With the recent news of finding bodies buried in backyards in our region , a lot of people are probably wondering what other secrets are out there, just waiting to be discovered. Personally I’ve always been terrible at keeping secrets. In the past, even after a friend would solemnly swear me to secrecy, I’d usually blab to the next person I’d see. I just couldn’t help it. Maybe this was because in my professional role as a therapist, I had to be especially careful about always maintaining confidentiality. I’m a little better now, but not much. I hope I’m never captured by enemies, I’d probably tell them more than they wanted to know, even before they asked. No need for water boarding with me.
People keep secrets for a lot of reasons, but mainly I think it is to avoid looking bad in front of other people or to escape the consequences of our behavior. Sometimes we keep secrets just to avoid conflict with others, or to prevent our enemies from using information against us.
In literature keeping a secret usually leads to something bad. New York City writer Maria Konnikova points outs how keeping a terrible secret takes it’s deadly toll on the health of the fictional Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale (father of Hester Prynne’s illegitimate baby) in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. She wonders if a terrible secret could actually do that much damage to someone. She says, “The Scarlet Letter gets one thing so incredibly right that it almost… makes up for everything it gets wrong: it’s not healthy to keep a secret.”
It seems, however, to depend on the nature of the secret. Gail Saltz, a psychiatry professor at Cornell Medical School, says that secrets can be either “benign” or “malignant,” depending on the scenario.
Harvard psychologist Daniel Wegner and his colleagues found that secret thoughts tend to be very accessible. People can recall memories, which they had been asked to keep secret, better than memories which they had been instructed to tell the truth or lie about. Secrets come to mind much more often than almost any other kind of thoughts. They frequently preoccupy us, contrary to our conscious wishes. Wegner found that in his experiments people were likely to give unintentional hints about things they were supposed to keep secret. Wegner also found that personal secrets often result in outward signs of distress, and that secrecy can itself create further unwanted thoughts, continuing the cycle.
Knowing how difficult it can be to keep secrets, Wegner his colleagues give the following common sense suggestions: 1. Avoid alcohol since it diminishes inhibitions. 2 Reduce stress, since it decreases conscious control. 3. Write the secret down (in a symbolic way this disclosures the secret and relieves some of the pressure, even though no one actually reads the secret and finally 4. Avoid situations where being asked to keep a secret is likely to occur.
When we speak about secrets we use a special vocabulary and we often say things like, “We carry (or hold) a secret” as if where an actual physical object. Our language also refers to “being weighed down” or “carrying a heavy burden ,” and confession is said to “lighten our load”. Researchers have investigated how our bodies may literally interpret such metaphorical descriptions. For example, the importance or seriousness of information is often associated with weight. A serious persons is said to have “gravitas”, or an intellectual work may be said to be quite “weighty”. Dutch studies have shown that when subjects learn that a certain book is important, they begin to perceived that book as physically weighing more.
Along similar lines, Michael L. Slepian from Tufts University and his colleagues found that bodily states, associated with physical burdens, may be simulated when people have important personal secrets. In this study they looked at the behavior of people who harbored important personal secrets, such as infidelity or sexual orientation. In a series of studies, they found that subjects, who were currently held an important personal secret, perceived hills to be steeper, distances longer, and physical tasks requiring more effort than they would otherwise. Participants were also significantly less inclined to help other people with physical tasks. It was as if their own energy reserves were depleted. The more subjects thought about the secret, the more the secret influenced their perceptions.
The researchers found that concealments are perceived at a somatic level as physical burdens, they can result in actual physical overexertion and exhaustion. This exhausting effort required to maintain secrets over many years, may also explain why criminals sometimes suddenly confess, despite years of previous silence.
Psychologist James Pennebaker, from the University of Texas, found that people who had a serious trauma before age 17 were much more likely to have health problems as adults. The majority of these people kept the trauma secret. Pennebaker had subjects visited his lab each week to write about their traumatic experiences. Some subjects talked about the trauma, while others just wrote about it, showing their writing to no one. Divulging the secret to others or simply writing it on a piece of paper that is later burned, were both highly correlated with physical and mental health improvements. People who continued to conceal their traumatic secrets showed more hypertension, influenza, and even cancer. The subjects, who wrote about their secrets demonstrated, enhanced immunity and in some cases, T-cell counts in AIDS patients even increased.
In similar research studies, holocaust victims who finally disclosed secrets demonstrated a marked improvement in their health status, after the interviews. The more they disclosed, the more their health improved.
How the disclosure of personal secrets creates such health benefits is rather complicated. Pennebaker says that writing about a secret helps label and organize it, which in turn helps subjects better understand and master aspects of the secret that had been hidden. Disclosure can become a habit, leading to more openness in relationships. Revealing secrets can also reduce obsessive ruminations and their accompanying anxiety. Without anxiety and self-absorption, people become better listeners and have more opportunities for richer social relationships.
Notre Dame psychology professor Anita Kelly and her colleagues examined people’s health statuses and found that secretive people, tend to be sicker than other people. She found that “self-concealers,”, were often more depressed, anxious, and shy, and have discomfort. She believes there may be a genetic link between secretiveness and vulnerability to illness.
Kelly also believes that keeping benign secrets can have positive aspects, providing personal boundaries or avoiding unnecessary social conflicts. Disclosing a malignant secret, may have a positive outcome, but that depends on having a safe confidant. If such a confidant is not available, Kelly takes a cue from Pennebaker and suggests writing about the secrets, which simulates the benefits of disclosing the secret to others.
So, it you have some deep secret that is troubling you, spend some time writing about it down, or find someone that you trust and take a chance. You may find that a large burden is finally lifted. Just don’t tell me anything, if you know what’s good for you.
From a column that appeared in the Southern Indiana News Tribune
Tags: Humor, psychological burdern, Psychology, Secrecy, Secrets, Stawar Blog
Welcome to Planet Terry 
Causal Comments
24 SepWhen people offer spontaneously, without thinking, their offhanded remarks possess a special kind of power. We frequently assume that extemporaneous comments are truthful, or at least that they honestly reflect the way the speaker feels. Unintentionally overheard comments can be especially influential, since we assume they were frank expressions, not tailored specifically for our ears, just ask Mitt Romney.
For example, our five-year old grandson prefers to wear button-up shirts instead of the polo variety. We believe that’s because of a remark that some sweet nursery or Sunday School teacher once made that resulted in him referring to button-up shirts as “Mr. Handsome Shirts”. After all, what male wouldn’t want to wear a “Mr. Handsome Shirt”.
Of course such statements are not always positive. At a parent-teacher conference my wife Diane once overheard her Kindergarten teacher tell her mother, “Don’t bother ever giving Diane dance lessons, because she has no rhythm at all.” This has stuck with her for all these years and made her feel inhibited and avoid dancing. Some people may say perhaps for the best.
In his book Uncommon Therapy famed hypnotherapist Milton Erickson describes how he once treated a young woman who was convinced that her perfectly normal feet were grossly oversized and ugly. This belief kept her from ever going outside the house. On pretense Erickson made a home visit ostensibly to see the young woman’s “sick” mother. He acted quite annoyed and grumpy and “accidentally on purpose” stepped on the young woman’s foot. As she recoiled in pain he said loudly, “If only you could grow those feet big enough for a man to see!”. His crabby and spontaneous statement had more credibility with the young woman, than all the reasoning in the world would have had, and ultimately did the trick as, she re-shuffled her thinking about her self-image.
Over the years Diane has prepared and given children’s sermons in various churches we’ve attended. She always says that the children’s sermon is an excellent way to communicate with the adults in the audience. Since the message is not intended specifically for them, their defenses are down. Also their critical judgment is often suspended, as they are distracted and charmed by the youngsters’ response to the message.
Such casual messages function similar to what are called indirect or embedded suggestions in hypnosis. An indirect suggestion is a type of instruction phrased as an offhand comment, used during hypnosis to encourage patients to follow a desired course of action without specifically telling them to do so. The power of indirect and embedded suggestions lies in their ability to by-pass normal conscious resistance and influence people on an unconscious level.
An embedded suggestion is another special kind of a hypnotic suggestion that is usually buried in some sort of mind-numbing context, like a boring conversation. The suggestion is typically repeated, but since it doesn’t stand out dramatically, it is usually not consciously perceived.
I once attempted to use a variant of these techniques with a young woman I was seeing for counseling. Outside my immediate family, she was probably the most argumentative person I had ever met. Even when I was repeating back exactly what she just told me, she would disagree. Most of all she was highly self-critical and I was trying to help her realize that she did possess some positive features. One day I was talking to her and the secretary called me out of my office, to handle an emergency. When I returned the chart containing my progress notes was in a slightly different position. It was hardly noticeable, but I realized that she had must been reading my notes. For the next session, I carefully prepared a fake progress note to put in a dummy chart that looked just like the real thing. This note contained all the positive messages that I wanted her to realize. If I had said these things to her, she would have just argued with me and rejected them. When she came in for her session, my secretary made a prearrange call to my office, and I excused myself, claiming that it was another emergency. After about 15 minutes I returned. The client seemed both pleased and frustrated. She obviously liked what she had read, but seemed bursting, wanting to argue the points. She was not able to, however, because she was loathe to admit she had been surreptitiously reading my notes.
Back in June, Ann Von Brock, a blogger with United Way in Asheville, North Carolina wrote a piece entitled, “Can One Passing Comment To a Child Really Make a Difference?” It was about the power of adult influences on a young people’s lives. She describes how her 7th grade biology teacher once wrote “has potential” as remark on her report card. Although Von Brock admits she was a an underachiever for much of her school career she says, “… somehow I hung onto the comment of that one teacher and always believed that I was a smart kid.” She concluded that seemingly casual comments can be “powerful”, “ motivating and inspiring”, but just as easily “crushing” depending upon the people, the setting, the tone, and the context.
I suppose there are two important lessons you can draw from the power of passing comments. First, if some casual comment is hurtful or discouraging, then reengage your critical thinking and challenge it. If parts still seem true, then use it as a motivator for positive change. Second use your own casual remarks constructively. You can never really know how much influence a word of encouragement or a positive comment can have in the long run. We are constantly confronted with opportunities that can change people’s lives with very little effort or cost to ourselves.
I respond to casual remarks as much as anyone. When I was in high school, the first day of varsity football practice, the coach looked at me and realized my brother had played for him a few years earlier. He said to the people standing around, “Stawar’s brother was an All Conference Guard, but Terry here isn’t good enough to carry his cleats”. I suppose that was meant to be inspirational but it ended up being more prophetic. Was it important to me or did it affect me? I would like to say no, but then I do remember it, 48 years later.
On the other hand many years ago I attended a two-day training workshop. It was in a resort area and everyone dressed very casually. On the first day I wore a tan jacket. On the second day I overheard people at nearby table talking about what people were wearing. One of them said, “You should have seen this tan jacket some guy was wearing yesterday. It was really cool.” I don’t think I had never heard a spontaneous positive comment about my apparel before. I believe I wore my “Mr. Handsome” tan jacket for at least the next decade.
Tags: Causal Comments, Causual comments, Humor, overheard conversations, Psychology, Romney