Why Keeping Secrets Can Hurt Your Health

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Secrets, secrets are no fun… but really, just thinking about the secrets you keep could be doing your body harm.

According to new research from Columbia Business School, it’s surprisingly common for us to reminisce on the not-so-proud moments of our pasts, and when we do, they can decrease our overall senses of well-being and happiness. Secrets ultimately hide certain aspects of ourselves from others, rendering us less authentic than we’d often like to be. This perpetual disconnect between one’s true self and public self can wreak havoc on relationships and ultimately hurt our health.

Usually, we expect secrets to feel the most troublesome when we find ourselves in social situations that require an active concealing of the information we hide. That inner panic is real, our voices shake a little and our hearts race. But because we don’t anticipate thinking about these dirty little gems in random, irrelevant situations — like when we’re in the shower — and so frequently, it’s those situations that mentally derail us more dramatically and for longer periods of time.

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According to Malia Mason, co-author of the study and associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, “Secrets exert a gravitational pull on our attention, and it’s the cyclical revisiting of our mistakes that explains the harmful effects that secrets can have on our well-being and relationship satisfaction. Along with a diminished sense of well-being and physical health consequences, keeping secrets can also shift a person’s focus from the task at hand to their secrets, which clearly can have a detrimental effect on task performance.”

The research, which was co-authored by Mason, Columbia Business School assistant professor of management Michael Slepian, and Ph.D. student Jinseok Chun, analyzed more than 13,000 secrets throughout 10 different studies. They determined the 38 most common secrets people keep as well as whether the participants in the study truly kept them private or shared them with select people. If you feel inclined to fill out the survey about your secret-keeping habits, you can compare your results to your peers who participated in these studies.

While you probably can’t turn around today and divulge all of these surprising stressors to make yourself feel better, it’s worth knowing how they can impact your mind, your emotions and your relationships when it comes to future secret keeping.