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 bloom of youth: 青春，風(fēng)華正茂； fit: 發(fā)作；episode: 發(fā)作癥狀。She’d become depressed and withdrawn, even hinting at suicide.2. withdrawn: 孤僻的，沉默寡言的；hint at: 暗示，略為提及。During one session, as he tried to help her uncover the source of her sickness, Freud observed Bauer toying with3. toy with: 玩弄，擺弄。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，滲出；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: 研究或調(diào)查的對象；sexual orientation: 性取向；spatial-ability:（視覺）空間能力；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. 另一項研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，相比回憶小秘密的人，回憶重大秘密的研究對象會感覺山更陡峭，路更遙遠。trivial: 不重要的，瑣碎的。When researchers requested help moving books from their lab, the subjects harboring meaningful secrets lifted fewer stacks.8. harbor: 懷有；sack: 堆，垛。

小伙伴有個“請你不要告訴別人的”秘密要告訴你，你的反應(yīng)是什么？或許在好奇心的驅(qū)使下，有些人會不管三七二十一，先聽為快。乍看之下，似乎是不會吃虧的買賣，但當你知道這個秘密后，你也擔(dān)起了保密的責(zé)任。保密可不容易，甚至還會造成心理疾??！人們只知道“好奇害死貓”，卻小看了保密的殺傷力，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. 所有這些勞心費神都可能把身體壓垮：研究表明因持續(xù)保守秘密而承受精神壓力會導(dǎo)致疾病，小到感冒，大到慢性疾病。exertion: 費力，努力；wear down: 消磨，使疲勞；ailment: 小??；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: 贊成，支持；traumatic: 令人痛苦的；confide: 吐露，傾訴；delinquent: 犯法的，危害社會的；sit on: 拖延，壓著某事不辦。

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: 傾向于，易于；self-defeating: 弄巧成拙的，不利于自己企圖的。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. 研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)了一小類被稱為“抑制者”的人，他們較少受到心中壓抑著的敏感信息帶來的侵擾，這類保密的能手會牢牢地把秘密鎖在心里，甚至把自己都蒙在鼓里。repressor: 抑制者；intrusive: 侵入的，打擾的；clandestine: 秘密的；wrap: 包裹。