The Art of Self- Disclosure

I recently realized that most of us just don’t know how to do appropriate self-disclosure. We desperately want to be understood, and we think this will happen automatically when we find a “Perfectly Understanding Person”. Often we find the person we believe will be the one that “gets us”, only to be disappointed when they don’t. We usually blame them for not being the person that we thought they were going to be.

But the truth is that most of us lack the skills to make ourselves understood. No one has taught us the ability to disclose our real selves in a way that connects us with others. Thankfully, it is a skill that can still be learned.

Let’s use The Dance of the Seven Veils as a metaphor for this discussion.

The skill to disclose our true selves effectively is a bit like the famous dance of the seven veils, in which the dancer removes one veil at a time, with plenty of dancing in between veils. The anticipation creates a far more alluring interaction than if he/she just showed up buck naked.

Building relationships, even completely nonsexual ones, works the same way. In the beginning our true selves are hidden behind innumerable veils. Each time we disclose a truth about ourselves — anything from our favorite food to our deepest feelings — we remove a layer. It’s up to us to determine how quickly to remove the next…