Ever heard the saying “a problem shared is a problem halved”? There’s real science behind why sharing our struggles makes them feel lighter, and why keeping them secret can make everything so much harder.
The Weight of Secrets
The founders of this site understand the weight of secrets because when a relative experienced depression, the whole family faced an impossible situation. She didn’t want anyone to know, so for eight months, none of her family members could talk to anyone about what they were going through.
“It started to really affect us personally,” they recall. “You don’t know what happens behind anybody’s closed door, and quite often you think you are the only person going through those particular circumstances.”
That isolation, feeling like you’re the only one facing a particular challenge, is more common than you might think. And it’s taking a toll on our mental health.
Why Sharing Actually Helps
Research shows that when we share difficult experiences, several powerful things happen in our brains:
Emotional Regulation: Putting feelings into words activates the prefrontal cortex, which helps regulate emotional responses. Simply naming what we’re going through can reduce its intensity.
Stress Relief: Keeping secrets requires mental energy. When we share, we literally free up cognitive resources that were being used to suppress thoughts and emotions.
Social Connection: Sharing creates bonds with others and reminds us we’re not alone. This activates our brain’s reward system and releases oxytocin, the “bonding hormone.”
Perspective Shift: When we voice our problems, we often hear them differently. This can help us see solutions or realise the situation isn’t as overwhelming as it felt in our heads.
The Isolation Trap
But here’s the catch: the things we most need to talk about are often the things we’re least likely to discuss. Mental health struggles, relationship problems, financial stress, parenting challenges, these topics carry stigma or shame that keeps us silent.
This creates what psychologists call “pluralistic ignorance”, we assume everyone else is coping better than we are because we only see their public faces, not their private struggles.
When Traditional Sharing Isn’t Possible
Sometimes we can’t share with the people closest to us. Maybe they wouldn’t understand, or we’re protecting someone’s privacy, or we’re worried about being judged.
This is where anonymous sharing becomes powerful. When we can be honest without revealing our identity, we get many of the benefits of sharing without the social risks.
We discovered this when we started reaching out to people we knew were in worse situations than our extended family. “To put what we weres going through in perspective of what others might be going through really worked for us.”
Breaking the Silence
The goal isn’t to overshare or burden others with our problems. It’s about breaking the harmful isolation that comes from believing we’re alone in our experiences.
When we learn that others have faced similar challenges, several things happen:
- We feel less abnormal or broken
- We gain perspective on our situation
- We might discover strategies others have used
- We realise that difficult experiences are part of the human condition
The Ripple Effect
When one person breaks the silence around a difficult topic, it gives others permission to do the same. This is why support groups work, why mental health awareness campaigns matter, and why platforms for anonymous sharing can be so valuable.
As we like to put it: “Maybe they don’t feel quite so isolated at the end of the day as well.”
Your Story Matters
Whether you’re dealing with something serious or just wondering if your quirky habits are normal, sharing your experience, even anonymously, serves two purposes:
- It helps you feel less alone
- It helps someone else realise they’re not alone either
Ready to discover you’re not the only one? Your honest responses to our questionnaires don’t just satisfy your curiosity, they help create a more accurate picture of what human experience really looks like.
We collect your email address so we can send you updates after you complete our questionnaire. We do ask for general demographic information like birth year, gender, and income range, this helps us understand patterns in the responses. We never ask for your name, address, or exact date of birth. Your personal identity remains anonymous and is never connected to your answers. Your curiosity drives our insights, not who you are.