Self disclosure... wait what is that?

Imagine this. You are sitting at the library, or some equivocal public place, when a stranger sits down to your left. They seem normal, you have no expectations of strangeness or awkwardness, they may even introduce themselves in a perfectly acceptable manner. You think nothing of it right? But then... THEN the waterfall starts. They start spewing personal information and you don't want to hear any of it.

They start with their class load, still acceptable. Then they move on to their church activities for the week, a bit of an over-share. Next its their love life followed by their family problems and by the time you've finish listening to their story about the power ranger toy they lost in the third grade at their best friend Brad's house after their schoolboy crush ripped their heart apart in language arts, you are considering faking ill to get away from the intruder.
You were just trying to do your homework. You had no intention of things getting out of hand. No intention whatsoever of spending 45 minutes listening to useless personal facts about a person that you didn't even know an hour earlier. What went wrong here? What is the problem?

I argue that the issue here is self disclosure... or lack there of. Self disclosure is an interesting topic. These days it seems, to me, that either you can't get a person to open up to you or you cant keep them from exploding their life stories all over your new shirt or filling your backpack with with uninvited personal info.

Self disclosure, by definition, is an intentional sharing of personal information that the other person doesn't already know. I lobby that we be a self disclosing people but that we keep our self disclosure for the people we are close to. We don't need to tell our "bidness" to the poor unsuspecting people sitting next to us at the library, on the subway, or in the line at the grocery store. Lets be honest... they don't want to hear it. Instead take that time and energy and get to know your kids, your mom, or your best friend from high school a little better. They are the people who care about those kinds of things. They want you to share and to share with you in return.