#1
My secret? When I have my headphones on around the house, she'll sometimes call out to me and I'll pretend I can't hear her at all. She'll often start singing and I turn my headphones off so I can hear her properly. It's been 4 years and she still doesn't know that I purposely ignore her so I can listen to her singing.
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Studies found that a person keeps around 13 secrets at any given moment, five of which they haven’t revealed to anyone; the other eight were likely shared on Reddit.
According to Professor of Communications at Syracuse University, Makana Chock, there are complicated motivations for revealing secrets. “Unburdening can help people to heal, grow, and make things right. Some social media confessions, however, may also be motivated by a need for attention and self-justification,” she told Bored Panda.
“Social media can be anonymous and asynchronous, which facilitates online disinhibition. You can confess to strangers—and hopefully receive reassurance or sympathy—with limited risk. If you tell a secret to someone whom you know and care about, there are greater consequences to being judged negatively and having that secret shared among your social group.”
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Be it Reddit or any other online platform where you can post things anonymously, it seems to be easier to unveil secrecies there rather than to someone’s face. While discussing the reasons for why that is, Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and author of Emotionally Intelligent Parenting, Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D., pointed out that just because we confess something, it doesn't mean that we want to take responsibility for it.
“Just as little children try to ‘hide’ behind one finger, adults ‘hide’ by attempting to conceal their identity,” he told Bored Panda in a recent interview. “It's also worth reflecting on the structure of the Catholic confessional—there is an attempt to make confession easier by making the confrontation not be ‘face to face’.”
The expert added that there was the common belief that the eyes are the window to the soul, which makes some anonymous confessions somewhat incomplete, as people might be holding back on perhaps some of the worst details... details that might be detectable through eye contact.
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While revealing secrets is typically not easy, it can make you feel better; even if for a moment. According to Prof. Elias, confession unburdens us from the powerful emotions of guilt and shame. “Yet in confessional situations, people still are fearful that they will be judged harshly if the worst of their actions are known,” he added. “So we get partial confessionals, which sometimes can make the guilt and shame easier to live with but more often only bring temporary relief.”
#13
I don’t feel strong enough to open up about my abuse and how hard it’s been being let down by police at every step.
🤷♂️ .
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If you’ve ever had to come clean about something and reveal a secret, you know just how nerve-racking it can be. And it doesn’t have to be something big to make your palms sweaty; minor things can be equally as uncomfortable to confess sometimes.
“That’s because few of us like to put our worst selves forward,” Prof. Elias pointed out. “And in cultures where perfectionism is not uncommon, admitting to any deficit appears to open the door to real, or potential, admissions of larger imperfections.
“Creating an environment in which people can acknowledge wrongdoing without feeling blamed and judged is a high aspiration for families, classrooms, and workplaces,” the expert added.
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