The hidden cost of keeping secrets | Mel Robbins #Shorts

I want to read to you from your book, Revealing. This is page 85. Research speaks to wide-ranging tolls of concealment. For example, the more frequently people think about their secrets, the more likely they are to experience feelings of inauthenticity, lower relationship satisfaction, and even worse physical health outcomes.

So let's talk about the cost of secrets. Yes. When we keep secrets, we tend to ruminate about them, and that decreases mental focus. It, it literally lowers your IQ on tests when you're holding secrets. It also is associated with decreased well-being. Like, people who hold secrets, they have lower objective measures of physical health. I think the main issue with secrets is we think they're inert, we think they're neutral, but they really, really sneak up on us in occupying our psyche. They represent kind of an unresolved loop in your mind, because if you have a secret, you're constantly monitoring, "Should I say? Should I not?" And it's like you're kind of perpetually ruminating over this disclosure decision, essentially. I'm not saying we should reveal all our secrets. Some secrets are important to be kept. Being private, having boundaries is one thing, and the difference there is that you've made a decision that this is my boundary. With a secret, it's unresolved. I think a lot of the case with secrets, most all the time, it's not a question of whether to reveal, but it's a question of how, to whom, and when. Because even if it's just you writing in a journal that secret, that is gonna make you, that is gonna help you feel better about it. It's gonna remove this rumination. It'll resolve it in certain ways, 'cause there's actually really interesting processes that go on in the brain when you reveal to yourself on paper or out loud. So somehow it's gotta be revealed.