Defining my terms: Openness

[mdlbear]

It occurs to me that, in a series of posts about mental states and relationships, I probably ought to define my terms. It's only fair, especially in an area where peoples' personal definitions are both vitally important to them and in some cases appear to have very little overlap.

Since this is an exercise in information sharing, it seems only right to start off with my definition for openness.

Openness:

Openness is, fundamentally, willingness to share information. In both directions. One might call the receiving direction "open-mindedness", though that's probably only part of it; I can't think of a good word for the sending direction. Anyone?

So let's take the sending direction first. Openness, in that direction, is a willingness to share information about yourself with others. There are degrees, of course, both in who one shares with and how -- and exactly what -- much one is willing to share. Some people share their most intimate feelings only with their closes friends; others (like me) "publish and be damned" almost everything on the open web.

In the other direction, openness is most of all a willingness to listen. It implies both interest in what the other person is saying, and (where applicable) a willingness to consider new information and possibly change one's own mind.

There's a lot of similarity between openness in relationships and in software; a good open-source software project not only shares its code freely, but accepts bug reports and patches for that code. It's not exact; there is, unfortunately, no revision-control system for relationships.

Most of the time I'm pretty far out on the openness side of the scale, by my own measure. There's very little about my own emotional life that I wouldn't publish here in my LJ, or put into a song. There have been a couple of times when I've suddenly thought "did I just say that to the entire damned Internet?" and friends-locked a post, but it feels wrong when I do it. As if there was something I needed to hide.

Sometimes I do need to hide things, though. I won't share anything I understand to have been told to me in confidence, and I won't share anything I understand will hurt someone else or reveal information they don't regard as private. The key word here is understand -- I'm all too likely to default to my own standards of openness; feel free to whap me with a cluestick if I blunder and cross one of your boundaries.

I've run across other peoples' boundaries enough lately that I'm setting up a private journal that's just for myself, finally. I haven't had a private journal in nearly four decades, but I have to write about things if I expect to understand them, and I need to be open with myself even if I can't necessarily share those particular thoughts with anyone else. It still feels wrong.

So, just as a reminder: this is my definition. You can tell me how it differs from your definition -- I really hope you do, in fact, since one of the motivations for this is to find out how my use of language differs from everyone else's -- and I'll be glad if you point out obvious inconsistencies or mistakes, or places where I could be more precise. You don't get to tell me that my definition is wrong. (edit 5/4) You can tell me why it doesn't really appear to be the definition I'm actually using. And you can tell me why you think I should be using a different one.

Similarly, you can tell me where you are on the scale, but you don't get to tell me I'm in the wrong place.

Comments

Personal boundaries and "Secrets"

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

I have always found it highly interesting what boundaries people have and what they consider private. Very few people feel the way I do about personal information, but I come from a very dysfunctional background that forever altered my point of view and lifestyle choices in that area. I grew up in a home with a drug addicted and alcoholic mother. We lived in a small rural town where everyone knew everyone's "secrets," so the secrecy my family tried to surround my mother's disease with was a total sham, and being an intelligent kid, I had this figured out long before any of the rest of my family twigged to it. In fact, my mom died thinking that no one knew about her alcoholism and drug addiction when in fact virtually everyone she knew was perfectly aware of her condition.

Having grown up in that environment with the proverbial elephant in living room, my instinct has been to just get my version of my personal life out in the open before someone else runs their edited and maybe exaggerated or perhaps error-filled version of my life up the flagpole. My opinion is that in a small town where the major hobby is gossiping about your friends and neighbors, that is the only way to go.

Now that I live in a city, no one really gives a hoot what I do, and I love that more than I can say. Certainly my neighbors here in Phoenix have better things to do then to speculate about my life or what I am doing behind closed doors, but the tendency to publish and be damned, or speak very openly about things because people may as well get their facts straight if they are going to gossip, is still very much a part of who and what I am. It really all goes back to that dysfunctional childhood, though, and the dawning and then mortifying realization that honesty starts at home, you never really fool half the people you think you are fooling anyway, and that most people rarely keep the secrets they think they are keeping even when they are patting themselves on the back for being so terribly clever.

That being said, I always try very hard to keep secrets when I am asked to, and can be very good at it, which has often amazed my friends, who have learned that just because I blab to anyone about my life, I can respect their boundaries when they tell me what those boundaries are.

I have had more difficulty when a friend has not mentioned that a certain subject is taboo and I blunder in, not realizing that the friend wishes to be selective about who they share that information with. Once I figure out that certain friends have certain topical restrictions, I usually don't screw up in the same way twice, but I still find their certainty that these things are secret from others a bit amusing for the reasons listed above. Most people are a lot more transparent than they like to imagine and some secrets are just plain impossible to keep from anyone but yourself. In Al Anon, we call those kind of secrets denial.

Steve, you prove to me over and over that people who sometimes label themselves as socially clueless can often be anything but. You and my husband are very alike in that respect. I adore your "personal posts." I have a much greater understanding of what you are saying in them than your technical posts, for reasons that ought to be obvious to all. *snicker*

Thanks for a very thoughtful post on an interesting subject.

Re: Personal boundaries and "Secrets"

[mdlbear]

"more difficulty when a friend has not mentioned that a certain subject is taboo and I blunder in..."

Yup. That kind of experience, especially recently, is what inspired this post.