Keeping secrets: Is it healthy?
You can call me the extroverted type. Sharing is caring -- like it or leave it -- with inner secrets slim to none. Personally, I usually find a tremendous amount of comfort and relief in getting secrets off my mind. Be free, I cry, be free! When I've confided my silliest and darkest stories eating me up inside to friends or complete strangers, I often found I wasn't alone with many of them. Will I be sharing some of them here? Not today, but let's talk about secrets. Is keeping secrets a healthy thing to do or not?Last year I was completely turned on and freaked out by Frank Warren's PostSecret project, where hundreds of people could confess anything from munching on boogers (sorry) to having experienced childhood abuse by sending a postcard to an address in Maryland. From those postcards a book was born called PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives. Checking out the PostSecret site will give you an idea of some of the stories shared, and apparently how revealing has lead to healing.
On the flipside, I just came across this Newsweek piece which discusses why keeping secrets can be a healthy thing. The article first speaks on the new Secret deodorant campaign urging women to spill the beans and applauding them for doing such. Moving onto how and why keeping secrets can be considered an ill and toxic thing for the mind and body, researchers went on to explore to the effects and health of people carrying secrets. In their study scheduled to be published in the Journal of Personality in October, they found that people hiding something had fewer psychosomatic symptoms than those with clear consciences. They also note that well-chosen secrets can preserve a more idealized and healthier self-image.
Take a look at both sites and let us know what your take on confessing, confiding, sharing and shouting your secrets is. Does it make you feel good or sick and sad inside?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-25-2006 @ 3:32PM
bottleman said...
Secrets are really important! You need to keep at least one at all times, because it helps you understand who you are and separate yourself from everyone else.
I'm not saying you need to keep monsters inside. If there's anything I've learned from my WASPy upbringing it's that emotions stored too long can fester -- it's better to let them out. Hopefully your friends and family will let you spill them when you're ready to.
But keeping a sweet little secret or two -- about some moment you had, something you did, some way you feel -- can really help you understand who you are and what you value. Ever experienced that odd feeling of disappointment and emptiness when you spill a secret to someone else and they just don't care? That's the little glow and charm of the secret disappearing.
You'll have to get a new one before you feel that way again. Hopefully it'll be a small, fun one, rather than a major betrayal, so if it gets exposed you'll be red-faced, rather than out in the street. :)
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8-25-2006 @ 3:43PM
Adrienne said...
Bottleman,
I must say -- I like what you had to say about the glow and charm of a secret disappearing. Never thought of that, but nice! Thanks for leaving your thoughts.
Adrienne
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8-25-2006 @ 8:56PM
Kris said...
I had a dark secret that I told no one until age 32. Then, I just needed to say it out loud, so I went to a therapist. eventually I told my best friend and husband, but that's it. The costs of telling certain people were too high.
So I'd say, for me, keeping the secret 100% just didn't work out. I feel much better now that I've "owned" it. I was victimized as a child and protected the perpetrater. And I didn't want to die without anyone ever knowing!
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9-23-2006 @ 12:39PM
snowbear said...
Sometimes the secret that may be asked to be kept is one that has dire consequences if revealed, those type need never to be revealed and can give the secret holder a sense of importance because of the "trust bond" that was given. That good feeling is about equal to the revelation of the told secret that is in itself not truly important to anyone but is a mere objectionable piece of information taking up space in your brain. There is a big difference between the two types of secrets, the second being of the benign type. Many times the person holding a benign secret eventually finds that they are not the only one that knows that secret, everyone seems to already know about it. One person's secret is yet another's daily news.
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