Keeping secrets can often be harmful in the long run, both physically and psychologically. However, according to Columbia University psychologist Michael Slepian and University of Chicago psychologist Alex Koch, it’s not the withholding of information from others that hurts us. Instead, it’s the fact that we tend to ruminate on our secrets. The bad news is that even when we are not hiding our secrets, they are still very much with us, and can still hurt us.
Reasons Why Keeping Family Secrets Could Be Harmful
- And so long as your intention isn’t to feel better at someone else’s expense, sharing a secret with someone you trust can ease your sense of isolation.
- By keeping something secret, people can protect their their reputation and their relationships with close others.
- Keeping secrets is a part of human life that can affect our emotions, relationships, and even our health.
- And the final consideration is, would your partner want to know this?
- Likewise, sexual orientation and sexual behaviors in general are a private matter for most people.
Why do people’s minds wander into thinking about their secrets despite the adverse effects of such wandering? One reason is that secrets tend to concern unresolved issues, which our minds are designed by evolution to prioritize. Moreover, to conceal a secret when the situation calls for it, we need to keep the secret top of mind, which may be why we ruminate on it. Secrecy, in other words, involves more than biting your tongue, changing topics, or dodging questions, and may require mental effort both before and after concealment situations. In fact, even the secrets that require no maintenance or active concealment may prove burdensome to the secret keeper.
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You might feel embarrassed about it, or maybe you just do not feel like sharing it with anybody else. Other times, we keep secrets that friends or loved ones have shared with us. We keep these secrets to earn the trust of our friends or loved ones, and because we want to protect their personal information. For instance, you would (hopefully) not tell a stranger where you live, right? Not sharing this type of information with others is called privacy, and it is different from secret keeping. We all have the right to keep some things private, just for ourselves.
There Can Be a Burden to Keeping Secrets.
- Topshop has teased its return to the high street in a new video posted on social media.
- The author argues that secrecy is best defined not as an action, but as an intention.
- Now, you might be wondering, “Why on earth do we keep secrets in the first place?
- He’s spent a decade studying secrets and has a lot to say about what they are and what motivates them.
It’s a cocktail of anxiety, guilt, and shame that would make even the most hardened bartender wince. The constant fear of being discovered can lead to heightened anxiety levels, while the act of concealment itself often triggers feelings of guilt. And let’s not forget about shame – that nasty little emotion that makes us feel like we’re fundamentally flawed for having something to hide in the first place. The science behind keeping secrets also ties into cognitive load.
Money latest: Pub adds 4% service charge for pulling a pint
Research suggests a variety of reasons, including increased feelings of shame, isolation, uncertainty, and inauthenticity that may arise from ruminating on a secret. Indeed, excessive rumination has been linked to lower levels of well-being. In terms of the trade-offs, it’s hard for me to imagine a more weighty one, right? But the price of keeping that secret might be psychologically catastrophic as well. Secrets create a barrier between people preventing them from being truly close with each other. I have seen this happen with couples, family members, and friends.
We asked Rupert Wesson, director of professional coaching company Debretts, what you should say if you are faced with a service charge. “HMRC accepts that a payment is a voluntary service charge if it is clearly presented to the customer as an entirely optional payment,” it says. In government guidance to businesses, it says there is no obligation for customers to pay a voluntary service charge. You only have a secret when you intend to hold specific information away from others. That decision may influence you in various ways, even before you are faced with the need to actively conceal the information in conversation.
A 2023 study found that those in romantic relationships of poorer quality tended to be more preoccupied with their secrets, exacerbating relationship issues. Hiding information implies a lack of trust that one’s partner will be supportive of them, and often leads people to believe that their partner could, in turn, be dishonest with them too. The way you feel about keeping a secret affects your relationships and your treatment of others.
The good news is that even when we choose to still keep something secret, talking to another person can make the world of difference. The key lies in self-reflection and healthy secret management. It’s about being honest with ourselves about why we’re keeping a secret and whether the benefits outweigh the costs. It’s about developing the emotional intelligence to handle the psychological impact of our secrets and the wisdom to know when it’s time to let them go. As we’ve seen, the psychology of keeping what happens when you keep secrets secrets is a complex tapestry of motivations, consequences, and coping mechanisms.
For instance, a secret about an affair can be high on both immorality and connectedness. Thus, the secret-holder can feel both shame at cheating on their spouse and the thrill of being intimately connected with another human being at the same time. Secrets come in all shapes and sizes, and they can be about good things or not-so-good things. Imagine you have a special gift for your friend’s birthday, and you keep it a secret until the party to surprise them.
Final thoughts: Secrets and the human condition
More to the point is the deleterious effect that secrets can have on the body. Secrets can be psychologically damaging because the secret-holder has no opportunity to discuss their contents with other people. When we have problems, it helps to share them with others who can provide us with insight on how to deal with them. But when it comes to secrets that are high on the immorality dimension, we feel shame and are reluctant to share them, often for good reason.
In an attempt to maintain some level of privacy, I found myself keeping secrets, small things like plans for the weekend or thoughts about a class. Secrets are universal; yet, they’re a complex part of human psychology. We hide truths for various reasons, often in an attempt to protect ourselves or others.