How good are you at handling secrets?

How many secrets do you have?

 

Apparently, the magic number is 13, reports Jill Suttie, in an article for Greater Good magazine, “with most people having five secrets they’ve never told anyone and eight they’d confided to at least one person (but intended to keep from others). Suttie was citing stats from Michael Slepian’s book, “The Secret Life of Secrets.”

 

And how many secrets have others told you?

 

Years ago, a colleague approached me after a board meeting and said, “Can I tell you a secret?”  I said sure, to which he quickly added, “But it’s not an American secret.”

 

I wondered, then asked, “What, pray tell, is an American secret?”

 

“That’s when you promise not to tell anyone, but then end up telling five people that you know.” 

 

I laughed, assured him that his secret was good with me, and then held it tight (he was planning to start a new business and shared both the name and the concept). 

 

Good for our well-being?

 

Is keeping secrets good for our health? The literature insists, with a few notable exceptions, that holding on to secrets can be quite burdensome.

 

Slepian himself advises people to reveal secrets – particularly those that eventually will come to light – as early as possible. But Slepian does share one exception: the joy and energy we derive from holding on to a positive secret (think surprise birthday party, marriage proposal, work promotion, a winning lottery ticket, and the like).

   

Slepian, cited in a piece for the American Psychological Association, said, “People sometimes go to great lengths to orchestrate revealing a positive secret to make it all the more exciting. This kind of surprise can be intensely enjoyable. . . . Having extra time – days, weeks or even longer – to imagine the joyful surprise on another person’s face allows us more time with this exciting moment, even if only in our own minds.”

 

The most common secrets, writes Suttie, involve “lies, romantic desire, infidelity, and finances, while the least common sources were sexual orientation, pregnancy, a marriage proposal, and abortion.”

 

Should we start revealing?

 

Nandini Maharaj, in a piece for wellandgood.com, says “that the problem isn’t so much the act of keeping secrets. Instead, our distress lies in repeatedly thinking about info we’re trying to conceal.” Maharaj was referencing research by Slepian and colleagues.

 

Maharaj quotes Michelle Felder, CEO of Parenting Pathfinders: When we shift from “believing that secrets are a reflection of our identity, to understanding them as a reflection of past choices or behaviors, they can be less taxing on our relationships and mental health.”

 

More from Felder: as our mind wanders, secrets “begin to consume our mental and emotional energy. . . . The guilt and shame we feel can lead to a deep sense of fear of what others would think if the secret was revealed.”

 

Should we share, or continue to hold?

 

In Suttie’s report, Slepian recommends leaving past mistakes in the past, adding, “If you did something morally wrong in your past, there’s no need to confess it to others, unless not doing so hurts another person – like if you’ve given false testimony and put another person in jail because of it.”

 

Out of your body

An article at wikihow.com, co-authored by Ebony Eubanks, recommends “getting the energy secret out of your body.” But if that challenge is too daunting, and you’re still itching to disclose, try postsecret.com, a website now in its 20th year where people anonymously send in postcards and their secrets are posted online (I visited the site, it’s quite interesting). 

 

All in all, it’s no secret that they have the capacity to create both joy and stress. The key might just be, as Kenny Rogers once advised, knowing “when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.”