So help us, the truth and everything but the truth has defined too many moments of 2002. Americans might be tempted to shake their heads or wag some index fingers at the moral misadventures in business, government, court cases and even sports. Yet, honest to goodness, lots of lips are zipped when it comes to the truth. One survey of 40,000 U.S. adults revealed that 9 of 10 Americans admit that they lie habitually, including 93 percent who fib at work and 35 percent who cheat on their spouses. Other research indicates that 1 of every 5 marriages involves extramarital affairs, but tell that to the excuse-weary marital partner.
There’s little question our society is worse for the wear, and a growing body of research shows that your own life might be equally bedraggled by too much secrecy and falsehood. At least one expert contends that your best health protection is knowing the difference between what’s private and what’s secret.
Watergate seems almost a fond memory compared with this year’s flood of falsehoods.
Where to start:
– Andersen, one of America’s most trusted public accounting firms, is dismantled because it didn’t come clean about false partnerships at Enron that misdirected hundreds of millions of dollars. Then telecommunications giant WorldCom announces it has inaccurately reported, oh, $7 billion as revenue.
Robert Hanssen, a longtime FBI agent and Chicago native, is convicted of selling 6,000 pages and 26 computer diskettes of classified information to Russia.
Two girlfriends of Palatine men, Eileen Bakalla and Anne Lockett, independently managed to keep secrets of mass murder at a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta outlet to themselves for nine years. Both women reportedly feared for their lives if they revealed the information to authorities, which would seem to be one of the better health reasons for keeping a secret.
How about if we just click the remote to sports for a carefree moment? Whoops. George O’Leary, head football coach with the fitting name, loses his dream job at Notre Dame after one week because he embellished a college playing career and fumbled his educational background.
The president of the U.S. Olympic Committee resigns from her fantasy position with a leaky resume.
Just this week, Sacramento Kings star Chris Webber was indicted on obstruction of justice charges that he lied to a grand jury about his dealings with a University of Michigan basketball booster more than a decade ago.
This is not what Gandhi had in mind when he said our lives are “experiments in truths.”
“Not everyone lies,” said Carl Hausman, 49, an author and chairman of journalism at Rowan University in suburban Philadelphia who has devoted his career to how companies and politicians manipulate the truth. “The spin, fine print and verbal chicanery is profoundly corrosive to the quality of our lives.”
Depending on the secrets you keep, your own physical, emotional and spiritual wellness can hang in the balance. Studies show people who habitually keep many secrets experience more depression, anxiety, back pain (isn’t that interesting?) and headaches than their free-and-easy loved ones and friends.
Likelihood of stress
Research indicates that the more effort a person expends at keeping a secret–which is common even when you are holding someone’s else secret, such as the two girlfriends in the Brown’s Chicken case–the greater the likelihood of stress-related physical and emotional problems.
Anita Kelly is a 38-year-old University of Notre Dame psychologist who is conducting pioneering research on the effect that keeping secrets has on personality and health. One of her more ironic achievements was being the opening-day speaker at this fall’s University of Notre Dame “Saturday Scholar” series before home football games.
Last weekend Kelly discussed personal secrecy in everyday life while the fleeting Fighting Irish coach O’Leary was preparing the defensive line of the Minnesota Vikings, who played the Bears last Sunday in Champaign.
“A secret is any bit of information you work to hide from someone else,” said Kelly, talking to an audience of about 50 people, including one fan with a towel draped over his neck and binoculars poised at his side for his football spectating.
Kelly made an important distinction about what’s secret and what’s private. Knowing the difference can positively affect both your health and relationships.
“When you are making a decision to reveal a secret, consider whether it really is a secret,” Kelly said. “The first question is whether the person you plan to tell expects access to the information. If your answer is no, it’s private and you don’t have to reveal it.”
An easy example: Your personal hygiene habits are private. Most people, even mates, don’t expect to know them–and likely don’t want to know.
The cost of unburdening
A more difficult example: Kelly has an acquaintance who was counseled by a psychotherapist to “unburden” herself by telling her fiance she underwent an abortion eight years earlier.
The would-be husband, a devout Catholic, seemed accepting at first but then couldn’t shake the thought that his future wife was “a murderer.” He subsequently broke off the engagement.
The acquaintance, who didn’t go into psychotherapy sessions feeling great heaviness about the abortion, was clinically depressed for months and taking sedatives. Private or secret?
Kelly said either choice can be right. Her take is that the acquaintance was not physically or emotionally troubled about the abortion before the revelation.
The woman didn’t start out feeling she was hiding information. That translated to a private matter and not a secret.
One reason to keep a matter private is the welfare of the confidant. Laboratory tests have shown that as a person reveals a traumatic event, his or her skin conductance (a measure of body agitation) decreases while the listener’s increases.
The revealer becomes more relaxed, the listener more uptight.
No direct evidence
Surprisingly, Kelly said, though secret keepers do tend to be sicker, there is “no direct evidence that keeping secrets is what makes them sick.”
Instead, the phenomenon might be better explained by Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan’s research showing that people who are shy and withdrawn are more prone to physical vulnerabilities.
Two of every 10 Caucasian babies are estimated to be born with this “inhibited temperamental type,” Kelly said. They tend to keep more secrets throughout their lives. More studies are ongoing.
Secrecy’s impact on health has been studied intensely for about 15 years. One area of study suggests that “high-scale self-concealers” are lonelier, more depressed, anxious and shy and visit doctors more frequently than people who are more open about their lives.
The top three categories of personal secrecy are sexual, mental health and failure (especially job performance).
Right about now, Brad Blanton would be bristling. He is a Washington, D.C.-based psychotherapist and founder of “Radical Honesty” workshops and books (check out www.radicalhonesty.com).
Blanton contends that our world would improve individually and collectively with one commitment: We tell the truth all the time.
He is determined to be honest, no matter if he offends anyone.
“We are all terrible liars,” he said. “We are always telling some kind of story, building a case for ourselves and trying to put on a best face.”
A hard sell
Blanton admitted “honesty is a hard sell.” He intends to publish a book next spring chronicling 100 success stories of honest people. One is an Arizona building contractor who started telling people exactly how much his materials cost (right down to, say, $19 for a box of nails) and how much he planned to charge ($30).
Colleagues considered the contractor misguided, but customers were refreshed by the candor. Business boomed and the man is a self-made millionaire.
Blanton has worked with several couples in marital counseling who separated or divorced despite his Radical Honesty approach.
Funny thing was, those couples started the process of being more truthful with each other in Blanton’s sessions, then continued the pattern while living apart by still communicating about raising their children. More than one couple fell deeply in love with each other all over again, sometimes moving back in together.
Blanton said anecdotal evidence indicates that people with notable stress disorders such as ulcers, insomnia and spastic colitis lie more often than healthier individuals.
But he added that “normal people are generally unhappy from lying, withholding, hiding, avoiding and evading.” He said most of us are not revealing enough about our emotions.
“A recent study by the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] shows 53 percent of Americans who die before age 65 are from causes related to lifestyle,” Blanton said.
“They die from such factors as lack of exercise, smoking and drinking alcohol excessively. I contend those lifestyle factors are directly related to suffering caused by people living in their own minds.
“Overindulgence is a way to avoid truth and reality. When people overdo it with alcohol, smoking and food, they cut themselves off from the love and nurturing of everyday life.”
Be wise about telling
For her part, Kelly is equally inclined to focus on what is private and who the confidants are who are hearing personal secrets. She doesn’t endorse lying but encourages us to be wise about when and to whom we reveal our secrets.
“We do have direct evidence that what we tell others affects how we see ourselves,” Kelly said. “How we think others see us is close to how we see ourselves, even if that is not what people are actually seeing.”
Kelly said the ideal confidant is discreet, non-judgmental and non-rejecting.
If you plan to tell a secret to someone not possessing those three qualities, reconsider before it becomes hazardous to your health, love life, job status, community standing or all of the above.
The secret might be better left unsaid until you find the right confidant, especially one who can provide insights to your personal dilemma. Or some studies show that writing about the secret is good for your health even if no one ever reads it (keep that diary locked).
Honest and protective
“We can be honest in our relationships while still appropriately protecting our reputations,” Kelly said. “It comes naturally to us.”
While grills were billowing smoke at nearby tailgating parties on Notre Dame’s campus, Kelly was explaining her early days of studying secrecy and human behavior–and why it is a health topic relevant to all of us.
“When I first started developing lab experiments, I thought to myself, `I’m really going to have to work at recruiting subjects with burning secrets,'” Kelly said, smiling a bit.
“But among hundreds of individuals in my lab, only two people over the years have said they could not come up with anything. Everybody else had a secret to tell.”
He vs. she on honesty
Lying is the sister of secret-keeping. Or would that be brother?
One European researcher, social psychologist Peter Stiegnitz of the University of Budapest, has found that men lie about 20 percent more often than women. Other European research–we’ll assume gender gaps aren’t wildly different on either side of the ocean–indicates that women lie more in their personal lives, usually to protect children’s or friends’ feelings, while men are more dishonest about their careers.
What not to say
Sometimes when we reveal a deep secret, we are left wanting for more support.
One survey showed that 80 percent of secret tellers characterized feedback as unhelpful. Especially not appreciated is “Look on the bright side.” What most benefits a secret-teller’s health is new insight, not the act of venting.
Assessing the pros and cons of telling
University of Notre Dame psychologist and personal secrecy researcher Anita Kelly has joked that she is “a blabber who wants to help other people blab less.” What she means is that people should make wise decisions about when and to whom they reveal secrets.
She has developed a four-question model for determining when it is appropriate to confide a secret in a relationship, including marriage or friendship:
1. Is the hidden information secret or private?
It’s secret if the relationship partner expects access to the information; otherwise, it’s private and you can keep the info to yourself.
2. Is your partner a good confidant?
If he/she is discreet, non-judgmental and non-rejecting, the answer is yes and you can reveal the secret; if no, then you must consider the next two questions before proceeding.
3. Is your partner likely to discover the secret?
If yes, it’s better that the secret be revealed by you, more “in themes than details,” Kelly said.
4. Is the secret troubling you, such as becoming intrusive in your thoughts or causing physical symptoms of anxiety, depression, ulcers, headaches or back pain?
If yes, reveal the secret or write it down or end the relationship; if no, don’t confide.
