Shankar Vedantam

She studies the science of secrets and self-disclosure, how much we share of ourselves and the benefits and costs of doing so.

Her book is titled Revealing the Underrated Power of Oversharing.

So Leslie, we talked earlier about how families or even nations of people can carry collective secrets.

And often this happens not through explicit discussion, but via the more subtle norms of a group.

We heard from a listener named Philip.

He grew up in an evangelical Christian community and would spend upwards of 70 hours per week knocking on doors to proselytize.

But then one day when he was in his mid-20s, Philip realized he was actually an agnostic.

Now that was difficult enough, but on top of that, the group I was a part of maintained a very strict set of rules around apostasy, if someone broke with doctrine, and excommunication, if someone broke through rules.

four years and i wound up suffering all the side effects that leslie john alluded to psychologically physiologically socially you name it um but the desire for coming clean so to speak and having that sensation of it simply feels good just built up

It felt really good to be able to express myself honestly without judgment, but because this friend was around my age and female, it also constituted a breach of trust and the emotional commitment with my wife.

Leslie, what strikes me in Philip's story is that he was incentivized to keep his secret by his faith community.

And this is true in a lot of settings, not just religious ones.

Talk about the difficulty of fighting not just our own feelings of shame and remorse about a secret, but going against the norms and expectations of the communities to which we belong.

I mean, I believe his spouse was part of that same faith community.

So in some ways, you know, talking about what was going on in his mind would have been a challenge to the faith community and to her.

Right.

I mean, he talks about this almost burning desire he had to come clean, to get the secret off his chest.

And it's almost like we have these competing forces within us, Leslie, where a house divided when we have a secret, because we have this desire to hide and this desire to reveal.

We also heard from some listeners who argued that it's not necessarily a bad thing to keep your cards close to your chest.

Listener David writes, sometimes we need to recognize that we don't need to know everything about a person to enjoy their company.