Secrets bring mental burden, according to psychologist – 04/17/2023 – Equilibrium

“Nothing weighs as much as a secret”, wrote the French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine, already in the 17th century.

This metaphor is repeated in various forms by many other writers. And it was the starting point for research that took a decade, carried out by psychologist Michel Slepian, from the University of Columbia, in the United States.

He visualized the deepest aspects of the lives of some 50,000 people from 26 countries.

“My original studies questioned whether people really thought this way,” Slepian told BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanish-language news service.

“And, in fact, when they thought about the secrets, they showed a sense of burden. They gave the same kind of response as someone who carries physical weight.”

To go deeper into the subject, the researcher looked for scientific literature on the secrets and realized “that, in reality, we didn’t know anything”.

The issue is not that the subject was not addressed, but rather that “psychologists simply assumed they knew what secrets looked like, and recreated them in the lab rather than looking at what they looked like in the real world.”

“We didn’t have satisfactory answers to some of the most basic questions, like what secrets do people keep, how often do they keep them, and what happens when a secret comes to mind,” says Slepian.

So he set out to find those answers.

But to begin with, there was a basic question that needed to be answered.

What is a secret?

Seems easy, but it is not. There are many things we don’t talk about, but are they all secrets?

“There are all sorts of thoughts and experiences that we’ve had that people don’t know about, but that doesn’t mean they’re secrets,” says the researcher.

There are matters that you would only confide to your inner circle or that you wouldn’t discuss in certain spaces, “but that has more to do with the notion of privacy.”

For Slepian, who authored the book The Secret Life of Secrets (“The secret life of secrets”, in free translation), what differentiates a secret is the intention.

“I define secrecy as the intention to withhold information from one or more people,” he explains.

“The moment you have the intention not to tell someone something, a secret is born.”

And it doesn’t depend on there being a situation where you could have spilled the beans but didn’t.

“Just because you didn’t have to hide that secret in conversation doesn’t mean it isn’t a secret.”

“In fact, we concluded that it is not very frequent to need to keep a secret in a conversation, but it is very common to keep thinking about the secret or even ruminating about it”, says the researcher.

38 secrets

Slepian started by asking a thousand people to share a secret they were keeping.

“From this set of thousand secrets, we developed a list of 38 categories very well represented by the data”, he reveals.

After asking the same question to another group of 1,000 people, he and his team proved that the list was valid. And they kept confirming.

“When we asked the open-ended question ‘What secret are you keeping?’ 92% of responses fell into one of 38 categories.”

And not only that: when presenting the list to participants, “more than 97% of people said they had one of the secrets on the list at that time, and on average, people say they had 13 secrets on the list at any given time”, says Slepian.

This list of 38 secrets ranges from things like hurting another person, physically or emotionally, to self-injury, drug use or any type of theft, to a planned surprise for someone or a hidden hobby.

light secrets

Lucky for us, not all secrets matter.

“What I call ‘positive secrets’ do not harm our health and well-being; in fact, they can improve them. They make us feel emotional and energized”, highlights the psychologist.

“We’re talking about secrets like a marriage proposal or pregnancy. These are things that make us happy.”

There are also secrets that are more like secret pleasures — things we don’t tell people because we think they won’t understand or share.

“Perhaps you enjoy watching children’s cartoons or soap operas, or use recreational drugs,” exemplifies Slepian.

“When people keep secrets that they feel good about and believe they’re not making the wrong decisions, even though they don’t want others to know, they demonstrate that there is a kind of solitude that is happy, autonomous and free from the influence of others.”

But there are many secrets that cause anxiety. The goal of Slepian’s mission was not only to learn what secrets people keep, but also to understand why they weigh so heavily – and, as a psychologist, how to make them lighter.

Three dimensions

With all the information gathered, Slepian and his team proceeded with the analysis. The goal was to find a logical order for these 38 categories by creating a 3D map of all the data.

When consulting the public to position the data in space, he realized that there were three dimensions—and that “each of these dimensions described one of the reasons why thinking about secrets is harmful.”

“A moral secret can hurt us by making us feel ashamed. A relationship secret (which involves other people) can make us feel isolated. [segredos] related to our goals or aspirations can harm us, making us feel insecure or not knowing what to do.”

According to Slepian, 95% of people surveyed highlighted that simply identifying how painful a secret makes them “feel more able to deal with it and find the way forward”.

In the first dimension, understanding, for example, that your past mistakes do not reflect who you are today, nor your future behavior, can help you feel better.

On the second dimension, if the main reason for not revealing the secret is because it would hurt someone you care about, even though it’s hard to keep it, it’s comforting to know that it’s for someone else’s benefit.

But there is something that helps even more.

The secret to make secrets lighter

In our drive, we tend to think that if we have toxic secrets, it’s best to come clean. And maybe it is, but not always.

There are times when being honest can set you free but profoundly affect other people for no benefit, or put you in the spotlight without solving anything.

But that doesn’t mean it’s best to shut up either. Slepian points out that “the problem with not talking about a secret with anyone is that it’s all too easy to find harmful ways of thinking about it.”

The secret to overcoming this situation would be to find a good confidant.

“A healthier way to deal with secrets is to talk about them with others, as they can challenge our unproductive trains of thought and offer social and emotional support that you may not be able to find on your own.”

But how to find the ideal confidant?

Slepian’s research highlights that it’s best to find someone who, in addition to being discreet, you consider sensitive, empathetic, affectionate, kind, who has no prejudices and who demonstrates a moral sense similar to yours. If he’s scandalized by what you reveal, it won’t help.

And before you start, remember not to think only of yourself. You need to analyze whether you are not going to put that person inside your problem. You need to make sure you share the secret and not the burden and anguish it brings.

“Finding someone to talk to about your secret and choosing the right person can make all the difference”, concludes the psychologist.

– This text was published here