New Research: The Surprising Psychology Behind the Secrets Everyone Keeps & What Your Secrets Say About You
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I am so glad you tuned in today because I am on the edge of my seat right now because of the conversation we're going to have. I have been talking about this topic with my friends and my family for a long time, but I wanted to wait until I found the perfect expert before you and I reached this subject. So prepare yourself, because right now you and I are going to discuss something that we've never spoken about, the topic, secrets, why you keep on, and how the secrets that you hold are directly impacting yourself a steam, your relationships, your health, and either holding you back from living the life you deserve.

My mission today is simple. I want to help you free yourself of the burden of Carrying your secrets and your family secret. Doctor Michael slepian is a best selling author, psychologist and and associate professor of leadership and ethics S A colombia business school and a visiting scholar at stanford, according to doctor sleep ions ten year research study.

You probably have thirteen secrets. No, not probably. You do five of which you've never told anyone, and you're not alone. We all have secrets. In fact, I asked five million of my instagram followers to share their secrets.

And boyle, boy they shared, did just wait until you hear what fellow listeners of this podcast are struggling with in secret. And that's why I wanted to talk about IT, because keeping the secret is the easy part. The hard part is forcing yourself to live with IT.

Let's change that. Please help me welcome doctor Michael. Slip on to the male Robin spot cast. Thanks for having me. Of course, I am so excited about this. You are inspired to write your book, the secret life of secrets, because of a secret in your own life. Tell us that story.

yeah. So this start takes place ten years ago and was presenting this new reserve on secrecy as part of a job because you at columbia and after a sort of a tough day of having meeting, after meeting after meeting, having dinner with the people who become my future colleagues and drinks and all the way late until the night around midnight, and I get a call for my dad and and like that, so wear, um he wlink Normally call me at this hour, but I was actually just still having my drinks with these forever with and then he all again. H something that has happened this, but they must be like a death in the family or something and so I call him back and he says, Michelle, to tell you something. Um maybe you could sit down .

for this OK.

O, I am calling to tell you that i'm not biologically able to have children. He was calling to tell me that he was not my biological father, and this was a secret that they had been keeping from me and my Younger brother, and then surprised he's actually my half brother born from a different day 呢。 And they told me this was a secret they planned on ever telling us, ever.

And that was, of course, shopping in IT wasn't the truth. That was sort of shifting the ground of the math. Y IT wasn't learning that fact.

I quickly thought, this is okay. I'm okay with this. Um this is the reality and and you know, this doesn't change anything between us.

But why are you telling me this? And why now? And why didn't you tell me singing there? That was the secrecy that was harder to understand.

What was his answer for why then?

So essentially what had happened was a couple days before my brother found out ah my mom started to tell I have a story about being an argument with our grandfather, her father and my brother was like that so we had i've never heard of you ever having an argument with your dad ever like what were you arguing about and you said, no, I can tell you is that guy it's it's related to a secret that I promised your father I would never tell you, which you can imagine as a great way to to make the other person insist that you reveal the secret, which is what happened and they wanted to not tell me before my interview in kids that would be distracting and they were very correct to do so. Could my dad have wait told the next morning? Yeah, but he know, he told me that night when the interview was .

ever do they know that you were studying secrets?

Yes, yes, they did. My mom would later tell me, one of the regions he thinks he essentially left at slip when talking to my brother is he was really ready to rebuild the secret. Mean, I was not part of the plan. There were multiple people who had a packed ever tell us essentially. And my mom was ready to to essentially break that and and you'll say the reason he started becoming ready to reveal the secret is because he was reading about my research and realizing, like obaa secret that are not good, afraid to you. I have to tell me.

how does that make you feel knowing that your research on secrets LED to this happening in your family?

If I can find the word for IT, but know it's gratifying and just so sort of art and strange, you know, the this sort of story begins one of first that I think my, at first starting this research on secret sea, and I learned in this big nager secret.

Then ten years later, writing this book about the past ten years of research I been doing, and i'm interviewing my parents for this book, and then I went, found out that the reason that I that secure the first place my be research is just it's, i'm glad to know I and i'm glad that that is a secret. They don't have to keep any longer. I I think they could have told me sooner. And I I certainly I didn't falt them for not doing so. But IT, it's going to be able to talk about that.

Well, I think you've done everybody in your family this extraordinary service. You've given everybody a gift because after really digg into your research, one thing that i've concluded is that secrets are like birds trapped in cages, and they want to be free, and that's why they torture us so much. And and why did you want to look at secrets in the beginning? I mean, you can feel like this is the universe, or god, or some sort of cosmic intervention for why you started setting secrets to begin with.

So when I first started setting secrets, y studding was this idea that people talk about secrets as if they have physical way. Uh, people talk about being weight down by a secret as if they were Carrying a way on their backs when a secret is time to their mind. And we ve saw an evidence that people are thinking about a secret that they have to roll around them some more chAllenging to interact with.

And so this sense of burden, you can really feel that in a way that that can be hard to articulate. But to try to measure that, we essentially ask people to make judgments that we know actually vary by being physically and compared. And so if you're tired out of shapes, Carrying a bunch of grocery bags, you'll judge a hill at steeper because IT IT truly is now going to be harder to scale that hill of here.

If you compromise in some way, if you really sources are compromise in some way. And we essentially found the same thing. When people are thinking about their secrets, they asked them to think about a significant secret.

And one day they were doing so, they just judge the world around them. Mm, more chAllenging to interact with. Hills appear to be deeper.

Distances appeared to be farther, as if that the secret was burdening them to the point where they felt like they had less ability of resources to tackle whatever lies ahead of them. Here, actually held back by a secret. And when I started presenting that research to people, some people thought of this is very interesting.

And that's when I realized we don't know anything about secrecy. And sorry, then I got serious without setting secret of what secrets to people keep, how many what does that look like when a secret comes to mind? And IT IT was something different than than what the sort of prior assumptions suggested from before.

We're all on the edge diversities. What kind of secrets based on your research are the top secrets of people keep?

So that was one of the first things to to look into this idea. You know, if we want to earn anything about secret acy, we should look at people's real life experiences. We should study people's real secrets because settings sort of made up secrets in the laboratory.

He just might not tell us anything about about real world secure. Cy, and so we asked a couple dollars people, what's the secret you're keeping right now? And so from the couple thousand people who told us about our secrets, we develop this list of thirty cagr ies of secrets s.

And we know this list turns out to be real comprehensive, because now we've given this list of secrets to fifty thousand people. And on average, the person will, at any one minute, have thirteen secrets from that list of thirty eight. Uh, we see ninety seven percent of people. People say they have at least one of those secrets right now when we have got someone up and then do, what's the secret keeping ninety two person of the time that fits one of the on the list. So we can on a single page paper, we can really cover well the universal secrets that people keep in and what they are.

Can you give us the top ten big categories?

The most common secret is having told a significant line. You can also not like to keep a secret. Someone can ask you something. You can onest ly say, oh, I don't want talk about that.

And then a lie itself can be a secret, uh, because of some significant untruth, we've told us, and we don't want that to be learned by other, the people after that number one line number is romantic desire, finances, sexual behavior, a one really interesting one that we call extra relational thoughts. You're in some kind of romantic relationship with one person and you're having some kind of romantic thought about another person that something people don't talk about. Family secrets are very common secret ambitions um discontent with your social life or physical discount ent the scopes on an mental health violations of trust and set on well .

what's interesting as we put out a call for people's secrets to nearly five million followers on instagram, and i'll tell you what first of all you'll showed up and uh pour your secrets into me and we're going to reveal some of them throughout this interview and kind of unpack your research with these real life secrets of people have right now that are fans of the show.

But I will confirm that every single one and we received hundreds and hundreds and hundreds within within hours, we had thirty six pages of them printed out um that they all fall within your top list of thirty eight which will link to in the show notes. And I think is very interesting that everyone, yes, you listening has an average of thirteen. And maybe that's why we should start with a definition. What is a secret?

I do find secrecy is the intent to withhold information tion from one of more people. There are plenty of secrets, but you may keep they just never have to actually conceal on conversation. They just don't come up in conversation.

And people don't go around asking you, have you ever cheered on your part for you ever abused as a child? You know, help you have an ivories. And these are topics we typically encounter.

And so there might be a bunch of secrets that you don't have to actively work to keep. For most of our secrets, we can think about them quite a lot, but we don't have to hide them very often. And so we don't want to define secure cy as an action because that's a really small slice of the world experience of secrecy.

Y we only sometimes hide our secrets uh, in conversation, and most importantly, our secret to exist before the conversations. And our secrets exists out of those conversations. They don't just disappear um after you've successfully hit IT, right.

Um and so the moment you can intend to hold information back from from someone, that's the moment you have as a secret. Imagine someone is traveling for work and they cheated on their partner. You've never done that before.

They'll never do IT again. But that moment they decide like can tell this to my partner will destroy our relationship. That's the moment they have a secret even before they have the right opportunity set to hide got IT.

So a more benign example might be you're supposed to be doing something at work and you're actually out running errands and your boss calls and you step somewhere where they can hear the announcer at target and you conceal the fact that you're not anywhere near your desk. That is another example of a secret. Do you have to feel bad? No.

it's just the intent to .

not disclose something exactly.

So now a little confused .

because our secrets, good or the bad. I mean, IT seems like you're saying sometimes keeping a secret is a good thing. Hold your answer, Michael.

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Welcome back, I ml Robins. And i'm talking to Michael slepian. He's the world's leading expert on secrets. And he's just about to tell us, are all secrets bad? Are there any good secrets, Michael?

Yes, there are some good secrets. Keeping a secret can protect your relationship and and I can feel good or or be good, but I can also be given some, at the same time, sometimes people who keep secrets about good things but that as much rather formal secret sey. It's certainly ens all the time, but it's sort the clipsed by all the negative secrets we keep.

right? IT doesn't bother you to keep the fact that you're planning a surprise birthday day party for somebody, but IT does eat away with you that you got caught at target shopping when you should have been working or some of the bigger ones that will get into? Is keeping a secret something that is innate in all human beings? Or is there something that we learn to do expose?

Uh, there is some evidence to suggest that you were not the only beings on the planet who who keeps secrets with some really fascinating studies on on champagne. And they seem able to keep secrets to and tolerance start to keep secrets as soon as they figure out how to, as soon ously understand that the things that are inside their head are not necessarily in another person said, must tell them um they start understanding that people have these mental words that are unknown until discovered or unknown until shared IT and as soon as they figure that out, they realized, oh, maybe I can not can trouble for the spill if if I can hide this um and so IT seems to be a pretty tough, strong way of interacting with people around us.

So let's talk about the hardest part of keeping the secret.

So IT turns out that was hard about having a secret is not that we have to hide IT that we have to live with that along and so of. For my family, secret IT wasn't a secret that they had to hide very often IT wasn't something that they had to frequently pulled back from us and conversation.

That doesn't mean the secret didn't exist ah, because sometimes they would think about the secret you know they might think about the secret after that conversation IT makes sort of linger and their thoughts and that turns out to be where the arms are. You hide IT when necessary. And so when those moments come, even if they feel awkward, your you're pretty prepared for this moments.

It's something you can do with with relative success in and ease. But you have all the time in the world to work like back on this secret and wonder what they are making the right choice. And then may be you start doubting yourself or maybe you start feeling bad for keeping the secret. T these are things you don't have the time or band lift to think about in the moment when you're holding in a back in time. And but at all the other moment in my mind can go to these places that that are harmful or that make the secrecy difficult.

You know what I what I find so fascinating is that you're basically saying that concealing it's the easy part. Living with IT is the really damaging part. And when I think about secrets that I had in my past, for example, the weight of that was crushing, hiding the fact.

And I am thinking specifically about cheating on boyfriends when I was in my twice, and holding the secret, managing the information, feeling like an ask hole. I still, to this day, regret and think about the things that I did when I was very self destructive when I was Younger, that I kept secret for a long time, and how liberating IT is to be able to talk about these things. You're so focused on the other people in your life and how they will judge you or react that I think we tip the scales toward protecting other people.

And we don't realize and this is what your research bears. We don't realize how profoundly secrets negatively impact you. Have you discovered in your research if there's a physical, mental, emotional cost to this?

yes. So so we can see in the research that there are so many reasons why IT just having to live with the secret and your thoughts can be harmful. You know there's something really big going on under something that step setting or a some you you're working through and you're choosing to to be entirely alone with IT.

You're just not going to develop the healthiest way of thinking about IT. You know healthy perspectives does does come from chatting about these things with other people. Getting other people's perspectives can kind of curr by over negative view of things.

And only negative views don't get tempered when when we just hold back from everyone. And then you might feel feel like some shame when a secret comes to mind. You might feel really isolated with a secret, might feel really an authentic for keeping IT. You might feel at a loss for what to do and what do you do with this feeling. So you just have to revisit the every time the secret place to mind and the future, not gna find a way following .

why it's very clear in the listening to the way that you described this, that the secrets that you keep keep you disconnected from yourself. Because by shutting IT down, managing information, feeling the shame and isolation and uncertainty that comes with holding the secret solo, that you are eroding this trust with yourself to just own your life experience. And in preparing for this show today, I did a little research of my own.

I asked the five million people that follow me on instagram to share their secrets, and I was floored by the burden that people are Carrying. I'm gonna read them. And as I read them to you, I want you to just feel the weight of what IT must be like to live with this.

I struggle with compulsion, whether its finances, shopping, purchases, benching. I'm desperately unhappy in my marriage, but i'm too scared to make the break. My husband and I are struggling financially.

I've never been satisfied in the bedroom with my partner, and I love them anyway. I've fAllen in love with somebody that isn't my husband. Nothing has happened, but still, I feel so ashamed i'm keeping a secret from my partner that I took out a high interest loan.

I had an affair with an employee, and IT gave me so much anxiety. In the end, I had to move. I didn't graduate from high school. Everyone I know thinks i'm thriving post divorce, and i'm more off than i've ever been. What are your thoughts about this?

Yeah so you know they all jumped out at me and sort of their individual ways you know when I think about the the relationship ones which is a huge theme um that will see in the secrets that people keep you know think about the person who is not thriving after their divorce in and they're just holding that information and back. That's someone who really, really would benefit IT from other is help. And it's not because we're helpless.

It's because other people just helps so much to offer you know someone can just hear you out. Someone can just listen to you who someone can just follow big your experience like that's i'm so sorry you're going through that just um you know sympathy among thy uh the center of little ourselves that we get from talking about these things are really helpful. It's just really hard to struggle with something alone and bringing the people onto the conversation can help so much.

The person who said that there in love with someone else, that someone who's not their husband, they haven't you know done any wrong actions. You know, this is not a common team. We see you where people will feel, I thought they've had or feeling they have is a secret that they hold, even though they haven't done anything wrong IT IT just goes to show you do how radius secret can be. And we're just talking about a collection of thoughts, are collection of feelings, not even in action.

The other one that popped out at me is I didn't graduate from high school. And the reason why that struck me is that if you keep that a secret, IT means you feel ashamed. And the secret keeping makes the fact that you didn't graduate from high school somehow a problem.

You know, like you think there's something wrong with IT. And so keeping IT a secret makes IT an even bigger issue in your life when most people, if you tell them that won't give a shit, and we will probably acknowledge you for how you're successful. And you know, you've done a great job without IT and see IT as something that is a thing to be proud of.

These things can seem so much a bigger at love, so much larger, and our heads, and we putting them out in the world is never as bad as we think it's going to be. I was that are pretty with a friend, and all of seven, he just said, I have a secret to tell you.

Okay, Michael, I wanted know what the secret was, but i've got to take a quick breaks so we can hear word from our sponsors when we come back. We're going to go to this point in the story and you're going to have to share that secret with us, to everyone, stay with us. This episode is brought to by miral with a dedicated moral adviser.

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Welcome back. I'm with Michael slippin who wrote the book called the secret life of secrets. He's the world's leading expert on the psychology of secrets, and he's about to tell us the secret that his friend felt SHE couldn't keep from him anymore.

He knew him for years. This was waiting on her. So when SHE leaned in and whispered the secret he had been keeping from you for years.

what was that? I didn't do .

well in colors. What that's IT I was like.

What made you think to share that? He just just like I realized I know that I have to keep and SHE was right, of course, learning that my really good friends didn't have good grades in college. It's like, okay, that's totally find IT.

That doesn't change our relationship. When we learning new things about other people, they're just drops in the bud of all our experiences with them and are our histories with them and learning something new, even something surprising, even something difficult? If not, could you just change everything about your relationship?

So you said it's never as bad as you think when you tell a secret IT might be a little uncomfortable or absolutely awful the moment IT comes out your mouth. But just in your example alone, you adjust that pretty quickly to what the truth is. IT was the fact that IT was withheld from you for so long that truly upset you and bothered you.

And I think we've all had experiences like that where somebody confesses something, you pissed off, your disappointed whatever, and then you forgive them and you afford, but you're kind of upset that they didn't come to sooner. But knowing that intellectually doesn't help us actually confess our secrets, which i'm kind of gathering. Telling somebody is one of the best ways you can start to relieve this burden.

I want to talk a little bit about secrecy versus privacy. So what is the line between. Having a secret versus this is information about me that I just would like to keep private.

So not everything that people don't know about us is a secret, right? There are certain things people do not know about us because because it's never come up in conversation. And you know there is a subset of those things that we consider private because it's just something we never talk them.

And for the example, maybe you don't talk about your sex life with your friends, maybe you don't talk about your sex life with your family, for example. Uh, and these are things that are not secrets that may not be secret that you have a sex life. But if it's just the kind of thing people don't talk about is the kind of thing you don't talk about. Um you know that might be considered something private but not secret if you have a specific, for example, sexual experience that you would not want people to know about and something you would intentionally wait with hold if I was every relevant to a conversation. Now we're talking about a secret.

It's interesting because I feel like the word secret feels like i've done something bad and the word private feels like i'm just not for king telling you like that's private information I am control. But there is a huge difference between shame and guilt. And I personally believe that the area that is most important for everyone to pay attention to when IT relates to research is how secrets create shame and shame being.

Not that the thing that I did the cheating was bad, it's that i'm a despicable person for doing IT the fact that I didn't graduate from high school as bad. No, no, no. It's i'm a stupid in basso and there's something wrong with me, the shame and the weight where you indite yourself. And that's why I wanted to talk to because I don't think anything is realized how damaging IT is to keep a secret because you are piling shame on yourself, because you are judging yourself when you don't feel free to disclose certain things, because you feel ashamed of yourself for having the secret, what is your research bear .

out so that that's exactly right? You know, we all make mistakes, every human and makes mistakes. And that's okay, right in the face of these mistakes, or admissions of girl, or, you know, things we feel that are wrong, rather, you know, mister is league can say, oh, i'm a terrible person and that's what we call shame.

And what's really, really not like about that way of thinking about the issue at hand is it's really hard to find a way to change that you if you feel like you're a bad person, you'd like, well, I guess there's nothing I do about that. It's not good. But if instead of thinking about how this reflects on you, if we think about how reflects on your behavior, how reflects on your actions, you could say, i've done something bad.

And i've done something bad is a much healthier way of thinking about the problem, then i'm a bad person. And when you think I ve done something bad, that's not shame, that s guilt. And guilt is good in this context because if you're saying, okay, i've done something bad, that means you could do something differently next time.

Your past doesn't dictate your future. When we feel guilty, we feel motivated to to do Better. And it's hard to get to that point when we're hopefully focused on how bad we've feel about ourselves, when we feel ashamed.

I went to highlight what you just said. I take my imaginary yellow highlighter because I want to make sure you're listening to us right now that you really got something, because I think Michael just handed us a script from ten years of his research that you can borrow. I want you to start to think you are a good person who did a bad thing that does not make you a bad person and when you go to confess to somebody or you go to talk to somebody about IT because you realize you are a good person and you have learned from that thing that you did and you no longer are gona Carry the burden of the secret that you're a good person that did a bad thing.

And part of taking responsibility for IT is being able to talk about IT and what you learn for IT, and to separate what you did from who you are a person because, you know, i've just confess to everybody that know the thing that I regret the most is being a cheater in college and in moscow. And I hate that about myself. And yet, at the same time, I know I was just a good person that was really struggling.

I was a good person with crushing anxiety. I was a good person that felt really lost. I was a good person that was coping in very self destructive ways.

And when I can look at myself that way, I don't have to hold the secret because i'm not saying i'm a shady person. Therefore, I have to hide this thing because i'm afraid of what people are gona think about me. I have to prioritize Michael, what I think about myself.

And so steal this for Michael research everybody. You're a good person and the thing that you're holding onto as a secret is a bad thing that you did that you're going to learn from and you're going to move on from. We have a lot of parents and also Young adults that listen to this. How does the ways in which we grew up impact how we deal as secret t as adults, Michael?

So children seriously start there and have to keep secrets. We'll try to do so not of is successfully and when we're talking about three years are not very sophisticated secret keeper, but they will try ah they'll say like I didn't I don't have any cooking spite cookie crimes on the left, for example. Um and so it's a natural place for kids to be at that stage to use secrecy y as a way of getting out of trouble.

Um but that's not a problem. Um that's that's that's Normal, right? And where the problems begin is if children or you know, teenagers, Young teenagers, are ashamed about something, or if you like, they're struggling with something, maybe they're being bully.

You know, something like this, something that that needs to be addressed in some way. And if they're keeping those kinds of secrets. Now we're talking about the kind of harmful to secrets that we see in adults. And so what we want to do as parents is making feel comfortable bringing something difficult to talk about to you. They know they're told their parents that are going to get in more trouble.

And so they might think what I will just not tell them and said, the chAllenge for parents is how can you open that door for confession? And how can you do keep IT open? How can you sort of a express the disappointment that is sort of natural to do so without sort of making IT harder for them? You know, how can you make them feel .

comfortable coming .

to you with trouble?

Can we are really why you be the parent and i'm the kid because I am serious like we need scripts because I would love to have you coaches and give us scripts on let's just start with the parent child situation. You're a reading in bed. I've gone to a party.

Am a junior high school dad. I'm in trouble. Uh, i'm at this party.

I was drinking. The police showed up. Um I am sorry, I don't know what to do. What should the parents say, Michael?

Yeah you know, the parents should say, lake, i'm cared to help you essentially. You know, let me talk you through this. Let me walk you through this. This is something that we can get through together, uh, that this is going to be OK and and yes, i'm upset that you were in out with me, but I understand how you got here. I'm glad you have bringing this to make us we can work on this together.

I clearly just felt my shoulders s drop. I love you, dad. Now that was great and but when the kid comes home, I think we make the mistake or then we grow.

Yeah when you're really frustrated with with your child, they're really annoying that really angry. You probably need to communicate that. But what you want to try to avoid is like a an angry output um because you're modeling coping behaviors that your children will pick up on and in a fail in that when I listened to you, you just lash out at me there to learn maybe that's not something I should do uh maybe next time i'm been this situation, I should just keep IT in myself. And that's when the arms of secrecy y start.

Well, two things that have made a difference, or at least I think they have, is that I ve always thought to myself, if my kids in trouble, I don't want their first thought to be a fuck. My mom is gonna tell me, I want their first thought to be, I have to call, my mom is going to help. And I try not to express the disappointment in that moment, because I know that we will be talking about the incident for weeks, months, maybe years to come.

I want to keep on packing this because I think a lot of us has been in a situation where somebody that we know is keeping a secret from us, and we kind of get IT. And so I would love tools from you in how to approach these. And so let's take a scenario where you've got friends that are constantly getting together and they're not inviting you and they're sort of sly about IT. They've planned a trip and you sort a pick up on IT. What is the best way to bridge with somebody that you know that they are keeping something from you without coming across like some psystar kish, you know, insecure freak?

There are no situation we want to say like, hey, you know, I know these kinds of things can be difficult to talk about, but I am open to talking about them because of in this case, I I think that would might be Better than secret keeping secrets are counts to help each other um they don't have to be this thing that separate us and and makes us sort of turn in word .

I love that that you can use IT as a way to actually be closer with somebody. I know you guys are playing in trip, but totally fine. But in i'd love to talk about the fact that you feel they need to keep a secret.

What about in a relationship you think that somebody y's cheating on you and you have your suspicions and you don't even really have events? Or maybe you do. You've seen a text message or something. Typically, what happens in these situations is you're emotionally triggered and you accuse. And then there is the defense and the stand off, how do you even approach this topic, knowing that somebody, he's likely gonna de you, but to truly invite the discussion to open the door?

So I really like this question because it's it's hard, really tough.

But well, let let's take our example, Michael. So let me just read to this woman. SHE says I found in love with someone that isn't my husband.

Nothing has happened, but I still feel so ashamed. Let's say that this persons spouse just has a suspicion. How does the person spouse open up this dialogue in that .

situation? I was was talking about the most common secrets. Number five is what we call extraordinary thoughts day, which I mean, having romantic thought about someone who's not your romantic partner.

or an emotional affair .

or an emotional affair, but among the secret of people will keep. It's the one people talk least about. Maybe you you feel like, okay, I think my partner is like really close to the other person or seems sort to be available to me.

IT can be something that we can work through together. IT can be something we can talk about. This is something we can figure out what that means. Maybe we need to do some work together. Maybe we have some work to do on our end.

but why I think that's what you kind of say yourself, to coach yourself up, to get the nerve to actually breached the topic. And IT is profoundly Normal to be attracted other people, but your partner finding somebody else attractive or leaning on somebody else emotionally is kind of how human beings Operate. And so if you can understand that, I might not kill your relationship, but it's something that you have to talk about.

It's the secrecy of IT that really will pull your relationship apart. How would you prove that? Like, what's the first sentence that you say to try to get somebody to open up about a secret?

The first sentence is not an accusation, because that's what might lead to defensive responses. You just want to say, I want you to feel comfortable, bring something to me, and I hope that I can do that with you.

And if you feel like there's something we need to talk about or there's something about our our relationship tests, not as good as they can be, I want you to know that something I want to talk about and something I want want to work through relationship issues is is really high in the list of the things people don't want to talk about with their partner. It's awwad um or not practice that IT. Now I probably wouldn't mention this other persons and so my god.

I would have taken a totally different approach. You know, having cheated in my past, I literally and the one like, yeah I don't feel does anything need to talk about with you because i'm more comfortable with not doing and so I loved where you were going, where you're like, you look, first of all, I want us to have the kind of relationship where we can talk about, but I I want to work through everything with you and i'm feeling very insecure about how close you are. I was and so yeah.

I I think that that's good. I think that's a good dreaming. What I really like about that is you're still talking about yourself. Yeah, you're not saying I have a problem with what you're doing, but you're saying this is making me feel in the way that I feel like anything to bring .

to you you know, I want na dig into family secrets because I was very struck when we asked our audience to share secrets that they were keeping. How many family secrets people felt obligated to keep? And i'm going to give you a couple examples. And then lets talk about him.

There was a woman that wrote in talking about how SHE know that her uncle was making his kids keep a secret from their mother, that every other weekend when they were growing up, their father would take his two daughters fishing with his other woman, and the daughters have kept IT from the mother forever. I've got another listener who wrote, in male, growing up, I was acceptable for me to sit with my parents and get high. I feel that because of my parents lifestyle, we always had to keep IT a secret.

And so I never let anyone in these patterns Carry over into relationships and end up looking like secrecy. It's just comfortable to me to not let anyone in. And then this one, my mom was sexually abused as a child by her late father, and my living grandmother doesn't know. And that bothers me every time he talks about what a wonderful guy he was.

Family secrets are also in the top ten. Here's this thing that's incredibly difficult to talk about IT. But I will want to, and I want to be able to you. And how can we get there when that comes to children? Me know. I think you want to think very carefully, as a parent, what IT means to be asking your child to keep a secret with you or on your behalf, because IT should set off some alarm bells. I actually .

think it's emotional abuse. I think IT is completely inappropriate for adults to be burdening children with details about their marriage or with secrets that you're supposed to keep, because IT makes you, as a child, start to associate love with loyalty and obedience.

And I get so angry, Michael, when I see parents disclosing issues about their marriage to their children, where they try to triangulate and get kids to go against the next spouse or a current spouse and bar, I just this, this is, you can tell IT IT pisses me off for me personally. I I feel like this is more than be careful, don't fucking do IT because I let's focus on Christian growing up, I have become so overly independent, I never know when to ask for help. I feel that because of my parents lifestyle, we had to keep a secret.

And so now I never let anyone in in these patterns Carry over in the relationships. How does having family secrets, a child impact someone as an adult? What did you see in your ten years of research, Michael?

Do you thinking there in a situation and where there is a lot of fAiling secrets, you start getting the idea as a child, like secrets are how you solve problems. Make sure this person doesn't know about this and and we can all me fewer and of course what we've been talking about, his secrecy, y greate problems, people who have uh habit of keeping secrets as a way of dealing with the stress, as a way of dealing with difficult issues.

These are people who develop a habit of not coming to others for needed help. You don't want children to think lake the way to solve difficult conversations to just never have them. That's going to make things .

worse when you think about how prevalent sexual abuses that one in four women, one in six men, at least based on the research, have experienced that we know how I can become generational and be a big secret inside of families.

And so I think about this listener that wrote in talking about the fact that her grandmother has no idea that her late husband molested their daughter, how does somebody start to deal with a secret of that magnitude? Because I would imagine that you're like, well, should I tell my grandmother? Should I not tell my grandmother?

right? And so I think this is the right question. Should I tell my grandmother? Because I think, why do you want so a person, this person, your secret? Is that just because you just can't be alone with that anymore? Or you just or is IT that you do really feel that they should know IT, but that's the right thing to do is sometimes not clear.

And I think that's a moment when you realize you should be talking to a third party about this. And and so I get some other perspectives because once you tell IT there, there's no going back. So you want to you really cleared to yourself why you are considering telling someone this thing that there's no undo bad and for do they need to know this thing, what they want to know this thing if the reason you want to reveal this, just because you you feel like you really want to talk about IT.

That's like, well, maybe you should first talk about IT with someone else and see where that I take to you and maybe get that other person's perspective on whether you should told your grandmother in this scenario IT turns out that the secrets we think most about are the secrets that harness molest what's much more column n as people feel like it's one dimension that's really hurting them. And so what's useful about knowing there's three ways in which a secret tends to hurt you is noting for yourself, which are these ways don't apply. It's very useful IT.

Turns out people to point to one of those dimensions we like you are not hurting on this dimensions. And that's really useful because that's essentially your life fine movie. You're like the secret is hard.

I can learn with that and I don't know to do with that, but I don't think it's wrong. Um that's helpful. That's huge.

One of the things that i'm a little worried about with this episode is that everybody listening, according to research, has three secrets. Our thirteen secrets, one of which is very active. We've probably stated up inside of them now they're like pissed off at me and feeling uncomfortable and like Michael, you know don't tell me that feeling the shame.

You're right. I should do something. Let's talk about something that you call the coping camps yeah so you have a secret and you're feeling that IT is a huge burden and it's time to relieve yourself of that burden is finding somebody to confide in the first thing you should do.

Yes, if you can find the right person to talk to you, you're you're in a really good place. And there is a lot of people who are the right people to talk to. The idea the coping compass is essentially are trying to point yourself for the resource that's most available to you, kay, in this context that I would say that you have someone you can talk to.

Maybe a really natural person to talk to is the person who told you this secret and say, hi, i'm having a lot of trouble with this. I'd like to talk about IT with you. This person is uniquely available to you to talk about this.

And you know it's easy to forget them, uh, that you have this person who just knows the whole story and you can to talk about IT with them and just understand like where they had IT with this because you're finding at hard and there's a lesson we need to come back to you, which is choose your person carefully. What you want to avoid as much as if you can is putting a burden on someone else, say, achieved on your partner, talking to their best friend. It's not your best option.

It's maybe one of your worst option. You don't want to be just taking the bird of you and placing on them. Someone outside of the situation is is someone to talk to. And so. You could also talk to have a party about IT as well and just say, hey, what would you do in this situation? How can I work through you?

Here's how I think about IT. I love the word coping compass because even just in you're in my conversation, I think that anybody listening to the two of us, you probably have designed that. I would put Michael in the compassionate and Carrying camp, and I would put me in the assertive camp.

And so if your compass is telling you, I gotta talk to somebody and I just need somebody who's gone to listen and be compassionate, you would likely go to Michael if this is eating you alive. And you're like, I gotto talk to somebody and I need a solution here I I A absorbs some courage. You would go to the assertive person he's going to go, are you at your fucking mind, you either need to end this or tell your partner you clearly need to go to therapy.

But this is killing you. And you told me because you knew I would say that to you, but you got two weeks to figure this out or else i'm telling your spouse. So I think that advice, Michael, choose the person that is your coping compass wisely because IT matters. And the second thing that you said that I think is really important is when you're choosing to remember, you may be doing a bad thing, or you may be embarrassed by this thing that you need to work through, but you're not a bad person. The simple fact that you want to tell somebody indicates that you know that you don't deserve to live under the weight of the secret. And so I love the fact that in every situation, finding somebody to talk to, whether IT is a compassionate or it's an assertive friend or a that's the number one thing because what that does, Michael, is IT seems like IT would honor the fact that you deserve to feel Better in your life and that you're ready to relieve yourself of the pain that holding a secret has caused you.

Yeah, that's exactly right. There's essentially two forms of social support and one is what we call emotional support. Um just want someone to hear you out.

Do you want just someone to say like, that sucks, i'm here for you or or do you need to do something? Do you have to take some action? And that's when you're looking for the assert person.

This, the person you know is going to push you to do the thing that you need to do. And you know, you choose your person carefully. And there's a study that I really like.

It's not about secrecy. Y, it's about, you know, the people read these stories about other people on one version of the story as someone's done bad things, the past, another doing good things. And then in the other ways of the historian, people have done good things in the past, and they're doing bad things today. And essentially what the study showed was most people, at the end of the day, believe that most people, deep down.

I believe that with my whole heart, I really do. I love your point, Michael, that when you keep a secret, IT keeps you apart. But when you share a secret, IT actually brings you closer to the people that you love.

And I found these two questions in a new york times essay by Mandy catron that are questions you can ask anyone in order to create a more intimate relationship. And I think these two questions are great tools in any relationship to open up the door, to have deeper conversations and even allow people the opportunity to potentially confess a secret. And so i'm going to ask them to you right now, Michael, and the first one is, what is your biggest regret? Do you want to go first?

Biggest red is, yeah. This this is going to make a cluster. Uh, no, I mean, yes, uh, I mean, let's let's try this out. Um the gist regret you know what other regrets that comes to mind right now because of the secret we were talking about earlier, the secret of learning about being donor can see with, you know one thing I didn't realize until way later is that you know that secret got out. I found IT shocking in hard to grapple with my brother found IT even more difficult um and you know essentially there was the day that both of us knew and I like had a phone call with my mom the next day and I think know I with my dad and my brother came out to visit me in california and we talked about IT a little bit and then be stopped um like like two weeks later kind of like they never happened and nobody was talking about IT more I mean .

he realized .

is that even once of a secret is out we sometimes still don't talk about and not even now we have the opportunity is to do so. And where my regret really comes in is I didn't realize this until years later, when I started my parents with the book that I learned that my grandmother and my dads father played a huge role in in the secret.

And this is something I could have learned if I asked questions about the secret at the time I first learned IT, but I just didn't. I don't know why. I didn't think too until, you know, years and years later, and I worked.

I did because I could have found out solar, why the secret was held in the first place. And that turned out a lot of IT came down to my dada's mother. My grandmother SHE really didn't want me and my Younger brother to know, because he just felt so close to mean my Younger brother.

And we felt so close to to my dada's parents, and especially our grandmother. And IT was just such a special relationship. And SHE didn't want her. SHE didn't want her heard IT. SHE was concerned that we would feel last part of the family if we we knew we weren't biologically were related to our dad in his parents. And I just an, I really wish we could have talked about that because it's exactly the opposite. Learning that I wasn't biologically reverted to know my grandparents I was so close with didn't make those relationships less special, less meaningful IT IT made them more meaningful and and more special. And I just, I really wish I couldn't told her that .

that's be beautiful. I I my biggest regret is definitely cheating on people that I really cared about. And the second question is, what is the hardest st. Memory they have?

Don't think about this. Who also answer, and when IT comes to relationships and in past relationships, I found all my old emails from my next someone who I was with for five years, and and the relationship just ended in a really bad way. And you know you you kind of remember your side with story and I started reading these old emails has just like, oh, god, I I was really the terrible partners at the this relationship.

And you know, all I remember, he was the ways in which my partners at the time was feeling me up the way in which I was feeling her and and that just see IT so clearly on the screen IT was really confronting um to see that I would played a huge part in in that break up as well and that's just not how I remember that some of the things that I was reading about related some problems that i've Carried on to my current relationship. And just if IT was kind of hard to see the other perspective on this problem, the one that wasn't mine, I guess IT doesn't matter anymore but it's IT kind of feels like IT doesn't. It's tough to think about things you've done that in retrospective or .

were wrong, but how beautiful that you now can reflect that there are some similar themes coming up that you can actually actively work on to Better your life in your relationships.

My hardest memory is after often a year of college um had a terrible break up with this guy that I really, really loved and we had at a really, really hard spring because his father had died of suicide and I spiral and um we had big plans for the summer and I just created and his mom drove up from inDiana to pick him up from our house in michigan. And I just remember then leaving, I could barely even look at his mother because I just knew how much pain he was in. I was in, I was in, you know, I think a lot, I was just a kid.

And yet, if I could do IT all over, I would then IT kind of also relates to another huge regret to mine, which is I just wish that I had known how much child hod drama had fucked me up earlier, and that i've gotten into therapy earlier, and how there were so many things that I didn't even realize that I was doing because I didn't have the tools or the knowledge or the skills that I do now. So I look back with a lot of compassion for myself, but oh my god, there's always this like, so not a secret anymore. But boys, there's a weight, your heart.

It's what drives me now like if I can save anybody the headache and the head he that I caused myself another people, because I just didn't know how to do Better, that i'm, i'm, i'm going to do IT. And so I want to thank you, Michael l, because I know that this conversation today, your research, that IT is going to cause a massive rip of change and empower ment through people's lives around the world. So thank you for taking the time to be here today and to be so open.

of course.

Wow, I am so blown away by the depth of this conversation that I already anticipate that IT is stir something up inside of you. And I just feel the need to say something i've never done this before on the podcast, but I want to be that a certain friend.

So if there's something that got start up inside of you and you now are looking for advice and coaching to be able to work through some secret a burden that you've been Carrying alone, I am raising my hand and saying, I will be that a third friend. Go to mell Robin's stock com. Go to the podcast section, you'll find a form there that says, submit topic and fill IT out so that I can help coach you through this secret.

And you might just find yourself anonyme sly on the mill Robin's podcast as I coach you through your secret. Okay, awesome. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted tell you, despite what you're Carrying deep inside you, you're a good person and I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a Better life. All right, after the.

I've been discussing this topic with my friends, and, oh, sees me, I just start a protein. Jack, oh god, wow. IT tastes good, but IT repeats.

Could I have a sip on my water? Jessie, i'm sorry to, how are you or am to get my head phones? Answers here.

You, what if I should take this brace because I making some noise? Yes, to take him off OK, just as I get that jeweller off. Very go.

Okay, I just do the limbo and get back in here. okay? All right, never mind. Never go. You're very intellectual, dude. Okay, excEllent.

Oh, and one more thing I know, this is not a bleepers. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers, right? And what I need to read to you.

This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a license therapies, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional.

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