What a psychologist discovered by studying people’s secrets for a decade

“Nothing weighs so heavily on us 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 of a decade-long research in which psychologist Michel Slepian from Columbia University, United States, peered into the most intimate corners of the lives of some 50,000 people from 26 countries.

“My original studies asked if people really thought that way,” he told BBC Mundo.

“And sure enough, when thinking about the secrets, they showed a sense of burden. They gave the same type of answers as those who carry physical weight“.

Wanting to delve 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 that they knew what the secrets were 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 mind”.

So he set out to find them.

First of all, there was a question that Slepian and his team had to answer.

Sounds easy but think about: there are things we don’t talk about but are they all secret?

“There are all kinds of thoughts and experiences that we’ve had that people don’t know about, but that doesn’t mean they’re secret.”

There are topics that you would only confide in your closest circle or that you would not discuss in certain spaces; “but that has more to do with the notion of privacy“.

According to Slepian, author of “The Secret Life of Secrets” (The secret life of secrets)), what distinguishes a secret is the intention.

“I define secrecy as the intention to withhold information from one or more people: the moment you intend not to tell another person something, born a secret“.

And it doesn’t depend on whether or not you’ve been in a situation where you shut up.

“Just because you haven’t had 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 conversation, but it’s very common to find yourself thinking about your secret, or even ruminating on it.”

Slepian began by asking a thousand people to tell him a secret they were keeping.

“From that set of a thousand secrets we developed a list of 38 categories that were very well represented by the data.

After asking 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, “more than 97% of people say they have one of the secrets on the list right now, and on averagepeople say they have 13 secrets from that list at any given time,” he told BBC Mundo.

That list of 38 secrets ranges from things like hurting another person emotionally or physically and self-harm, as well as drug use or any kind of theft, to a planned surprise for someone or an occult hobby.

Luckily, not all secrets count.

“what I call ‘positive secrets’ they do not harm our health and well-being; in fact, they can improve them. They make us feel excited and energized.

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

There are also some that are rather secret pleasuresthings that we do not tell people because we think that they will not understand or share.

“Maybe you like to watch children’s cartoons or soap operas, or you use recreational drugs.

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

But there are many secrets that do cause anxiety, and the goal of Slepian’s mission was not just to know which ones people kept: he wanted to understand why they weigh so much, and as a psychologist that he is, how to lighten them.

With all the information he had amassed, Slepian continued his analysis with his team, but this time trying to find a sensible order for those 38 categories, creating a 3D map of the uncovered secrets.

Consulting with the public to gradually position them in space, he found that there were 3 dimensions, and that “each one of these dimensions described one of the reasons why thinking about secrets was detrimental.

“A moral secret can hurt us by making us feel ashamed.

“A relational secret (involving other people) can make us feel isolated.

“And thinking about the ones that relate to our goals or aspirations can hurt us by making us feel unsure or not knowing what to do“.

According to Slepian, 95% of the people surveyed indicate that the mere fact of identifying how a secret is hurting them it helps them “feel more capable of dealing with it and finding 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 because it would hurt someone you care about, even if it’s still hard to keep it, it’s a relief to know that it’s for the benefit of others.

But there is something that helps even more.

The impulse is to think that if you have toxic secrets, it is best to confess.

And maybe it is, but not always: sometimes, being honest can free you but deeply affect others without benefit, or expose yourself, without solving anything.

However, that does not mean that it is best to remain silent.

In fact, Slepian stresses: “The problem with not talking about a secret with anyone is that it is very easy to find harmful ways of thinking about it.“.

The secret to overcome it?

Find a good confidant.

“A healthier way to deal with secrets comes from talking about them with others, as they can challenge our unproductive trains of thinking and give us social and emotional support, things you can’t find on your own.”

But, who is the ideal confidant?

Slepian’s research indicates that it is best to find someone who, in addition to being discreet, you judge to be compassionate, empathetic, affectionate, non-judgmental, kind, and with a sense of morality similar to yours, since it is useless for them to be scandalized with what you are going to reveal.

Before doing so, yes, remember that you cannot think only of yourself.

You have to consider whether you are not going to involve that person in your problem: you must be sure that what you are going to share is the secret, not the burden and anguish of keeping it.

“Find someone to talk to about your secret and choose the right person can make all the difference“.

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