The Secret Is Out

What started as a whim for Frank Warren has turned into an international phenomenon, resulting in millions of strangers sharing secrets daily on postsecret.com.\nIn November 2004, Warren, the owner of a document delivery company in Germantown, Md., passed out 3,000 postcards. On them, he asked complete strangers to write down their secrets. The 100 that came back became part of an art exhibition Warren entered.\nWarren assumed the experiment would end at this point, but two years later, the secrets are still coming in. They arrive on surfaces as varied as report cards, sonograms and leaves. \n"Pretty much anything you can imagine, I've had in my mailbox," Warren said.\nThe one thing the postcards' authors have in common is the desire to share. Warren decided to start posting the submissions on a blog he called PostSecret. The popularity has swelled, with about three million visitors checking out the site each month.\nAfter the success of the blog, Warren took the idea one step further -- compiling submissions into book form. The latest of these compilations, "My Secret," was released Tuesday.\nThe 144 pages of "My Secret," which is centered around submissions from young people, are organized into diverse categories -- from funny and hopeful to sexual to anguished. Warren said he wanted the book's postcards "to show the full breadth of humanity of the kinds of secrets we keep."\nWarren, who has a bachelor's degree in social science from University of California, Berkeley, does not claim to be a psychologist. His goal for PostSecret was to simply create a safe, nonjudgmental forum in which people could share secrets they might not want to share with people they know, Warren said. Sticking with this mission, all submissions are kept anonymous.\nNancy Stockton, a licensed psychologist, director of Counseling and Psychological Services at the IU Health Center, has a different view of the trend. \n"When we hold things inside, we tend to distort them," Stockton said. "Problems can seem more overwhelming and worse than they are."\nStockton said she is not sure, however, whether Warren's venue is beneficial. \n"A person confesses something that he or she needs to be working through," Stockton said. \nThe release that comes from getting a secret off one's chest might be harmful in the long run if further help is needed and not sought, offering what Stockton called "a false consolation."\nDespite any professional concern, the popularity of the blog and books shows that something must be working.\nWarren sees two sides of benefit from his work. Aside from catering to those submitting, he said he hopes those reading the secrets can also develop some sense of compassion. \n"Everybody has a secret that would break your heart," Warren said. "If we just recognized that, we would find a tolerance of others in this short time we are here."\nFor senior Calvin Graves, a perusal of PostSecret brought about a sense of relativism more than tolerance. \n"A lot of this isn't deep, dark secrets," Graves said. "It comes across as something a 16-year-old would write in their Live Journal."\nSenior Kimberly Musgrave also noted the relative nature of some of the submissions, likening the forum to a more technologically savvy form of writing on bathroom stalls. But it was the serious content in PostSecret -- which went as far as one woman proclaiming her wish of her husband's death -- that made Musgrave feel a need for action. \n"If I know that so-and-so from this city wants to kill herself, does that make me responsible somehow?" she said.\nStockton agreed with that sentiment, again offering a warning. \n"For those reading, there may be a sense of anxiety, of wanting to reach out to those in need, but having no mechanism for that," she said.\nWarren is adamant about keeping the content anonymous. He volunteers as a crisis counselor and donates some of the proceeds of his published work to the Kristin Brooks Hope Center, a national network devoted to aiding those dealing with psychological problems. As for the secrets, Warren's role remains the purveyor of a means to express.\nTo submit a secret or read others', visit www.postsecret.com. New secret submissions are posted every Sunday.