It is common practice for a therapist to have a “no secrets policy.” When partners are in therapy together, it is up to the therapist to be a neutral individual, to know what is shared during the sessions that the partners share together. If one partner were to disclose information to the therapist without the knowledge of the other partner, an imbalance is created. Whatever the therapist knows, is known by both partners. Hence, no secrets policy.
So why do people keep secrets?
Keeping secrets is a major developmental milestone for children. By the age of five, children develop the ability to keep secrets. To have a secret from others is to create an alternate world, one to which others don’t have complete access. With the ability to keep a secret, people can seal off an episode from others, protecting their personal information from what could be prying eyes. But this can come at a cost.
During adolescence, keeping secrets from parents is related to greater feelings of autonomy yet also to lower psychological and physical well-being. Likewise, in adults, secrecy is associated with lower well-being and relationship quality. Sometimes keeping a secret is good practice. It might protect someone from learning information that would be detrimental to themselves or their relationships.
I don’t like keeping secrets. And worse is when I feel that there are people keeping secrets from me. There is a quote from The Italian Job (2003) where Charlize Theron’s character says “I trust everyone. It’s the devil inside them I don’t trust.” This really describes how I feel about secrets. I will trust everyone at face value. But I may, at times, feel that there is something that is being kept from me and that brings the devil out in people and makes me question them.
As a result of my non-secret-keeping, I often tell people, especially friends and family, that I am an open book. I share everything. Sometimes it can be difficult to keep information from others. I have very few secrets from the people that truly matter to me. And I typically don’t have any problem with sharing about my past demons. The only secret that I remember having to keep was when my parents got my sister a Dalmatian puppy as a surprise, and I couldn’t tell her for 5 days! I was in my early teens at the time, so you can imagine what it is like to keep a secret as a teenager. Difficult! It was challenging, but I kept the secret until we brought the puppy home and surprised her. She had no idea. It was such a memorable moment.
Let’s take a moment and imagine that each of us is a book, or more so that our lives are a book. There is the main character, protagonist, that’s you. Supporting characters are all of the people in our lives that come and go at regular, or even irregular, intervals. There are familiar settings wherever events take place. And there is time. The almighty construct of time that keeps moving us forward in the story of our lives. Time machines don’t exist, so there is no going backwards.
Each chapter is a period of time in our lives. It could be a short event or a longer span of years. Some chapters end and the places, characters or events that occur during that time are then left untouched, possibly forever. We might revisit chapters during a later span in our lives and characters or events will resurface in later chapters. We have the control of who can read or have knowledge of what happened in previous chapters in our lives. Some of us openly share about our past relationships with our current partners, others choose to keep those chapters sealed under lock and key.
What happens if secrets from previous chapters, from our past, rear their ugly heads in our present? What can we do to minimize the negative effects? The best thing you can do, and I say this not just because I’m a therapist, is talk to someone about it. You don’t have to reveal the secret to the person it is being kept from, but talking to a third party individual, someone that you trust, can make a world of difference. Talking about the secret does not reduce how often the secret is actively being concealed, but rather alleviates and reduces how often the mind repetitively wanders to the secret. You can also receive a lot of emotional support and useful advice that helps to move you forward and cope better.
Now, if you, like me, feel wronged when someone is keeping a secret from you. You don’t know what the secret is, you aren’t necessarily going to be privy to that information. What should you do? Again, talk to someone. Talk to a therapist, a trusted friend or confidante, who can alleviate the anxiety that you are experiencing with not knowing, or maybe even knowing, the secret. Keeping things bottled up inside can be detrimental to your relationship with yourself and the relationship you have with others.