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Anyone who says their family doesn't have a secret might just not know about it yet. Or, maybe they're lying.
In fact, people keep about 13 secrets at any one time on average, five of which they've never told anyone. That's according to research by Michael Slepian, one of the leading experts on the psychology of secrets and author of The Secret Life of Secrets.
Some secrets are kept strictly confidential while others are revealed to a few select souls. Slepian says there are 38 common categories our secrets fall into. They include beliefs, family, finances, ambitions, habits, hobbies, substance use, mental health struggles, cheating, work, relationships, bedroom shenanigans and more.
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Apparently, the most common secrets people keep are related to having told a significant lie (without revealing it), having a romantic desire whilst single; and issues about money and personal finances.
People are more likely to share their experiences with substance use or hating their job than they are to reveal secrets about romantic desires or their behavior in the bedroom. These, says Slepian, are "consistently the top secrets shared with no one".
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so to save a lot of boring details the local PD contacted him after talking to me and gave him my number, we reconnected. I found out why he went "missing" and it was because both sisters essentially took the jewelry off my dying grandmother when she was in hospice and made her cry. after the funeral he cut them out and they still don't know I found him.
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Not surprisingly, experts say secrets can be harmful. But not in the way you might think.
"The idea that our secrets hurt us mostly because hiding them is difficult and stressful turns out to be wrong," explains Slepian. "Our secrets do hurt us, but often for other reasons associated with feelings of shame, isolation, and inauthenticity."
The expert adds that these experiences can leave us feeling helpless. And that holding a secret back in conversation is just a small slice of the pain and stress caused by secrets.
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Evan Imber-Black, a professor of marriage and family therapy at Mercy College in New York, agrees. "People keep secrets for all kinds of reasons but mainly to protect relationships, themselves or others," he says. "Secrets become harmful when a relationship is injured, or when it haunts the secret holder."
And according to Slepian, keeping a secret has been associated with a lower life satisfaction, lower quality relationships, and symptoms of poor psychological and physical health.
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Psychologist Maria Mifsud says there are three types of family secrets. Individual secrets are the ones only one member of the family knows. For example, only a father knows that he has an affair baby, or only a mother knows that she once had an abortion.
Internal family secrets are shared by two or more family members, who keep at least one other person in the dark. "For example, only the parents know that their daughter was conceived out of wedlock," writes Mifsud. "An especially complex situation arises when a son or daughter is the only one to share a secret with one of his or her parents, as this entails a serious conflict of loyalties."
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Then you get shared family secrets: those known by the whole nuclear family. "These are secrets the family will keep within the family walls and never disclose to an outsider; for instance, no one apart from the nuclear family knows that the father was in prison," Mifsud explains.
Like the other experts, Mifsud warns that secrets can have a negative impact. "Family secrets have consequences beyond what the secret keepers ever imagined," she says. "I have met individuals that were afraid that their partners would get to know their secret (a traumatic episode for example). Thus, they unconsciously avoided forming intimate relationships out of fear that if their partners were to discover this secret, they would reject them."
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Misfud warns that the secret-keeping culture can be carried on from one generation to another. "During my line of work, I became aware of many cases where children were raised in an atmosphere of secrecy," she revealed. "These children in return grew up with a sense that something is wrong, and were afraid to discuss their intuitions with their parents."
The expert adds that in these families, once secrecy becomes the norm, there is no end to the ways in which information is blocked from flowing. Children learn to keep secrets from parents, and parents keep secrets from children and from one another. "This learning process can be carried over into generations as the children marry and keep secrets from their spouses," she says.