To understand the impact of secrets on mental health, Michael Slepian, professor of management at Columbia Business School in the United States, asked 1,000 participants to reveal a secret they had been keeping for a few or several years. All these confidences were then analyzed and classified into 38 categories, among them, lying, rapeI’infidelitythem complexperversions, a hobby, etc.
For our health, secrets should not be kept too long!
The results of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology led to two observations. On average, we hold 13 secrets during our lifetime, 5 of which are so unmentionable that we will keep them to ourselves forever. In 60% of cases, the most common secrets observed in the study are related to money. 47% of revelations relate to a betrayal and 33% are related to theft, a hidden relationship or a problem at work.
Researchers have observed that it’s not so much keeping a secret that might affect us, but thinking about the act itself.
“People tend to talk about their secrets as if they were a physical weight that they carry with them,” says Michael Slepian, who hypothesizes that people are simply not prepared for the time they will have to keep this secret.
“People are not ready to bear the weight of secrecy, and the time they will think about it. This may be the reason for the negative impact on their health,” he adds. Spending too much time thinking about the secrets we keep could even lead to stressof the’anxiety and a feeling of loneliness. To avoid getting there, Michael Selpian advises to “get rid” of his secrets and talk to someone you trust.
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