Keeping secrets is exhausting. Talking about things is known to be beneficial to your mental health. But in some cases keeping secrets is imperative. Perhaps your substance abuse problem would cause issues at work. Maybe you’re keeping your criminal past a secret in order to get a job you want. Perhaps you’re not honest about your mental illness because it will cause adverse effects in your (social) environment.
Maybe you’re keeping someone else’s secret, in order to protect them or yourself. In some cases you might be living a country or regions where your secret is a taboo, socially unacceptable or even illegal.
Keeping these kinds of secrets can be traumatic.
This article will be updated with further research and sources soon.
Sources
DEVELOPING THE COVERT TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE SCALE (COTES): A RETROSPECTIVE EARLY PSYCHOSOCIAL TRAUMA ASSESSMENT TOOL
Tiffany E. Vastardis PhD, LMHC, CCTP, CMHIMP
Clinical Education Specialist • Florida Residential Clinical Training Liaison • Mental Health Researcher • Licensed Psychotherapist • Clinical Trauma Specialist • Integrative Medicine Practitioner
Household Secret-Keeping
Though controversy exists, concealment, or general secret-keeping, has been
linked to the onset of pathology. This relates to the pervasive nature of stress that one
experiences while concealing information from others. In one clinical study, individuals
who deferred to the concealment of critical information in therapy were determined to be
more vulnerable to the expression of negative mental health symptomology (Kelly,
1998). These findings were further supported when applied to a non-clinical sample of
undergraduates (Kelly & Yip, 2006). More specifically, in investigating of the effects of
household secret keeping, whether in the form of intrafamilial concealment or
concealment of sensitive information from individuals outside of a household unit,
detrimental results were uncovered, namely a tendency to default to maladaptive coping
mechanisms, the onset of eating disorders, and various other forms of pathology (Dalzell,
2000; Imber-Black, 1999).
