There are two aspects of secrets that seem pretty intuitively obvious:

First, keeping secrets probably makes you feel worse than you would if you were not keeping a secret.

Second, the most stressful part of keeping a secret is hiding it from the people you love.

The stress caused by secrets arises because people think about the information they are keeping secret often, even when they are not around the person they are hiding the information from.

These thoughts cause stress and make people feel as though they are not acting authentically.

Whether or not you feel the need to share your secret, the important thing to remember is this:

As long as you’re not actively endangering anyone, don’t feel bad for keeping it.

If it’s dragging you down, telling someone may help you to quit ruminating on it; if you’re feeling okay about it, though, there isn’t really a reason to worry that you’re harming yourself in the long run.

Maybe telling someone your secret will help you think about it less, or maybe it won’t change anything. Everyone has secrets. It doesn’t make you inauthentic to have them.

It makes you human.

Elizabeth

Let the winds of change dance between your secrets, gut and shame