Shankar Vedantam

What's interesting is that the story echoed what we've heard from several other listeners.

The distress that we feel about our secrets is often wildly disproportionate to the reactions of others, including, you know, our quote-unquote victims.

Why is it that our secrets have this outsized impact on us?

I'm wondering if the fact that Claire kept her secret for so long in some ways amplified it in her mind.

In other words, the longer she kept it, the more she is thinking about it, the more she's ruminating about it, and the bigger it gets in her mind.

But of course, it's not getting bigger in anyone else's mind.

Right, right.

So there are secrets that have to do with what we've done, but there are also secrets that get at who we are.

Here is listener Emma.

So one thing that strikes me about Emma's story, Leslie, is that this is not about something that she did, but about who she is.

Talk about the difference between those two things when it comes to holding secrets.

Hmm.

Sometimes the secrets that we keep are so at odds with the person who we want to be, it can be very difficult to bear.

Here's a message we received from a listener named Dean.

So Leslie, I can really hear the pain in Dean's voice.

He used the word shameful to describe his secret.

And this is a recurring theme that we heard and that you've explored.

And a central reason, I think, that we try and keep things from others, we're worried about how they will judge us if we come clean.

One of the things that I think is interesting about secrets is why we're keeping them.

Are we keeping them in our interest or are we keeping them in the interest of someone else?