Everyone has had one, you may have one now, sitting there in the back of your mind, or on the tip of your tongue waiting to come out. Secrets are all around us. What can bearing secrets do to people and their relationships with others? There can be both negative and positive outcomes.
Choosing secrets for the topic of my research, -being an obvious theme in the readings- seemed both interesting and easy to collect information on. Secrets are common experiences so there are various opinions on this subject, they affect some people in different ways than others. So surely theres a lot of information out there, but what i’m getting to is the feelings and problems that secrets can bring into a relationship or into a persons life, using the information gathered from books, real life experiences, and research to prove points on my theme. As displayed in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, and Freefall by Mindi Scott, secrets can have a negative effect on the relationships between people, but once revealed, there is a sense of relief on the subject.
The bearer of a secret faces many obstacles to feeling inner peace. When someone is holding in a secret they are also holding back from peace, keeping things bottled up inside usually makes people unhappy. It can be mentally exhausting having to repetitively think of this thing thats haunting your mind. There is proof of this in both my readings and my research but the example used is from the play A Doll’s House. When Nora -The main character and wife of torvald- and Krogstad -Torvald’s employee- are talking about her secret, he’s telling her that she must not think of leaving the children or harming herself. When she asks how he could possibly know what she has been feeling, he explains that...
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Ibsen, Henrik. “A Doll’s House.” World Literature: An Anthology of Great Short Stories, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Donna Rosenberg. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companies, inc, 2004.
142-202, Print.
Isay, Jane. The secret that became my life, Psychology Today 2011. web. 2 April. 2014 http://www.pshychologytoday.com/articles/201312/the-secret-became-my-life Lickerman, Alex. The danger of keeping secrets. Psychology Today 2012. Web. 16 April, 2014. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happiness-in-world/201209/the-danger-keeping-secrets Scott, Mindi. Freefall. New York: Simon Pulse. 2010. print
Slepian, Michael, E.J. Masicampo, Negin Toosi, Nalini Ambady. The physical Burdens of secrecy,
American Psychological Association. 2012. Web. 16 April, 2014.
http://ambadylab.stanford.edu/pubs/Slepian-Masicampo-Toosi-Ambady_Physical-Burdens-of-Secrecy_in-press_JEPG.pdf
Plato once said: “Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.” People are taught from a very young age never to lie or keep secrets. It would be easy for anyone to stand behind the argument: “Honesty is the best policy,” but in times of personal anguish, that decree is quickly disdained. What this argument fails to consider is that keeping a secret or lying is the justifiable in times of crisis.
The end product could potentially be worse than the act of betrayal. The person could feel that they cannot trust the person that deceived then, or might feel like they are unable to trust anyone else. They could have mixed feelings about keeping a friendship or being around that person on a daily basis. If it were something that had major consequences or really hurt that person, one would feel anger towards that said person, especially if it were embarrassing in front of a large amount of people or was suppressing one for a long time.
Lying is never the better option to take, as shown in the book, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.When you lie you destroy relationships with the people you love, some of which relationships can never be made whole again and you will have to live life with your
Secrets by their very definition are truths that are not mean to be known by others. As a result of that, if what is being held in is shocking or revealing, it can be destructive. When the truth behind a secret is revealed, it can lead to a break in trust between people, and conflicts that shouldn’t have happened.
This essay will compare the novels Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts and Unwind by Neal Shusterman. As both novels are about survival, we will outline the strategies the characters used to mentally move forward after a setback. The novels Dark Inside and Unwind both portray the idea of hiding their feelings in order to keep moving forward. Risa and Aries both leave someone they have grown to love and must continue feeling as if they broke a promise. Chickadee and Connor abandoned by people they thought they could trust, now having to set aside their anger. Mai and Colin are faced with the deaths of their partners and are now broken inside. The feeling of betraying someone who is oblivious to your actions is exactly what Aries and Risa had to go through.
Self-disclosure: Important aspects psychologists, therapists and counsellors should keep in mind when disclosing personal information.
In the film Secrets and Lies, we are introduce into a family that seems to have quite a few problems that are on the surface and far more that are well hidden to the world as well as those they call family. Instead of pulling together and expressing their feelings and problems they instead decide to draw in on themselves and keep the secrets hidden. It seems to me to be a out of sight, out of mind kind of mentality that for some odd reason they believe will help them deal with their problem. At the birthday party when things finally come to a head and Maurice finally says his peace and gets the secrets and the lies that they have all kept for so long out in the open the burden of his message is what is going to happen after this is unleashed upon their family. Maurice faced an unknown future when he decided to face up to his family’s problems. He was the only character in the entire film that actually knew everything that was being kept from the rest of the family. With this knowledge comes a burden of what to do with this knowledge. With the emergence of Hortense and the discovery of her true identity Maurice must come to grips with the truth of his family and must make them understand that they must tell each other the truth behind their demeanor. Maurice’s speech could have had very bad consequences. He could have lost his niece, whom he views as the daughter he and his wife will never have. He also could have lost Cynthia’s trust in making her tell the truth of matters. Lastly, Maurice’s own marriage was on the brink due to his wife’s inability to have children and she was driving him away because of it. One small turn of events could have forever veered this from the brink of tragedy right over the edge and this would have been yet another family lost to the unforgiving world in which they live.
The theme of this story is that when something bad happens you need to talk about it. It can trigger more and more problems if you don’t get it off your chest. When you keep the secret to yourself it builds up and eats away at you. Then it makes you angrier about the problem. By not telling anyone it doesn’t help the problem any.
Secrets. A soft whisper here and a sly mischievous smile there. This act is part of the human nature used as a defense mechanism or an act of power. Secrecy being harmful to individuals isn’t a problem, it’s the matter of using the power appropriately. Throughout our lives we are shaped and molded by friends and family that can have a lasting effect on our mind and self. The betrayal burns through them as they see the once honest friendship dissipate into thin air. No matter how well someone thinks that they know a person that person will always have secrets. This is seen in the book A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens use of literary devices conveys the idea that individuals will always continue to be secretive and dishonest.
In Tobias Wolff's 'Hunters in the Snow', the three main characters each have secrets which they are concealing despite their friendships. These obscuring truths later cause trouble for each of the characters and will lead to their destruction. How will their decisions and lies impact their relationships?
An issue which is mentioned throughout the story is the concept of “Ignorance is bliss”, which is an old cliche meaning what we don’t know can’t hurt us. While massaging his naked female neighbor’s body, the narrator is asked if he’s going to tell his mother. No, he answers. “So you even know that certain things are better left unsaid! You really are a devil” (Mahfouz, 13). The neighbor makes the obvious point that sometimes there are things that don’t have to be repeated, for the benefit of all the parties involved. Some might argue that the Truth will always come out, and by hiding it someone will end up being affected by it much more later on. But that is only if the information does get repeated. Knowledge doesn’t always have to be repeated, as was shown by our narrator and his neighbor. If the narrator had told his mother, would any of the parties benefit from this knowledge?
Hewstone, M. Fincham, F. and Foster, J (2005). Psychology. Oxford: The British Psychological Society, and Blackwell Publishing. P3-23.
Boneau, C. A., Kimble, G. A., and Wertheimer, M. (1996) Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, Volume II. Washington D.C. and Mahwah, NJ: American Psychological Association & Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Have you ever wonder, How does Shame and Courage affect someone you love? A deep sense of love and belonging is the need of all people,we are biologically cognitively, physically and spiritually wired,to love and be loved and to belong. Therefore, when these need are not met we do not function as well as people who are love and belong. Thus people break, fall apart, hurt others in an and unloving and cold manner. all these stem from the guilt of your pass of shame,Until we practicing the courage it take to own our stories and tell the truth about who we are then the freedom from guilt will not achieve . So it is with these character
Lying is something that can make or break relationships with people. People will not only lose their trust in you after they have figured out the truth, but they will lose their respect for you. Nobody wants to be friends with a liar, associate themselves with a liar, or marry a liar. Guilt is another underlying consequence that comes with the liability of lying. Lying to family or friends or both can and will leave you feeling guilty because you are killing the trust they have put into you. Lying is an art which can be successfully determined by its effectiveness and ability not to be caught and the morality of lying is determined by the intentions of the liar. To lie or not to lie all depends on the benefits or the consequences that follow it.