Michael Slepian, author of the book The Secret Life of Secrets, argues that keep secrets can cause damage to the physical and mental health of human beings. The problem, in this case, is not the fact of keeping secrets, but the mental repercussions that this generates in the person and the burden of having to to live with the secret in our head.
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Everything we keep grows
In the dynamics of secrets, everything we keep grows. Be the good secrets, like a pregnancy or a job proposal, be the bad and shameful secrets, like a betrayal.
Thus, with the accumulation of bad secrets in our lives, which follow us wherever we go, our health can be weakened by having to live with the negative consequences caused by the movement of keeping secrets.
Michael Slepian conducted a study of over 50,000 participants. In this study, people revealed their intimate secrets to the author and, as he verified, all those with great undisclosed information presented more debilitated health, with bad relationships and a feeling of less pleasure with life in general.
The more shameful the secret, the more the person will feel bad.
According to Slepian, as people see themselves as having exemplary morals, any past mistakes cause embarrassment and, therefore, must be kept hidden from their peers.
While there is a joy in sharing the good things we do, a way of doing others If people see us as nice people, sharing negative secrets can be embarrassing. And if the secrecy is judged by itself as immoral, the consequence is even worse, because these people can aggressively punish themselves and start to inflict pain on themselves.
Bad secrets can keep you away from family, friends and colleagues, and isolation becomes negative, impacting mental health and, in many cases, physical health. In the study, the main secrets are related to lying, sexual desires and behavior, as well as family. Infidelity was one of the points that most attracted attention in the study.
To prevent secrets from negatively affecting your health, confide in someone you trust or seek help from a psychologist. Another tip is to forgive yourself, recognize past mistakes and analyze how you grew from it.