The Field Guide › Paper
Names and critiques 'forced vulnerability' in student affairs: disclosure activities baked into orientation leader training, RA training, onboarding and staff retreats that go unnoticed because they're so routine. Traces self-disclosure's move from group counselling practice (Jourard and Lasakow, 1958) through organisational communication research (Eisenberg and Witten, 1987) into team-building orthodoxy, where it's treated as a shortcut to trust, shared values and aligned teams. Illustrates the power problem with a single vignette: a supervisor asking new hires to share 'a significant item' at a retreat, and the very different exposure created depending on whether the supervisor opts out, shares something safely low-stakes, or goes deep, none of which is actually neutral once positional power is in the room. Marginalised participants carry disproportionate cost: LGBTQ+ people pressured into disclosing pronouns or coming out before they're ready, and 'othered' staff routinely expected to educate colleagues about their own marginalisation as the price of group inclusion. Names and dismantles three myths used to justify these practices: 'challenge by choice' (opting out rarely is, and the paper draws an explicit line to hazing), 'what is said here stays here' (unenforceable, and mainly protects those already in power), and 'we are family' (a framing that assumes families are free of conflict, which most aren't). The paper's own conclusion, stated flatly, is the argument in miniature: trust is established first, and disclosure follows, not the other way round. Closes with practitioner guidance: be intentional about why disclosure is being asked for, give participants full control over what they share, and treat self-disclosure as something to use sparingly even when done well.