A closed and empty mouth beneath an open mind full of secrets

Alexandria Cox
Tuesday, May 10th, 2016
1B Mrs. Livingston

Dear Readers,
For this multi-genre research assignment i decided to focus on secrets. I have chosen this topic because i feel that
this is something that needs to be addressed. I am quite opinionated when comes to secrets. I myself am a secretive person,
and i could never grasp exactly why. In addition i want to tap into the minds of other people and why they would keep
secrets. I believe that there is psychology behind it all. I want to know if people keep secrets solely for themselves or simply
for the sake of other. I think that secrets can ruin and save peoples lives and i would like to find out in what instances
this would be. Often i forget that i am secretive and so i want to get a better understanding of why people would keep them
so i wont be hurt or offended when a friend keeps one. I hope that this research will enlighten me on, and allow be to
become more respective a persons decision to keep a secret.
Sincerely,
Alexandria Cox

Table Of Contents
2.
Preface to the contents of the Research assignment
4.
A short story on keeping secrets
5.
Case study on benefits of sharing your own secrets
6.
Song lyrics
7.
A poem selection
8.
Notes Page
9.
A bibliography of works cited

This is my secret
:
My mother is a compulsive hoarder. For years I didnt tell anyone except my husband. Even my
closest friends knew only vaguely of my mothers issues. Then, a few years ago, a series of crises pushed the toll of
my mothers hoarding beyond my limits. Suddenly I found myself not only responsible for hiding her habit from
the public eye something Id done since childhood, believing I could protect her from judgment but also in
charge of finding a cure for the nasty parasitic mite Id caught while cleaning out her house. The mite had then
inadvertently spread to most of my immediate family. Keeping her hoarding a secret was making it impossible for
me, and now my family, to live comfortably in our own skins.
Desperately searching for someone who might understand, I joined an anonymous online support group for
children of hoarders; it turned out there were a lot of us. And almost all of us were so ashamed of our parents
mental illness that we told practically no one else about it. We wanted to protect our moms and dads, we wanted to
be good daughters and sons, we were ashamed of the squalor of our childhood homes, we were afraid of being
judged. Being part of the group helped me immensely. So much so, that after a while, I began to reconsider my secret.
What was I losing by keeping it? And what could I gain by coming clean?
The answer to both questions was the same: a lot.
Keeping secrets hinders our ability to be truly intimate with friends and mates. Case in point: Whenever I was in a
group of people and the topic turned to childhood, especially mothers, I would feel my face flush and Id try to
change the subject. For fear of people learning about my mothers mental illness (which I also assumed would place
my own perceived mental health in question), I said nothing about her at all. But by keeping parts of my personal
history under such tight rein, I also had to rein in myself. Constantly. This made it impossible for me to ever feel
truly at ease in my friendships, and led to chronic anxiety.
Holding on to a secret costs us physically, as well. Cloaking important facts is stressful. Chronic stress increases
adrenaline and cortisol levels two hormones that cause inflammation and damage the immune system. These are
high prices to pay.
All types of secrets can produce these results: everything from surreptitious eating and hidden debt to telling or
concealing a lie. Even seemingly small pieces of secret unfinished business like unwritten thank-you notes or
unreturned calls can tax your body and emotions in myriad ways. Its only by shining light into these
shame-shadowed nooks and crannies that you can safely avoid their stress-related consequences. And its not that
difficult really once you take that first step.
By: Jessie Sholl

Studies show the personal health benefits of sharing your private hopes and fears with trusted confidantes. But what if you feel alone?

You keep secrets from each other; you keep secrets from yourselves. Secrets bond you; secrets drive you apart.
Keeping a secret can be a burden, or it can delight you. Sharing secrets can be a relief, whether its with your
old friend or new therapist.
For children, learning to keep secrets is a vital developmental milestone. In
one study
, researchers asked kids
who were three, four, and five to play hide-and-seek and to keep a secret about a surprise. Abilities to do the
two tasks correlated strongly with each other, and with the kids social cognition. At three, the kids were
fairly hopeless at these tasks; by five, most of them could keep a secret, and had the cognitive development to
match.
For adults, this is expected behavior. Virtually all adults of normal intellectual and psychological
functioning do keep personal secrets at one time or another, writes
Anita E. Kelly
, a professor of psychology
at the University of Notre Dame, in
The Psychology of Secrets
.
Yet
across ages and cultures
, multiple studies show the personal health benefits of sharing your private hopes
and fears with trusted confidantes and the corresponding detriment of keeping some secrets entirely to
yourself.
Which secrets should you not be entirely alone with? Secrets motivated by shame. The research is clear: shame is
highly correlated with addiction, depression and violence. The first step away from shame can be as close as a
shared secret and the words me too. As Brene Brown (TED Talk:
Listening to shame
) explained so eloquently in
2012, If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and
judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it cant survive.
If no trusted confidante comes to mind, then it may be appropriate to share that shameful secret with
someone new. Just being listened to by a kind and empathetic stranger can sometimes provide relief, says
suicide prevention counselor Kevin Briggs (TED Talk:
The bridge between suicide and life
). And if youre not
yet ready to share your secret out loud, the act of writing it down and turning it into shared art can
sometimes be transformative.

Secrets
by one republic
I need another story
Something to get off my chest
My life gets kinda boring
Need something that I can confess
Til' all my sleeves are stained red
From all the truth that I've said
Come by it honestly I swear
Thought you saw me wink, no
I've been on the brink, so
Tell me what you want to hear
Something that will light those ears
Sick of all the insincere
I'm gonna give all my secrets away
This time, don't need another perfect lie
Don't care if critics ever jump in line
I'm gonna give all my secrets away
My God, amazing how we got this far
It's like we're chasing all those stars
Who's driving shiny big black cars
And everyday I see the news
All the problems that we could solve
And when a situation rises
Just write it into an album
Send it straight to gold
I don't really like my flow, no, so
Tell me what you want to hear
Something that are like those years
Sick of all the insincere
I'm gonna give all my secrets away
This time, don't need another perfect lie
Don't care if critics never jump in line
I'm gonna give all my secrets away
Oh, got no reason, got no shame
Got no family I can't blame
Just don't let me disappear
I'mma tell you everything
6

Secrets

You say you are ready to hear my secrets.

You ask me everyday.
The secrets of my mouth I can do part.
But the secrets of my heart that grow heavier everyday.
cannot be dragged from
their deepening pit.
where I choose
to no longer
shine my
light
-Sx

Notes Page
I wanted to find out what makes a secret worth keeping to yourself, and why some individuals are very secretive. I also
wanted to know why some find it alright to tell someones secret; as well as, when is it not good to keep a secret. Through
my investigation of reading testimonials, stories, and case studies i found out that sometimes its important not to
keep some things to yourself because it could have a negative impact on a person. Some people are worried that they will be
judged by others which is why they became very secretive, even with those that trust most. I have also learned that a
persons secrets are one of the most valuable things a person has and those secrets reflect a persons personality. People feel
vulnerable when they let people in and so they are very conservative in most cases on what they allow people to know
about them. There have been many instances in many peoples lives where someone has found out anothers secrets and has
used it in an advantage over them. secrets have transitioned from being to something that was a symbol of ultimate
and was told to be kept in confidence into being something to hold over someones head to get the upper hand.

Th

Bibliography
"Government."
World Book Discover.
World Book, 2016. Web. 22 April 2016.
Van Der Zande, Irene. "What Kinds of Secrets Are Okay for Children to Keep And What Kinds Are Not?"
Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International
. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 26 April 2016.
Jaffe, Eric. "The Science Behind Secrets."
Association for Psychological Science RSS
. N.p., 06 July 2006. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.
Gross, Jessica. "The Art and Science of Sharing a Secret."
Ideastedcom
. N.p., 09 July 2014. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.
Imber-Black, Ivan. "The Power of Secrets."
Psychology Today
. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 May 2016.
Lickerman, Alex, M.D. "The Danger of Keeping Secrets."
Psychology Today
. N.p., 30 Sept. 2012. Web. 2 May 2016.
Sinex. "Secrets Poems on Hello Poetry."
Hello Poetry
. N.p., 19 Dec. 2014. Web. 4 May 2016.
Sholl, Jessie. "Keeping Secrets."
Experience L!fe
. N.p., Apr. 2011. Web. 6 May 2016.