4/5-week 6

Lucy discusses the topic of conversational messages and how they impact relationships. She explores the five stages of conversation and the different ways to manage and close conversations. She highlights the factors that influence self-disclosure, such as personality, culture, listener, and topic. Lucy also notes that gender plays a significant role in self-disclosure, with women more likely to share personal information with their friends. She discusses the benefits of self-disclosure, including increased self-knowledge and relationship effectiveness. However, she acknowledges that self-disclosure can also lead to pain and hurt if not done properly. Lucy shares her personal experience of open communication with her sisters, emphasizing the trust and comfort they provide. She discusses the guidelines for disclosing information and the importance of rebuilding trust when it is broken. She concludes by emphasizing the importance of self-disclosure for relationships and mental health. Hi, this is Lucy and this is week six of looking at my relationship between myself and my four sisters through the lens of interpersonal communication. And this week, the subject is going to be conversational messages. Within this chapter, the conversational messages chapter in Joseph Desito's book, Interpersonal Communication, he goes into the conversation process to start and he just describes the five stages of conversation. And he says that there's opening, feedforward, business, feedback, and closing. And then after this, he goes into conversational management and describes initiating, managing, and closing conversations and the different ways you can do that and what it looks like. And all of this is really interesting, but the thing that I found most interesting about this chapter was the section about conversational disclosure and what it looks like when you start to reveal more about yourself to the person that you're conversing with. In this section, the first thing he goes into is describing what makes a person want to share more about themselves. And the first thing was just whether or not they have an introverted or an extroverted personality. The second was the culture that they grew up in. In some cultures, self-disclosure is a little bit more off-putting. Like in Japan, it's a weird thing if someone's going to share about their personal life to their colleagues, but in America, that's really normal. And another thing was who your listener is. If you're talking to someone who you don't know, you're not going to want to share things about yourself that you think are more private. As much as if you're talking to someone who's your best friend, you're more likely to share personal information and disclose more about yourself. And then with the topic you're sharing on, if you're sharing something that's pretty general about yourself, you're not going to mind disclosing that information, but if it's something more personal, then it's going to be something that you say for someone you're closer to. But the thing that I found most interesting was your gender is a huge influence in whether or not you disclose information about yourself. They found more likely that women are going to disclose information about themselves with their friends than men are. It's pretty common for a woman to share and disclose personal information about themselves to other women, like what their fears are or their dreams are, things that they're going through emotionally or past experiences that they've had, but men typically do not do this with other men. And when they do share things about themselves, it's usually with other women. And this really stuck out to me because growing up in a family of all girls and a bunch of them, I just can't imagine ever not sharing every detail of what I'm going through emotionally or mentally or this random experience that I had or something I found funny or scary or whatever it was with the people that I'm closest to because my sisters know me better than anyone. And a large part of that isn't just because they've known me my whole life, although that's obviously a major factor, but also because we share everything with each other. There's pretty much nothing that we hold back and I just can't imagine as a man not doing that or like not sharing everything that you're thinking or feeling or whatever to your brother or to another friend. And there's also a lot of benefits of self-disclosure and the interpersonal communication book goes into this. Joseph DeVito writes, self-disclosure may help increase self-knowledge, communication and relationship effectiveness and psychological well-being. So those are some pretty major benefits to get from just sharing a bit more about yourself and what you're going through. And I can really see that when I look at my relationships with the woman in my life, primarily my sisters, because they know me better than anyone else, like I said, and I always feel like whenever I'm going through something hard, especially the second I share it with one of my siblings, it's like a weight has been lifted off of me because I immediately get so much wisdom from them and their experiences or just comfort from them being there for me with whatever I'm sharing. But while disclosing information about yourself can be a really good thing for you, it can also be a very bad thing and lead to a lot of pain and hurt in the future if it's not done well. And the book goes into this and it just describes guidelines for disclosing information about yourself. So it's really about doing it out of right motivation, at the right time and place, doing it gradually. So not just telling someone who's known nothing about you, everything about you all at once, but having steps in that and also disclosing information about yourself that won't burden you or somebody else with you doing it. So if you have like a pain or something that you should not be telling someone, something private about you, not doing it would be a good move. But when I was reading that, I thought it was interesting how I could see how those guidelines had come into play with other friendships and relationships that I've experienced. But in regards to my siblings, those guidelines weren't there at all. Whenever there's anything that needed to be shared, no matter the time that had gone between last speaking to whatever sibling, there was never any steps that needed to be taken in order for me to feel like I could share information with them. And there's been times where I haven't talked to my siblings for like weeks at a time, or even months in some cases, actually, because we're just all like so spread out, but I never felt like I had to work my way back to building that trust with them in order to explain something with them. I just could because they're my sisters and they know me so well. But while all my sisters have just been amazing confidants for me, and have helped me through so much just being there for me whenever I need to talk, there are times when trust has been broken between us, just because someone will share something that wasn't meant to be shared, just because we're human and everyone makes mistakes. But I felt that it was necessary to include what to do when trust has been broken. And Ramsey Solutions gives eight little steps to rebuilding trust. And the first is taking responsibility for the role that you played, not just like making excuses for what you did. The second is practicing forgiveness. Third, leaving the past in the past. Fourth, allowing time for space to grieve. Fifth, following through with small things. Six, showing and choosing to practice vulnerability. Seven, attending to deeper issues. And eight, co-creating a new future. The thing I found most helpful in that was honestly the fourth, which is allowing space to grieve. And me, I am such a fix it person. When something's wrong, I just want to do everything I can to solve that issue. And sometimes the only thing that can help is to give them time to grieve through that. So I felt that that was helpful. And Psychology Today also said that one of the most important things for rebuilding trust is to empathize with them and listen to the other person's hurt feelings of what you've done. And I feel like that is also such a helpful tip, is not trying to make sure that the person whose trust that you've broken is hearing you and hearing how you feel and how sorry you are and how you will never do it again or whatever it is. But also just listening to them and hearing what they have to say about what they're feeling because of what you've done. I feel like that's such a powerful thing in rebuilding trust. So in conclusion, after reading about conversational messages, I just learned how important self-disclosure is and how important it is not only for the relationships that you have and deepening and strengthening those relationships, but also your own mental health. And I'm just so thankful that I have four amazing sisters that I can always rely on and go to whenever I need them. So that's everything for this week. But as always, if you have any questions or anything like that, you can leave them in the chat box and I'll be back next week. Thanks for listening.