Secrets & Lives

We modern Americans are the tell-all type.

No longer bound by the prudish mores of our ancestors, or even by the manners of our parents’ generation, we talk and talk and talk about the most intimate details of our lives.

We go on Sally and Ricki and Oprah and confess.

We write autobiographies that make the readers blush and the publishers wealthy.

And even when the policy is “don’t ask, don’t tell,” we do.

We spill our secrets like so many lost, dirty pennies.

Disclosure, after all, is supposed to be healthy. That’s what Freud and other great psychoanalytical thinkers have taught us. Psychological literature is full of studies showing the disastrous consequences to our mental health when we bury, deny or repress our secrets.

But real life is full of the ragged debris from bombed-out secrets, proof that perhaps it’s time to pause and reflect on the “instant intimacy” of the late 20th century.

In a watershed paper published recently in the journal Psychological Bulletin, Anita E. Kelly, a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and co-author Kevin J. McKillop of Washington College in Chestertown, Md., offer advice for the new millennium: shut up. Or, if you must tell, choose your confidant very wisely.

“We contend that there are many circumstances in which a secret keeper is better off not telling anyone about a personal secret,” says Kelly, who is devoting her career to research on secrets. She describes the most typical secrets as those involving sexual behavior, mental health problems or large-scale failures.

“We’re told as a culture that it’s acceptable to reveal. But what happens to people is that it can feel really good to reveal something, but then the person has regrets later,” she says.

Pour out your heart over two martinis with a stranger in a bar and beware.

“We will pay the price for telling things to people without any assurance that it’s not going to be used against us,” says Penn State University sociologist Vicki Abt, a critic of the confessional talk-show phenomenon.

OK, so Brenda didn’t graduate from college. She didn’t even obtain a junior college degree. The most college credit she acquired was for a few classes she took one semester.

But her resume reflected a college degree--a fib, she believed, that had enabled her to get a good job in marketing at an Orlando resort. Hard work and natural talent led her to numerous promotions over the years.

Nearing 40, Brenda, who asked that her full name not be used, finally felt secure enough in her career to give her little lie some air time one night last fall while relaxing with a colleague over white wine after work. During the course of a conversation about some of the lackluster employees in their office, Brenda bragged that she had risen to the top despite the fact that she had no college degree. Her resume, she said with a laugh, was fake.

Her colleague chuckled too--then promptly spread word of Brenda’s fraud around the office.

“My boss didn’t say anything, but I knew she told him too,” Brenda says ruefully. “He never acted the same toward me.”

And when economic pressures forced layoffs a few months later, Brenda was the first to be handed the pink slip.

“It’s my own fault,” she says bitterly. “I thought I could trust her.”

Brenda may have finally spilled the beans because of her own insecurities. People who can keep secrets are typically secure about themselves, Kelly says.

She calls it “managing your identity.”

“Being able to keep a secret and not be terribly bothered by it is a healthy step in personality development,” Kelly says.

Indeed, it used to be that keeping your problems to yourself was a sign of good taste, dignity and respectability, Abt says.

“There has been a cultural shift from self-reliance, self-control and keeping things to yourself. The question of taste used to be very important. What distinguished people was your deportment and keeping your secrets,” she says.

Information is so freely traded nowadays that we have lost respect for its power, Abt suggests.

“If you give people information about yourself, you give them power over you,” she says.

But it’s not hard to see why many people choose to relieve themselves of their secrets, Kelly says. She calls a secret “an active process” that, researchers have found, requires constant mental vigilance to avoid slip-ups.

There is also an emotional toll: It can feel deceptive.

Evidence suggests that the cognitive labor required to keep secrets can trigger a host of other problems. Studies on people with cancer, for example, have found that those who talk about their illnesses in support groups have better immune-system function and live longer than similar patients who are not in discussion groups.

“There is something about keeping secrets hidden that takes active work and drains people,” Kelly says.

Moreover, studies tend to demonstrate the downside to keeping secrets. For example, people who bury their secrets tend to have more back pain, headaches and ruminations over the secrets, she says. Other research shows that people who conceal secrets tend to have lower self-esteem and more depression, anxiety and shyness. They are also more likely to seek therapy.

“Part of the trouble with hiding information from others is that the secret keeper does not get the chance to hear another person’s perspective on an issue,” Kelly says.

Indeed, increasing your own understanding of your secret appears to be more valuable than just the feeling of catharsis generated by telling, Kelly says. A recent experiment she conducted showed that people who try to make meaning out of their secret felt better than people who are simply venting.

All this evidence has been used, she says, to endorse the concept that “the benefits of revealing outweigh the costs of revealing in most circumstances.”

But is that really sound advice?

*

While much has been written on the benefits of telling, there is little research on the psychological, social and health impacts of keeping secrets or revealing secrets only to a single confidant--now the subject of Kelly’s research.

“Researchers have not examined the long-term effects of revealing guilty secrets in these studies, thus leaving open the possibility that feelings of regret could emerge at some time after revealing the secret,” says Kelly, who conducted an exhaustive review of previous studies on secrets.

Indeed, a few studies indicate that feelings of relief in telling a secret may be quickly followed by negative repercussions. One study, for example, showed that suspects accused of crimes felt relieved when they confessed even though the implications were obvious.

“Later [the suspects] may regret having revealed such things,” Kelly says. “This is a clear example of the delayed effect of telling secrets.”

People might also misjudge how others will respond when they divulge secrets. For instance, in studies, parents who have experienced the death of a child have said that revealing the loss has sometimes left them open to callous remarks, such as, “be thankful you have another child.”

People often find they are viewed differently by others once their secrets are known. Even the confessor may see himself or herself in a different--and not necessarily better--light, Kelly says.

“The heart of the problem with receiving unhelpful or negative feedback from others is that people may form their identities through interaction with others. For example, a woman who reveals she was raped to her co-workers may be seen in the future as a victim and may even come to see herself as a victim.”

*

Indeed, at age 50, Joan Corey learned a secret that caused her a wrenching identity crisis. Six weeks after the 1989 death of her mother, Corey discovered that she had been adopted.

The San Rafael teacher wishes that her adoptive parents had been open about her birth, because learning this secret in midlife was emotionally shattering, she says.

“It has made it very hard for me to trust,” she says. “Part of me wanted to go on living the lie. I wanted it like it was, even though it was a lie. I feel a great loss.”

After years of therapy--and being unified with two half sisters she discovered--Corey is now glad she knows the truth. And, her relatives, many of whom knew the secret, were grateful that Corey had discovered the truth.

“My aunt had been so scared about this secret. Everyone, in fact, was so relieved,” she says.

The key to the dilemma of tell-or-don’t-tell may be to tell only one carefully chosen person who can add insight or lend advice about the secret, Kelly argues in her paper.

“If your secret is troubling, then select very carefully the confidant, get a new perspective [on the secret] and then write it down,” she says. “It is critical to find confidants that won’t give poor responses. It has got to be someone who will offer constructive comments. The reason why I believe that making meaning is so valuable to people is that they can find closure to the secret.”

But a trustworthy listener, Kelly adds, “is tough” to find. One study, she says, showed that a confidant will tell a secret to two other people, on average.

Brian, who joined a top-notch L.A. law firm in the early ‘90s, was cautious about revealing any details of his personal life, but even colleagues in another city learned his secret: He’s gay.

“I had never advertised my sexuality but, in school, you could be open and no one could hurt you. But this was corporate L.A. law. It’s a good ol’ boys club. I knew after I got a job there it would not be safe for me for the firm to know my personal business,” he says.

But his secret became known, and what transpired ruined his career, Brian maintains. First, after he missed two weeks of work because of illness, word began to circulate around his office that he was gay and HIV-positive. He had, in fact, been found to have HIV. Gradually, he sensed that people in his office, including other lawyers, were shunning him and wanted him to quit. He confided in a woman in the office whom he viewed as a good friend, asking her if she knew what was being said about him. She assured him that nothing was amiss.

Then, one evening, Brian ran into an office clerk at a gay bar. The clerk assured Brian that he wouldn’t discuss Brian’s sexuality with anyone at the office.

But the clerk did tell Brian’s colleagues, and the harassment became more open. Brian, 37, eventually suffered a mental breakdown that he attributes to stress and took a disability leave. When he signaled that he was ready to return to work, the office placed him on probation “in an obvious effort to discourage me from returning,” Brian says. He was eventually fired for not acceding to the conditions of his reemployment.

When Brian again asked his friend in the office if everyone knew he was gay, she confessed that they had been discussing his private life for more than a year.

“It felt like a betrayal that my best friend never told me this for a year,” he says. “She said, ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’ She had engaged in this gossip too. This was somebody who was supposed to be my friend.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Should You Tell?

1) Is the secret troubling? (Do you have ruminations, anxiety, depression, headaches, back pain you think are related to the stress of keeping the secret?)

If NO: Keep the secret

If YES: Go to Step 2.

2) Is an appropriate confidant available? (The person should be discreet, nonjudgmental and able to help.)

If YES: Reveal the secret to the confidant.

If NO: Keep the secret or write it down.

Source: Anita E. Kelly, Kevin J. McKillop