Especially the good ones.

I don’t think this question requires an intro because we’ve all been there. We all have secrets. 97% of people have at least one secret, but on average, a person has 13 concurrent secrets, five of which they have never told a single person. Sounds quite reasonable. Sometimes we f*ck up. It’s simple is that. Sometimes, these secrets are so deep that we are ashamed to even mention them to ourselves. Sometimes, they are shallow ones that we accidentally overshare with some acquaintances. At other times, they don’t even belong to us. In this case, those secrets can also bring us stress to keep them concealed from others or bring us excitement because we’re gonna gossip about it with our best friends or partners after work (shame on you!).

Most of the time, though, it’s a lonely place. And you know we humans don’t cope with loneliness pretty well. So, sometimes we invite few others to this lonely place to hold our hands and be there with us, or sometimes, without us even noticing, our tongue decides to dance around the you-know-who, and suddenly that lonely place becomes an underground rave in Amsterdam, filled with random people shaking their heads and enjoying that you-know-what.

Today, I want to dig deeper into why we share some of those secrets, whether they belong to us or others. I’m not here to make a case for or against telling secrets. It depends on person to person and situation to situation. It might be healthy, maladaptive, or both at the same time. In the end, I think the mechanisms are interesting, and I’d like to mention a couple of them.

1- Keeping secrets is not an action; it’s an intention.

It might sound counterintuitive but hear me out. When we decide to keep a secret, we don’t actively try to hold a secret like it’s a hot plate. We just try not to drop that plate. While holding could be action, trying not to drop is an intention. We intend to keep a secret, and whenever there is a situation where he has to hold that information, we become hardcore intenders not to do the action of revealing the secret. If it were an action, we might do it once or twice and be done with it. Since it’s an intention, we have to keep that intention for eternity, which is hard to keep up unless we are the type of person who forgets everything within seconds. They are the OG secret keepers.

2- Secrets are mentally exhausting, especially if they’re from a friend.

Yes, sharing secrets with our friends makes us feel closer to them. We might become friends with new people solely because we experienced something that we cannot tell anyone. The social benefits and harms of sharing secrets are also scientifically backed.

While most of the time, we have to respect the person who decided to open up to us (professionally or personally), trying to keep a secret can become the brain equivalent of juggling beer bottles. After some point, we might become tired and slip a piece of sensitive information from our mouths. According to research, this is especially hard when we have overlapping social networks with the confidant because trying not f*ck up is not a great way of enjoying those social interactions.

3- Secrets are like pink elephants. Try not to think of a pink elephant.

Did you able to manage not to think of it? If so, for how long? This is called ironic process theory in psychology, in other words, the pink elephant paradox or white bear phenomenon. When we try not to think about a particular thought or not to feel a certain feeling, we tend to think or feel more of it. It’s a paradox. To not think of something, you must first think of that thing and decide not to think about it. Secrets are like this. The more we force ourselves to forget it, the stingier it becomes.

4- Repetition + Arousal = Problem.

There are two contexts in which we think about a secret: social and non-social. I already talked about the social contexts, where it can be exhausting and frustrating to micromanage everything we have to say. On the other hand, we also think about those secrets in private. We think of them when we drive a car, wash the dishes, unexpectedly take a shower, or go “number 2” in the bathroom.

First, this rumination happens more frequently when the secret is relatively important or emotionally intensive. By merely repeating thinking, we train our minds to bring the secrets into our consciousness. It increases the chances of us becoming aware of the secrets in related or non-related contexts.

Second, when we are aroused — the psychological or physiological state of being awake or stimulated — our inhibition abilities diminish. It means we are less likely to control our mouth when we are too excited, caffeinated, or even sexually aroused. Even time slows down when we are too excited about something. This arousal can be due to social interactions as well. Sometimes, the vibe in the room is so good that everybody starts sharing very private stuff that they normally wouldn’t share. This can go both ways, depending on the secret and your surroundings.

Then, when you increase the chances of thinking about a secret in your own time and are excited in a social context, oops!

Okay, but what to do about it?

This blog post also might be torture to read for some because I haven’t mentioned anything that can solve this problem. Yes, there are scientifically backed tips, interventions, or techniques to cope with secrets. There are studies that thought the art of dodging questions within social contexts to protect a secret. They literally created boot camps for politicians. Some other studies suggest that we have to be careful about who tells our secrets. For sure, but how can we determine the “right person” and the “wrong person”? In what situations does the right person remain the right person, or when does the wrong person become the right person? What is the nature of the secret we are keeping?

In the end, my limited experience in psychology has already taught me that there is no one-for-all solution, especially for sensitive matters like secrets. Still, no matter how different the circumstances might be, keeping a secret can quickly become a burden. If you think that you have a problem with either the secrets of your own or the others, I suggest seeking help from a trained mental health professional. In this way, you can process your emotions and thoughts in a safe context and decide which is the right course of action within your unique internal and external circumstances. I know it’s the fallback response to say, “Get help,” but guess what? Getting help helps.

Best regards,

Bugra