- Dalia Ventura
- BBC News World
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“Nothing weighs on us as much as a secret”, wrote the French fabulist Jean De La Fontaine in the 17th century.
This metaphor, repeated in various ways by many others, was the starting point for a decade-long investigation in which psychologist Michel Slepian of Columbia University in the United States scrutinized the the most intimate corners of the lives of some 50,000 people from 26 countries.
“My original studies asked if people really think that way,” he told BBC Mundo.
“And of course, thinking about the secrets, they showed a sense of burden. They gave the same kind of answers as those who carry physical weight.”
Wanting to delve deeper into the subject, he searched for scientific literature on the secrets and “realized that we really didn’t know anything”.
It wasn’t that they hadn’t been addressed, but that “psychologists just assumed they knew what the secrets looked like and recreated them in the lab instead of 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 or how often do they keep them and what happens when a secret comes to them? mind. “
So he went looking for them.
First, there was a question Slepian and his team had to answer.
What is a secret?
It sounds easy, but think about it: there are things we don’t talk about, but are they all secret?
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“There are all sorts of thoughts and experiences we’ve had that people don’t know about, but that doesn’t mean they’re secret.”
There are subjects that you would confide only to those closest to you or that you would not discuss in certain spaces; “But it has more to do with the notion of privacy.”
According to Slepian, author of “The Secret Life of Secrets,” what distinguishes a secret is intent.
“I define secrecy as the intention to hide information from one or more people: the moment you intend not to tell another person something, a secret is born.”
And it does not depend on whether or not you have been in a situation where you were silent.
“Just because you didn’t have to hide that secret in a conversation doesn’t mean you don’t have it.
“In fact, we find that it’s not very often that we have to keep a secret in a conversation, but it is very common to find ourselves thinking about our secret, or even ruminating on it.”
38 secrets
Slepian began by asking a thousand people to tell him a secret they were keeping.
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The five most common secrets are: the lies we’ve told (69%), romantic desire (61%), sex (58%) and our finances and money (58%).
“From this set of 1,000 secrets, we developed a list of 38 categories that were very well represented by the data.”
After interviewing another group of a thousand people, they verified that this list was valid. And they kept confirming it.
“When we ask the open-ended question ‘what’s the secret you’re keeping’, 92% of responses fit one of 38 categories.
Not only that: When the list is presented to respondents, “over 97% of people say they currently hold one of the secrets on the list, and on average, people say they hold 13 secrets on this list at any one time. given,” he told BBC Mundo.
This list of 38 secrets ranges from things like hurting another person emotionally or physically and self-harm, as well as drug use or any type of theft, to a planned surprise for someone or an occult hobby.
Fortunately, not all secrets count.
“What I call ‘positive secrets’ don’t harm our health and well-being; in fact, they can improve it. They make us feel energized and energized.
“We talk about secrets about things like a marriage proposal or pregnancy. These are things that make us happy.”
There are also some that are more like secret pleasures, things you don’t tell people because you think they won’t understand or share.
“Perhaps you enjoy watching children’s cartoons or soap operas, or you use recreational drugs.
“When people keep secrets that they feel good about and feel like they don’t make bad decisions, even if they don’t want others to know about them, they show that there is a kind of blissful loneliness, autonomous and free.
But there are a lot of secrets that cause anxiety, and the purpose of Slepian’s assignment wasn’t just to find out which ones people were keeping: he wanted to understand why they matter so much, and as a psychologist, how lighten them.
With all the information he had amassed, Slepian continued his analysis with his team, but this time trying to find a reasonable order for these 38 categories, creating a 3D map of the discovered secrets.
Consulting the audience to position them in space, he found that there were 3 dimensions, and that “each of these dimensions described one of the reasons why thinking about secrets was harmful.
“A moral secret can hurt us by making us ashamed”.
“Relational secrecy (involving other people) can make us feel isolated.”
“And thinking about those who are related to our goals or aspirations can hurt us by making us feel insecure or not knowing what to do.”
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Secrets can make us feel ashamed, isolated or dishonest.
According to Slepian, 95% of people surveyed say that simply identifying how a secret is hurting them helps them “feel more able to deal with it and find a way forward.”
In the first dimension, understanding, for example, that your past mistakes do not reflect who you are today or your future behavior, can help you feel better.
Or, in the second, if the main reason you don’t reveal what you know is that it would hurt someone you love, even though it’s still hard to keep it down, it’s a relief to know that it is for the good of others.
But there is something that helps even more.
The secret to clearing up secrets
The impulse is to think that if you have toxic secrets, it is better to confess them.
And maybe yes, but not always: sometimes being honest can set you free but deeply affect others without benefiting from them, or expose yourself, without solving anything.
However, this does not mean that it is better to remain silent.
In fact, Slepian points out, “The problem with not telling anyone a secret is that it’s very easy to find harmful ways of thinking about it.”
The secret to overcoming it?
“A healthier way to deal with secrets is to talk about them with others, because they can challenge our unproductive thought patterns and give us social and emotional support, things you can’t find on your own. “
But who is the ideal confidante?
Slepian’s research indicates that it’s best to find someone who, in addition to being quiet, you consider to be compassionate, empathetic, affectionate, non-judgmental, kind, and with a similar sense of morality to yours, since that doesn’t it is useless for him to be scandalized by what you are about to reveal.
Before you do, yes, remember that you can’t think only of yourself.
You have to ask yourself if you are going to involve this person in your problem: you have to be sure that what you are going to share is the secret, not the burden and the anguish of keeping it.
“Finding someone to tell your secret to and choosing the right person can make all the difference.”
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