The Nuances of Confidentiality

In this period in human history rife with oppression, shaming, defamation, and very-much-conditional love, confidentiality is valuable—even necessary. It's valuable because it creates the space for psychological safety which is important for nurturing close, trusting connections. However, confidentiality has many nuances that are worth considering — starting with the fact that the baseline definition of confidentiality is an impossible standard to uphold — and some reflection is warranted if we want to avoid the pitfalls of unmanaged expectations and risk breaking trust in our relationships.

When you are asked in a group to maintain confidentiality with no further explanation offered, what does that mean to you? Of course, you can just ask (and you probably should) but often this does not happen and there is a presumption that everyone understands what confidentiality means. So out of curiosity, before I continue further I'd like to ask you, my reader, a few questions:

• Generally speaking, what does confidentiality mean to you?
• There's what you feel confidentiality is in principle, and then there's how you engage with it in practice. Would you say that the definition of confidentially you selected above is the same as how you treat confidentiality in practice?
• If you believe confidentiality allows you in certain cases to share what was told to you to others, should you always conceal the identity of the sharer?
• If you take the utmost care to completely conceal the identity of the sharer, are you then allowed to discuss what was shared with others?
• Are there exceptions when it comes to keeping things confidential?

Please take a moment to answer these questions here. The results will be shown to you afterwards so you can see how other people responded.

This topic came up during a conversation the other day in which I mentioned in passing that I have little interest in entering confidentiality agreements that ultimately require me to remember an ever-growing list of things to keep secret from those around me. For example, in various forms of counseling or in support groups such the ManKind Project or Alcoholics Anonymous there is often a necessary agreement to confidentiality in order to participate. Now imagine going to one of these groups and agreeing to confidentiality every session. Session after session after session the list of things you cannot talk about increases. What's more, the rotating cast of attendees will require you to not only keep track of what you can't discuss, but who you can and can't discuss it with.

For example, Joe shows up to a session of your men's group and as he was there when Ralph shared a confidential story, you feel free to talk to Joe about that story. But Joe does not show up next session, and instead Peter does. Ralph shares a different story, so you have to track which sessions people showed up to and which discussions they are allowed to hear and which they aren't, indefinitely into the future… After many weeks, let alone months and years, you will have an impossibly long list of things you must keep confidential between an impossibly entangled list of people. Do you see my point yet? Broad-scoped, permanent confidentiality agreements are impossible to keep because we cannot possibly remember all the things we must keep confidential amongst an ever-evolving list of people. In other words, no one can maintain 100% confidentiality; eventually we are bound to slip up, probably a lot. Surely this must be expected, given the aforementioned challenges, but why even bother with confidentiality in the first place then?

A friend remarked that I could always just talk about my feelings instead of specifics of what was mentioned. This might work in some cases, but I'm not sure it's so simple. For starters, I don't experience the world in terms of feelings; I'm far more left-brained so this is not really feasible for me and the many people out there like me, although I'm not unwilling to try. More importantly, there are times when context matters, when the actual event or story shared has relevance, so even if I was able to talk about my feelings, it would be extremely limiting to never be able to talk about the context of what brought those feelings. Furthermore, in this community I live in (where I have engaged in a few activities like a men's group in which confidentiality was requested), I interact with people every day multiple times per day at meals, while working on projects or on the land, or during regular community activities such as check-in's and heart shares. Many of the topics brought up in these moments are the same as or closely related to what might have also been talked about in confidential contexts, and so it becomes even messier in terms of what can be shared and what cannot. No human on our planet is capable of perfectly remembering and sorting through the complex network of discussions that must be kept confidential and those which must not when you consider all these things.

Given that, it helps to ask ourselves: what are we really asking for when we ask for confidentiality? It strikes me that confidentiality agreements of the nature I'm referring to here are more of a facade than an actual agreement, and that the purpose is to simply promote trust-building between people who do not know each other (i.e. who have not yet developed trust between them). I feel this is especially the case given that it is somewhat paradoxical to ask for confidentiality without trust (i.e. without knowing whether the other person can be trusted to keep what you say confidential). On the flip side, it also seems unnecessary to ask for confidentiality between people who already do trust each other. As an example, in the context of this community I live in, I'm fairly confident everyone here would not mind if I told my partner any of the things they might share in confidence (and several people have already echoed that sentiment to me). I imagine this is because they trust her to hold things in confidence, as they do me.

Perhaps some will think I'm being pedantic here, but I find the nuances of confidentiality interesting to reflect upon and important to note, especially because when confidentiality is asked for, it is rarely accompanied with a detailed explanation. The general assumption I've always had is that no one should share what is said with anyone else beyond those who are listening, but as I've noted (and as I'll hopefully discover as more people fill out the survey), not everyone may feel this way, and in most cases it probably does not apply to keeping secrets from mutual trusted friends. But what about a non-mutual but otherwise highly trusted friend? Also, what if the impact of the disclosure is high? For example, I probably wouldn't share nuclear launch codes even with my most trusted companion because the risk of potential harm is so high if the information got out… There are still many more nuances to cover, but I'm feeling pretty complete here.

Bottom line: I'm happy to hold things in confidence to the same extent or better than anyone else can using my best judgment on a case by case basis, but I encourage you to define what that means to you if you ask it of me. I prefer to keep my life simple, transparent, and unencumbered with things I have to withhold; I want all my communication to be honest and to not have to keep secrets from people, especially those I love and consider part of my family. I grew up in a house of endless family gossip and deceptions and I'm done with that way of living. So if there's something so secret you want to share with me that I can't even tell my life partner, perhaps it's easiest for everyone if you don't tell me at all. 😆😄