Strange things

I’ve always been proud of the fact that my friends consider me as a guy who can keep secrets. But after reading psychologist Dr. David Wenger’s White Bears and Other Unwanted Things, I’ve decided to retire from the secret-keeping business.
Mind Control
Wenger, who has outlined the science of keeping secrets, declares that doing so just upsets your mental processes.

He begins by explaining that the mind uses two processes to help control thought. There’s the intentional operating process or the “operator” and the ironic monitoring process or the “monitor.”

The operator functions on a conscious level, helping us grasp concepts and strengthening our mental grip on our beliefs. The monitor, on the other hand, serves as the checks-and-balances center, making sure that we stay consistent by weeding out factors that contradict or hinder our mental resolve.
Managing “Closet Skeletons”
To give you an idea how it works, let us examine how the operator and monitor deal with a secret:

Say, you’re on a high fiber diet and you go into a restaurant knowing that you should only order high-fiber food. As you read the menu, the operator tells you to focus on the salad selections.

Simultaneously, the monitor stops you from looking at the photo of the buttered chicken and tells you that it’s not the right choice.

The operator and the monitor work the same way when we want to avoid thinking of something.

For instance, your friend confides, “I let people think I’m a vegetarian but I snack on steak late at night. Don’t tell anyone what I told you.” Since your immediate response would be to avoid thinking of the secret you’re made to keep, your operator begins to prompt you to look for “distracters,” such as TV shows, songs, work, and just about anything that would keep your mind off the secret.

Meanwhile, the monitor complicates things as it actively sifts through all the information that your brain gets, looking for any hints of the secret so that it could tell you to put your guard up.

Unfortunately, this mechanism only makes you think of the secret even more.
Endless Agony
Thus, you begin to have thoughts that are secret-centered such as, “I’m not talking to X because he knows Y and he might want to ask if Y told me a secret” or “I don’t want to watch the documentary about vegetarians because I might commit a Freudian slip about Y’s secret.”

And so on. You’ll be on this treadmill of secret torment day after day.

Secret-keeping involves work and effort. Naturally, it takes its toll on your body. According to Dr. Norman Anderson, co-author of Emotional Longevity, people who keep secrets usually “vacillate between being agitated and irritable,” get tension headaches, develop vague body aches, and have nightmares.
False Rewards
Thus, Wenger observes that lying would be a less stressful undertaking: “On the face of it, it might appear that maintaining a running fabrication would be harder than carrying a secret. But, psychologically speaking, just the opposite is true. With lying, the lie serves as an effective distracter for the concealed truth.”

Further analyzing why lying is less of a chore, Wenger lists down three reasons:

1. It’s part of an alternate universe. The fabricated story allows one to construct a reality that takes the mind into a world where the secret doesn’t exist.2. It’s a “game.” While the secret keeper paints himself into a corner by not being able to create distracters at will, liars sometimes dare to make a game out of fibbing. They’re often curious how tall their tales can grow before being found out.

3. It’s practically worry-free. Liars relieve tension regularly each time they create a new story or add yet another fake detail as distractions.

In the end though, the truth always has a way of coming out. Besides, the longer you keep a “cat” in the bag, the more you run the risk of being mauled by a “tiger” when things beyond your control eventually destroy the said bag. Bottom line: Let out that “cat” while it’s still in the meowing stage.

For me, Lindsey, the truth is still your best bet–no matter how terrible it may be.