The Emotional Load Of A Secret Feels Like A Physical Burden

As per a survey conducted by a skincare company ‘Simple’, women can only keep secrets for about 32 minutes. Women have this urge to share secrets and are ill-famous for keeping secrets. They take minutes to betray a friend’s trust by sharing the secret confided by the friend, with someone else. We have always wondered as to what could be the reason for this?


A recent research conducted by Tufts University reveals that the reason behind it could be that the emotional load of a secret actually feels like a physical burden. Women find the task of carrying a secret overwhelming and take it as a burden.

As part of the research, tests were conducted which involved gathering a healthy mix of women who were carrying life-changing secrets and those who were carrying less-important personal secrets. They were then asked to evaluate the height of a hill or how far a particular milestone was. It was found that the women who were carrying life-changing secrets always found the distance and height to be more in comparison to the women who were carrying less-important minor secrets.

After a number of repetitions, it was concluded that the more burdensome the secret, the more influence it had on the actions and perceptions of these women. Therefore, it was concluded that just as physical burden weighs people down, in a similar fashion, the burden of secrets too weighs people down. People who keep secrets tend to feel more stressed about simple physical tasks.

We often use words such as carrying, keeping, and offloading/unloading to describe secrets. This is specifically because our mind considers secrets to be psychological burdens. The best way of getting rid of this burden is by offloading the psychological load. The very obvious way to go about it is by sharing it with someone close. That is why it is very difficult to contain a secret – it just spreads like a wildfire!


Studies also suggest that revealing personal secrets is actually advantageous for the overall well-being of the secret keeper. Secrets have shown to induce patho-physiological processes, which have a direct bearing on the well-being of the person. Concealing secrets might lead to greater physical burden, stress, exhaustion, and physical overexertion. The longer a secret is kept, the more burdensome it feels.

So the next time you find a woman betraying a secret, try to understand that she is just offloading her burden.