Why You Can’t Keep a Secret?

By Sarah Yager

Though his 18-year-old Patient Ida Bauer was “in the first bloom of youth,” Sigmund Freud wrote in 1905, she had come to him suffering from coughing fits and episodes of speechlessness.1. bloom of youth: 青春，风华正茂； fit: 发作；episode: 发作症状。She’d become depressed and withdrawn, even hinting at suicide.2. withdrawn: 孤僻的，沉默寡言的；hint at: 暗示，略为提及。During one session, as he tried to help her uncover the source of her sickness, Freud observed Bauer toying with3. toy with: 玩弄，摆弄。a small handbag. Interpreting the act as an expression of repressed desire, Freud concluded, “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”4. betrayal: 背叛；ooze: 流出，渗出；pore: 毛孔。

Sometimes a handbag is just a handbag, but modern research does support the idea that secrecy can be a source of mental and physical distress5. distress: 不幸，悲痛。. Keeping a secret, as the idiom suggests, requires constant effort.In one recent study, subjects asked to conceal their sexual orientation in an interview performed worse on a spatial-ability task, reacted more rudely to criticism, and gave up sooner in a test of handgrip endurance.6. subject: 研究或调查的对象；sexual orientation: 性取向；spatial-ability:（视觉）空间能力；handgrip：握力器。And the bigger the secret, the harder it is to keep. Another study found that subjects asked to recall a meaningful secret perceived hills to be steeper and distances to be longer than those asked to recall a trivial secret.7. 另一项研究发现，相比回忆小秘密的人，回忆重大秘密的研究对象会感觉山更陡峭，路更遥远。trivial: 不重要的，琐碎的。When researchers requested help moving books from their lab, the subjects harboring meaningful secrets lifted fewer stacks.8. harbor: 怀有；sack: 堆，垛。

小伙伴有个“请你不要告诉别人的”秘密要告诉你，你的反应是什么？或许在好奇心的驱使下，有些人会不管三七二十一，先听为快。乍看之下，似乎是不会吃亏的买卖，但当你知道这个秘密后，你也担起了保密的责任。保密可不容易，甚至还会造成心理疾病！人们只知道“好奇害死猫”，却小看了保密的杀伤力，殊不知保密也能憋死人呀！

All of that mental exertion might actually wear a body down: research shows an association between keeping an emotionally charged secret and ailments ranging from the common cold to chronic diseases.9. 所有这些劳心费神都可能把身体压垮：研究表明因持续保守秘密而承受精神压力会导致疾病，小到感冒，大到慢性疾病。exertion: 费力，努力；wear down: 消磨，使疲劳；ailment: 小病；chronic: 慢性的。Other evidence in favor of disclosure includes multiple studies showing that writing about a traumatic experience can boost the immune system, and the finding that teens who confide in a parent or close friend report fewer physical complaints and less delinquent behavior,loneliness, and depression than those who sit on their secrets.10. in favor of: 赞成，支持；traumatic: 令人痛苦的；confide: 吐露，倾诉；delinquent: 犯法的，危害社会的；sit on: 拖延，压着某事不办。

One reason secret keeping is such hard work is that secrets, like unwanted thoughts, tend to take up more brain space the more one tries not to think about them. But not everyone is equally prone to this self-defeating cycle.11. prone to: 倾向于，易于；self-defeating: 弄巧成拙的，不利于自己企图的。Researchers have identi fied a small class of “repressors,”who experience fewer intrusive thoughts about sensitive information they are suppressing: these clandestine elite may keep their secrets so tightly wrapped that they manage to hide them even from themselves.12. 研究人员发现了一小类被称为“抑制者”的人，他们较少受到心中压抑着的敏感信息带来的侵扰，这类保密的能手会牢牢地把秘密锁在心里，甚至把自己都蒙在鼓里。repressor: 抑制者；intrusive: 侵入的，打扰的；clandestine: 秘密的；wrap: 包裹。