Midterm, Question 2
Relationships take time to develop and transition from superficial to intimate. While this transition is happening, sometimes a comment can be made, or a fact can be disclosed that makes someone feel uncomfortable because they don’t know the other well enough to reach that level of disclosure. “Let me tell you a story...it involves that guy I met last night….” If you had just met this person and they dove into a story about intimacy between another person, chances are you don’t want to hear about it; too much information. However, if you were best friends with the person, you would probably want all the details. Often times, we are part of conversations that seem too personal or not personal …show more content…
Petronio published research studies with her colleagues about the idea of rule development with systematic self-disclosure. From the publications came the development of Communication Boundary Management, a micro-theory, which was based on how people make decisions about disclosing certain information that is private. In 2002, the theory was referred to as Communication Privacy Management once it became a macro-theory and encompassed a larger variety of interpersonal relationships. Communication Privacy Management Theory explains the complexities between privacy and disclosure. It explains the process that people use to manage the relationship between concealing and revealing private information. The assumptions of the theory, based on rules and systems, are that humans are choice makers, rule makers and followers, and the rules and choices are based on a consideration of others as well as the …show more content…
Culturally, panic attacks are considered a mental disorder. I never felt like the misconceptions of mental disorder applied to me, so I didn’t want others to label me a certain way. The cultural criteria influenced me to keep the information private while I was figuring out how to control and fix it. Eventually, through contextual criteria, I had to reveal the information to my teachers since I needed to leave the room and calm down without disrupting the class. I was 15 when I had panic attacks, so I felt more comfortable sharing the information with other girls. It was at a time when we were all experiencing our bodies changing, and before we were old enough to develop stronger relationship bonds with boys, so revealing private information between girls was normal for our gender. The exception was when my student teacher in AP History was notified of my condition prior to teaching the class. He revealed privately to me that he also had suffered from panic attacks and we formed an instant bond through privacy boundaries. He may have initially felt boundary turbulence because the relational bond we formed was not an ordinary bond between a teacher and a student. However, he trusted me with his disclosure in his effort to help comfort me, and to help me overcome what was happening. Our private information became co-owned, and