WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — Maryl Kunkel stared at the blank notecard. For three days, she searched for the courage to give voice to her secret, a fear she has about her relationship, and how it affects her family. Finally, after much introspection, she wrote it down. And felt remarkably better.

Her confession is one of dozens in Cal Secrets, a Berkeley, Calif., exhibit featuring anonymous secrets penned by students. The project is inspired by www.PostSecret.com, the third most popular blog on the Internet, according to Internet tracking site Technorati. The exhibit's goal is to reveal buried fears, regrets and wishes in the hopes of promoting healing and connecting the community.

It features a range of admissions, from "I play Sudoku during lectures" to this haunting revelation: "Sometimes I have this nagging feeling that I'm not good enough. Actually, that's most of the time."

Kunkel calls the process liberating.

"You have your secret out there and no one knows it's you, but you're able to get it off your chest," she says. "That's the first step to self-discovery."

Some call it a step; others, a catharsis. Be it silly, sexual, dark or wistful, what was once a private piece of information reserved for only the closest of confidants is now community property in the hyper-personal online world.

http://Grouphug.us has collected nearly a half-million confessions since its launch four years ago. Visitors to www.Absolution-Online.com can confess their sins, Catholic-style. And those who divulge their secrets on www.DailyConfession.com must brace themselves for responses in the Talk Back section. In many ways, the experience of online releasing and relating is the new group therapy.

Greg Fox, a former Walt Disney producer, started www.DailyConfession.com in 2000 as a way to make his mark on the dot-com world. He wasn't satiating his inner voyeur or looking to help people, he says.

"It took off unbelievably quickly," says Fox, who lives in Orlando, Fla., and left his day job in 2001. "We have this aspect to our humanity, a sensational desire to live our lives through the trials and tribulations of others."

Fox now receives hundreds of anonymous confessions a day — from abuse and adultery to flushing the toilet with your foot — for a grand total of 300,000. With a half-million unique visitors a month, the site gets 97 percent of its traffic from readers, not confessors, Fox says.

"It's unburdening yourself," Fox explains. "Like talking to the bartender when you're out of town on a business trip. You can have closure by leaving that town and knowing you told someone."

SOME HAVE CONCERNS

Fox says he checks the Talk Backs frequently to make sure the fodder is clean. Naturally, psychology experts still have concerns.

While there's value in writing down emotions, the repercussions can be damaging, says Larry Rosen, a Cal State Dominguez Hills psychology professor. Especially, Rosen adds, when the form is YouTube or MySpace, which is packed with photos and other identifiers.

"I worry because you're going to get feedback and most likely it's not going to be helpful," says Rosen, author of the forthcoming "Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation," (Palgrave Macmillan). "It (the secret) is permanently circulating, and it's just a snapshot in time. Catharsis is great, but that's not how therapy or healing really works."

The millions who've participated in the www.PostSecret.com project may disagree. Founder and Cal alum Frank Warren was coping with a period of darkness in his own life when he launched what was then a community art project.

Warren, a suburban father and medical document supplier, passed out postcards to people asking them to jot down a secret, decorate it, and send it to his Maryland home. Three years later, the postcards are still flooding his mailbox.

He's received nearly 200,000 pop art renditions of scandalous confessions ("I have been planning my husband's funeral for 24 years"), tragic revelations ("My mom put me on my first diet when I was six") and goofy admissions ("I pee in the shower"). The last, incidentally, is the most common confession.

According to Warren, his site receives 3 million unique visitors a month and is approaching its 100,000,000th hit.

But the number that makes Warren most proud is the $30,000 he's raised for 800-SUICIDE (800-784-2433), the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, which he links to and volunteers for. Unlike many confessional sites, www.PostSecret.com accepts no advertising. The only moneymakers are the four hardcover books Warren has published, which are filled with the colorful, oftentimes subversive postcards.

"Sometimes we think we're keeping a secret, but it's really the secret that's keeping us," says Warren during a recent interview before his appearance at Diesel bookstore in Oakland, Calif. "It colors our perspective and affects our relationships. But when we face the secret, reconcile with it and move on, we grow."

BETTER THAN THERAPY?

Recently, a woman e-mailed to tell Warren that after reading another person's secret about an abusive boyfriend, she left her own. Erin Ruiz-Prunchak, of Oakland, has sent in three postcards in the past nine months. She hasn't seen them online, but says the PostSecret process is therapeutic.

"It saved me a lot of time and money in other forms of therapy," she says, laughing. "It's so meaningful. We all have issues, and it makes you feel close to everybody."

Dennis Yniguez, of Berkeley, says that PostSecret has helped him and his new wife, Anne, share many secrets. He's also learned that what is most general is most personal, he says.

"It is very validating that underneath all of these different religions and personalities, we are all essentially the same," he says. "We have the same fears and secrets."

There may be an anonymous bond. But is getting "it" out enough? For some, it is, says Mary Lamia, a psychoanalyst with the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. But for most, a "reality check" — talking with a friend, loved one or mental health professional — is imperative, she says.

"Being able to discuss your secret face to face with a person is powerful," she says. "You feel a sense of safety instead of shame."

That said, she believes there is a reason www.PostSecret.com is particularly popular, beyond the fact that Warren has shared his home address with the world.

"Because there is an artistic element to these postcards, it's showing that what's inside of you is beautiful," she says. "It's a crazy reversal, but a lot of times what causes people pain really makes them beautiful. And he (Warren) is capturing that."

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