What is self-disclosure and what are the benefits of doing it? 

Self-disclosure is an aspect of communication that involves intentionally sharing personal information about ourselves with another person­. Or, it may be thought of as the process that grants other people access to our secrets or ‘real self’ (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). Technically, any form of communication reveals something about us—the topics we choose to discuss, the self-assuredness in our voice, and the levity in our storytelling all communicate things about us. In psychology though, none of these are examples of self-disclosure, as they do not intentionally reveal something—like a belief, thought, feeling, experience, hope, or dream—that others would not know if not for us sharing it.
There are several features of self-disclosure that scientists have explored (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). They are:

• Accessibility – How easy or difficult is it for the discloser to share the information?
• Reward value – How positive or negative is the experience of self-disclosing for the discloser or the listener?
• Informativeness – How much breadth (variety of topics disclosed) or depth (level of intimacy of topics disclosed) is there?
• Truthfulness – How true is the disclosure and how much does it represent the discloser’s true self?
• Social norms – How much does the disclosure adhere to or go against what’s socially acceptable in the larger society?
• Effectiveness – How much does the disclosure help the discloser and listener achieve their goals (e.g., building intimacy, connection, or understanding)?

These factors, along with the intensity and frequency with which we self-disclose personal details, shape the types of relationships we have with people in our lives—our family, friends, coworkers, and other communities (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). For example, if we disclose virtually nothing at all, people often have a hard time connecting to us—they don’t really know who we are. If we disclose too much, too often, others might feel overwhelmed or burdened by the content of our self-disclosure. That’s why when it comes to self-disclosure, just the right amount of sharing is what we’re aiming for.

​Self-disclosure is thought to be beneficial (and perhaps even necessary) for forming close, intimate social connections. Three things seem to explain why this is:

1. People like someone more who discloses to them
2. People like someone more who they have disclosed to
3. People disclose more to someone they like (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006).

This is how self-disclosure not only builds on itself but generates upward cycles of self-disclosure that help build strong, intimate relationships.
In addition to the interpersonal benefits of self-disclosure, we often experience intrapersonal benefits—or internal (mental health) benefits. For example, self-disclosure can help us achieve a sense of catharsis, clarification on the topic, and increased social support (which feels good; Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). In contrast, research suggests that concealing personal thoughts and feelings—or not self-disclosing them—can be a stressor on the body, harm immunity, and even possibly lead to disease. Revealing this suppressed or silenced information can help alleviate this stress and improve health (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006).
Overall, self-disclosure is thought to be good for mental health. Of course, the benefits depend largely on the response of the person hearing the self-disclosure. If the response is negative, the benefits might not be there.

If self-disclosure is so good for our relationships and emotions, what keeps us from disclosing things? Some common reasons include:

• The topic is taboo (e.g., sexual fantasies)
• The topic feels too personal to share (e.g., being abused as a child)
• The topic is too undesirable (e.g., a habit of nose picking)
• The topic is too difficult to divulge (e.g., having cheated on a romantic partner)
• The topic is too burdensome (e.g., debts or disease)
• The topic is private (e.g., information that one desires to be theirs alone)

Sometimes self-disclosure of these difficult things doesn’t feel right to us, and that’s okay. For example, large self-disclosures at the beginning of friendships or relationships are often thought to be inappropriate (Greene, Derlega, & Mathews, 2006). Unplanned (spontaneous) self-disclosure in response to a question or another person’s disclosure can also be tricky. We may end up sharing more than we intended or get an undesirable response that we were not prepared for.
So before self-disclosing, it can be helpful to decide if you want to disclose information in person, through a letter, in a phone call, through video, through another medium, or not at all. The medium you choose for self-disclosure can change how effective it is or help you to manage some of the more difficult parts of self-disclosure.

​Self-disclosure—or sharing intimate details about yourself—isn’t always easy. It’s not always apparent why you should even do it. But when we look at the research, we can see that sharing our authentic selves with others may just be the key to happy, intimate relationships. 

​Want to get to know someone better? Here are some questions you can ask.

Maybe you're trying to get to know someone better. Maybe you're trying to make conversations more interesting. Or maybe you just want to improve your communication skills by asking better questions. Communication may just be the backbone of healthy relationships. But communication is more than just a tool we use to explore ourselves. It can also be used to build closer bonds with others. One way we can do this is by asking questions—questions that lead others to self-disclose to us. This is how we get to know who the other person is for real.
 
In perhaps one of the best-known studies on relationships, Art Aron showed that when two people asked each other increasingly probing questions over a 45-minute period, they felt closer than two people who had just engaged in chit-chat (Aron et al., 1997). Further research suggests that when others self-disclose personal information, we like them more (Sprecher, Treger, & Wondra, 2013). This may partially explain why asking and answering questions increases closeness.

​To start increasing closeness (or just get to know someone), here are some questions you can ask:

1. If you could have three wishes, what would they be?
2. Who was your favorite cartoon character when you were a kid?
3. Do you believe in giving people second chances?
4. What did you want to be when you grew up?
5. Are you a mountain or a beach person?
6. What is your spirit animal?
7. How would you describe your first crush?
8. What are your favorite hobbies?
9. Do you think anyone has the capacity to cheat or do you think only cheaters cheat?
10. Have you ever shoplifted anything?
11. Have you ever done something you regretted?
12. What do you think the solution is to climate change?
13. Do you think psychics are actually psychic?
14. What is your favorite workout?
15. Do you believe in astrology?
16. What do you want people to remember about you after you’re gone?
17. What was the most important lesson you’ve learned from a past relationship?
18. What are some of your favorite books?
19. What is a skill that you want to build?
20. If you could change one thing about your childhood what would it be and why?
21. Do you know how to play any musical instruments?
22. Who or what inspires you?
23. What is your place in the whole world?
24. Who is your doppelganger?
25. Have you ever had an epiphany? If so, what was it like for you?
26. What was the most intense experience you've had in your life?
27. Are you a morning or a night person?
28. How do you think you'd be different if you were raised in a different family?
29. What is the most important lesson you've learned this year?
30. What is your dream vacation?
31. What superpowers did you wish you had when you were a kid?
32. Are you very close to anyone in your family? Why?
33. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
34. What are your passions in life?
35. Have you ever had your heart broken? What did it feel like to you?
36. What type of music energizes you?
37. Are you still friends with anyone from high school?
38. What was your favorite subject or class in high school?
39. What was the most memorable experience from your childhood?
40. What is one accomplishment that you're proud of?
41. When you see your family, what do you do together?
42. Is there anything from the past that you wish would come back?
43. Do you get déjà vu? What does it feel like for you?
44. What makes you feel nostalgic?
45. What would you do if you found out you had a year to live?
46. If you redesigned society, what would you change?
47. What would be a perfect day for you?
48. If you had to eat only one meal for the rest of your life what would it be?
49. What's your least favorite food?
50. What's one thing I don't already know about you?

​Asking questions can be a great way to learn more about others, increase closeness between you, and have more interesting conversations. Hopefully, these questions will give you some ideas for what to ask people.

​Discover tips and techniques for better listening.

​Listening is a passive process of hearing (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). For the most part, this process is automatic and doesn't require us to do much of anything. On the other hand, active listening is the active process of listening to understand. It often involves responding both verbally and nonverbally to demonstrate comprehension (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). The active listener has a clear goal in mind: to capture both the experience and the perspective of the speaker (Rogers & Roethlisberger, 1991). 

​Active listening is important because we almost always want people to hear and understand what we say. The problem is that communication isn’t always easy. We can easily misunderstand others and leave conversations feeling unheard, invalidated, and misunderstood. But, when we use active listening skills properly, we can connect more effectively.
For example, active listeners are rated as more emotionally in tune (Bodie, Vickery, Cannava, & Jones, 2015) and are thought to be important in restoring relationship injuries (Min, Jung, & Ryu, 2021).

​Individual characteristics can sometimes make active listening hard. For one, active listening requires self-control. When trying to listen, many of us are instead are mentally assigning judgment to the things we've just heard. We may be asking ourselves, is the speaker right or wrong? Do we have anything to add? What will I say in response to this? We are often reflecting on the content to help us prepare responses.
Many of us also fall into the role of problem-solving as it's common to feel a need to "fix the issue" being shared with us. With the best of intentions, we may connect the speaker's story with an experience of our own and provide input based on the strategies we've found helpful in the past. The problem is, if we are readying our response or coming up with solutions while someone is speaking, we are likely not fully being present and engaged in first listening and understanding the speaker's experience.
Remember, the goal of active listening is to understand. Our rush to share our perspective or resolve an issue can leave the speaker feeling unheard because they haven't yet been able to talk through and process their perspective (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017). Being an active listener means making the choice not to speak, not to contribute your opinion, not to defend your perspective or belief, and not to offer solutions or suggestions for change in service of first fully understanding the speaker.

​There are four key pillars of active listening: preparation, open-ended questions, paraphrasing, and reflecting feelings (Nemec, Spagnolo, & Soydon, 2017).  

​Active listening is a critical skill that can help us feel more connected. It can be hard and requires intention and effort but hopefully, these tips can help you build active listening skills in your real life.

​Discover how to open-up in relationships (or deal with others who don’t open up).​

​Researchers define emotional availability as “an individual’s emotional responsiveness and attunement to another’s needs and goals” (pp. 80, Emde, 1980). Based on this, emotional availability involves not only negative emotions like anger or sadness but also positive emotions like happiness or excitement. One of the most important ingredients in a secure and healthy relationship is this ability to ‘show up’ emotionally for the other person (Saunders et al., 2015) which is why emotional unavailability can be so problematic.
​
Emotional availability involves:

• Showing empathy during difficult or challenging times
• Providing emotional support or encouragement
• Demonstrating genuine care and affection
• Encouraging and listening to emotional responses
• Intimacy and commitment to the relationship
• A sense of meaningful connection at a deeper level

When someone is emotionally unavailable, they may be unable to connect with their feelings or their partner’s feelings. This person may have trouble opening up emotionally, shy away from discussing their feelings, and fear intimacy. As a result, emotional unavailability can prevent a relationship from reaching its fullest potential. ​

​Being emotionally unavailable simply means that you may have to work on thought patterns and behaviors that are currently serving as a barrier to emotional intimacy. This can be an opportunity to look inward and then move forward with building more rewarding relationships.

​How to express more thankfulness in your daily life.

​Thankfulness—which might also be referred to as gratitude or appreciation—is a positive, other-focused emotion (Emmons & McCullough, 2004). It generally involves positive feelings about another person's actions, but it might just be for the other person's existence—e.g., I'm just thankful to have you!
Thankfulness may just be one of the best things we can do to improve both personal well-being and our relationships. Both expressing and experiencing thankfulness are linked with happiness and other positive outcomes (Bono, Emmons, & McCullough, 2004). So, the more often and intensely we feel thankfulness, the better.
Perhaps this is why psychologists have recently taken an interest in studying gratitude and thankfulness more deeply. One of the most rigorous ways they’ve done this is by creating gratitude interventions—interventions designed to teach people how to practice gratitude in their real lives. Numerous gratitude intervention studies have now shown the benefits of gratitude (Davis et al., 2016). Some of the most common strategies used in these studies involve short activities—for example, the gratitude list, gratitude letters, gratitude journals, and listing 3 good things (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). These are short and easy ways to boost well-being.
Even though some people speculate that gratitude interventions may not be as efficacious as other more involved psychotherapeutic interventions, they may actually be more effective (Davis et al., 2016). That is, we're more likely to actually do them so they work better in the long run and in real life. They're easy, they're fun, and they're doable—and that's what really matters.

​According to the research, the benefits of gratitude may include:

• Having positive social interactions
• Recalling deeply meaningful memories
• Having easy, positive activities that can be done almost anytime, anywhere.

Importantly, cultivating gratitude appears to result not only in short-term benefits but in some sustained improvements in well-being over time (Davis et al., 2016). So here are a few phrases you can use when trying to be more thankful:

• ​"I appreciate you."
• "I am grateful for this opportunity"
• "I just wanted to say thanks for ________"
• "You’re great!"
• "I'm so lucky to have you."
• "You make my life better."
• "I appreciate you doing _______."
• "I appreciate you being _______."

Whenever possible, try to focus more on appreciating who people are rather than what they do for you. These expressions of gratitude are often more beneficial for the person you are sharing them with.

​Taking a few minutes each day to be thankful can be an easy and effective way to boost your mood and strengthen your relationships. Hopefully, this article was a good jumping-off point to inspire you and get you started.