologists observe that some relationships may end at this stage (Guerrero, Andersen and Afifi, 2011).
It explains why Guerrero, Andersen and Afifi highlight the importance of communication in a relationship. Given the role of social media in promoting relationship developments, Tang and Wang investigated disclosure tendencies based on social penetration theory using social bloggers. They established differences between male and female bloggers in self-disclosure.
The level of disclosure among men and women bloggers varied with age and type of information disclosed. Female bloggers disclosed more information than their male counterparts. On the other hand, young bloggers (below 20 years old) disclosed varied topics to their fellow bloggers (Tang and Wang, 2012).
However, some relationships may survive and proceed to the next stage. This is the stage of “intensifying relationships among people” (Welch and Rubin, 2002). At this point, people tend to engage in testing relationships so as to establish the levels of reciprocity from their partners (Savicki, 1972). However, there are always different levels of self-disclosure for establishing impression.
This stage is also responsible for establishing the extent of self-disclosure between people. People employ diverse strategies such as gifts, expressions, and body appearances to develop a relationship. These strategies differ between one relationship to another as there are no specific guidelines to follow (Welch and Rubin, 2002). Therefore, counselors must understand every relationship within its context.
Forgas notes that emotional factors also influence the level of self-disclosure. Recent studies show that people in positive moods tend to disclose “intimate, varied, and abstract information about themselves” (Forgas, 2011). On the other hand, people who had negative moods were “attentive to the behavior of others and reciprocated self-disclosure from their partners accurately” (Forgas, 2011).
From Forgas’ study, counselors can understand the importance of “emotions in influencing processing of information and relationship behaviors” (Forgas, 2011) among people.
Effective Counseling
People tend to focus on their own well-being than on others meaning that people tend to defend their ideas, behaviors, and perspectives. Given these challenges, we note that relationships between people remain complex and difficult to understand. As a result, the role of a counselor is crucial for people to understand themselves and foster effective communications in relationships.
Self-disclosure remains a healthy form of communication that an individual uses in fostering communication and relationship development. This strategy can help people handle emotions, which affect human behaviors and information processing. Counselors must foster self-disclosure skills and effective communication. This process requires the counselor to build a rapport, and trust the client.
Counselors must create environments which allow clients to express themselves. Some of the approaches may include curiosity, empathy, and communication. These enhance clients’ expression of emotions. Counselors must also master skills which allow them not to express judgment or prejudice their clients. They must understand emotional insights, relationship development, and self introspection.
Conclusion
Guerrero, Andersen, and Afifi pinpoint areas which typically enhance development of relationships among people. Thus, communication is an effective tool for developing an intimate relationship. It is also useful for counselors who need to understand relationship development through information they obtain from clients.
Therefore, understanding communication processes and how communications influence behaviors and needs of people in any given situation enhances relationship development between people.
For counselors, understanding communication should involve effective evaluation procedures. This allows a counselor to understand various techniques people use in communication so that they can improve, or change a communication process in a manner that can aid clients make changes for self-disclosure.
Counselors must understand various dynamics in therapeutic relationships because the role of counselor is paramount in aiding changes. Thus, in self-disclosure, counselors must know how much personal information they should share with the client based on some particular situation.
As it has been established above, several factors influence self-disclosure. These include gender, age, culture, sexual orientation, emotions, and mental abilities among other factors of people. Therefore, counselors must determine ways of developing relationships with their clients based on prevailing circumstances.
References
Dindia, K. and Allen, M. (1992). Sex differences in self-disclosure: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 106-124.
Forgas, J. P. (2011). Affective Influences on Self-Disclosure: Mood Effects on the Intimacy and Reciprocity of Disclosing Personal Information. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 100(3), 449-461.
Guerrero, L., Andersen, P. and Afifi, W. (2011). Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Reis, H., Collins, A. and Berscheid, E. (2000). The Relationship Context of Human Behavior and Development. Psychological Bulletin, 126(6), 844-872.
Savicki, V. (1972). Outcomes of nonreciprocal self-disclosure strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychotherapy, 23(2), 271-276.
Such, M., Espinosa, A., Garcia-Fornes, A. and Sierra, C. (2012). Self-disclosure decision making based on intimacy and privacy. Information Sciences, 211, 93- 111.
Tang, H. and Wang, C. (2012). Self-disclosure among bloggers: re-examination of social penetration theory. Cyberpsychol Behav Soc Netw., 15(5), 245-50.
Welch, S. A. and Rubin, R. B. (2002). Development of Relationship Stage Measures. Communication Quarterly, 50(1), 24.