SECRETS

These thoughts came as a result of years of working with people and helping them with long held secrets as well as a recent series of engagements. A friend wrote a touching and revealing memoir about a long held secret. She kindly asked me to join her in discussions with readers about secrets in general. Here are some thoughts that have come to mind.

Everyone has secrets. Secrets involve trust, privacy, openness, and respect. The telling of and keeping of secrets is wrapped up in how we view ourselves: our identity.

Secrets can bring us together and they can also cause deep schisms. They are powerful. Yet each of us perceives secrets differently. What may be a well-guarded secret in one family may be everyday news in another. Furthermore, keeping someone else’s secret can be a privilege and/or a burden.

We ask ourselves: Whether to tell? Whom to tell? How to tell? When to tell? And then, those questions are often followed by, When I tell, what will happen (To me? My family? My community?).

Surprisingly, It is not always better to tell a secret. In some cases, it is better to keep it to yourself. While many of us believe that sharing a secret will result in an immediate lifting of burden, for many people, sharing a secret does not always ensure immediate healing.

For most people, however, when we consider how, when, to whom, and what is the true reason we are telling a secret, revealing what is inside of us will result in us feeling better, healthier, even more free. Questions we rarely (and can be helpful to) ask are: “How can I tell this secret without being hurtful?”, “Whom am I protecting with this secret?”, “How has keeping this secret benefited or hurt me or those I love?”, “What do I hope to achieve (or change) by telling this secret to this person?” or “Why now?”

We keep secrets for all sorts of reasons. Maybe we feel at risk ourselves because others are abusing their power over us. Maybe we may feel we need to protect others. Understanding why we hold a secret can help us decide whether to reveal it and if we decide to, what are the best ways and situations to do so.

Sometimes we tell our secret to members in a trusting community such as therapists, counselors, or clergy. After we tell, we feel less burdened. Sometimes, that is all we need to do; it is enough for us. But often, that experience of telling is just the beginning. We have entered a safe place to explore our feelings, whatever they are — embarrassment, disgrace, regret, humiliation, terror, guilt, shame, judgment, fear — a place to work through one’s own feelings, hopefully finding empathy, compassion, support, and strength in the process. Revealing secrets in such a trusting, non-judgmental environment can be enough. It can also be a place to start to examine and then practice how and when we will tell others.

It is often at major life transition times that we may have the desire to reveal a secret or it may just happen be the time when we hear one. To this exact point, Dr. Evan Imber-Black, a recognized expert in the field of family therapy and family secrets, suggests that we avoid revealing secrets at such times as weddings, graduations, and new beginnings. Think back to a situation or an event or a circumstance when you heard (or shared) a secret. Would you have chosen that time and place if you could do it again?

Some examples that have been shared with me:

— A mom decides (but waits) to tell her children who are graduating from college facts about their father’s secret life that she has kept from them.

— After hearing that her granddaughter was pregnant with twins, a woman reveals that she, in fact, had a twin who had been killed.

— As young man’s family prepares to attend his wedding rehearsal dinner, he tells them that his fiancé was married before.

— At his son’s confirmation, a man reveals to his wife and son that he had been sexually molested by a priest.

— As a 12-year old boy waits at his neighbor’s for his parents to pick him up after school, the neighbor informs him that his brother and sister had a different mother who died and that they are really his half-siblings.

— Upon opening what she expects is a 25th anniversary card from her husband, a woman instead, finds a letter from her husband telling her that he is leaving her for his “secret” family.

Secrets can be the most destructive when kept in the home. Families are our support system. Our identities and ability to form close relationships depends on the communication and trust we experience with our loved ones. If family members keep secrets from each other and from the world outside, there can be devastating emotional fall out.

Family secrets shape as well as scar us. They can divide family members as well as estrange them. Family secrets can discourage individuals from sharing information with anyone outside the family, seriously inhibiting the formation of intimate relationships. Family secrets can arrest development at critical points in life, preventing a healthy growth of the self and identity. They can lead to painful miscommunication within a family, causing unnecessary guilt, doubt, and shame.

But sometimes, someone tries to undo damage caused by a family secret. Often they have just had enough. And they accept as true that revealing the secret is not a betrayal of the family, as they previously believed, but a necessity to free themselves and others in the family. They appreciate that there will be consequences.

Not all secrets are destructive. Siblings keep secrets from their parents all the time, which helps the children become independent and close. By definition, every secret between two people, excludes someone else. That person(s) does not know the secret. Very often, children are “sworn to secrecy” in fear that further harm will come to others. “Let’s keep this as our little secret. Don’t tell or something bad will happen.” Such secrets include: sexual abuse; physical abuse, an alcoholic parent; a drug-addicted family member; a parent’s infidelity; suicide, and other issues. The stigma looms large.

Just think of the types of secrets: Beth Easterling’s research has led her to conclude that a secret is a secret in a relationship if it ‘directly affects or concerns the individual but is withheld from the partner.’ Some examples include: not telling your partner that you were married before (or are still married), a family secret that your mother took her own life, that you have a child somewhere but do not know where, that you were raped, that you have a gambling habit, a hidden debt, a father’s addiction to pornography, a mother’s hoarding, that you were in a car accident and someone was killed, or something else related to your own “unfinished” business. The fact is that everyone has “something” and that something may be a secret which may or may not be a source of our distress.

We need to ask ourselves what we are hiding and why? Secrets are common in most relationships, even the most open relationships. Each of us must explore the role the secret holds in our own life and then we can gain true insight into our self and our partner.

Why do we keep secrets from a loving partner?

For many of us we keep secrets because of a reluctance to hurt our partner, have them lose faith in us, or damage our relationship. We fear their disapproval. We are embarrassed. But protecting those secrets that make up the core of our identity keeps our partner from fully knowing who we really are. The longer the secrets are kept the more difficult it is to keep them and the more it can be a communication barrier between us and our partner. But it is oh so difficult. And, even the closest partners may need to keep some things secret in order to protect their relationship. Especially if we know it will cause them pain.

If we did something we believe our partner would disapprove of, we fear that we may be perceived as disloyal which might leave ourselves open for being criticized, ostracized, blamed, shamed, abandoned, etc., even if we are not the one who “committed the offense.” We are also wary of what others will think if they find out our secret: our partner was in jail for embezzlement; our son was expelled from school for cheating; our daughter shoplifted; or our husband gambled his fortune.

As I said earlier, a secret can be a barrier that keeps people from being truly close. We believe that certrain secrets would be stigmatizing, particularly those involving sexuality…unwanted pregnancies, STDs, abortion, rape or issues related to past behavior like drug use, shoplifting, and familial mental illness.

Keeping secrets hinders our ability to be truly intimate with friends and partners. I had a childhood friend whose mom was a nurse (and later, I found out, an alcoholic.) We always played at my house and never at hers. Not till we graduated from high school did she share with me her “big dark secret”. As a young adult, in a group of people, when the topic turned to childhood, especially mothers, she would turn red and change the subject. She lived in constant fear that people would find out about her mother’s problem (which she assumed would place her own perceived status in question). Therefore, she said nothing about her mother at all. By keeping parts of her personal history under such tight rein, she also had to keep a similarly tight rein on herself. This made it impossible for her to ever feel truly at ease in her friendships, and led to chronic anxiety.

Holding on to a secret costs us physically as well as emotionally. Cloaking or lying about important facts is stressful. Chronic stress increases adrenaline and cortisol levels — two hormones that cause inflammation and damage the immune system. These are high prices to pay.

Dr. Laura Smart, a psychologist and neuroscientist, suggests that even if we try to keep a secret, our brain is wired to not let us keep it for too long.

In The Hidden Costs of Hidden Stigma she wrote that because of a mental process in our brain called the ‘ironic monitoring process’ that even when we try to suppress a thought or secret we will remember it. “It functions to search for exactly those unwanted thoughts that are under suppression, thus ironically making the unwanted thoughts accessible and making it likely that they will return to conscious awareness.”

She cautions that the more stress we are under, the worse it gets until it ultimately pushes us to reveal the secret.

So, what do we do? We begin by being honest with ourselves about the secrets we are keeping. Author Iyanla Vanzant looks at secrets through the prism of shame related to our anxiety about what other people are thinking and that our secret-keeping is an attempt to protect ourselves from shame, judgment, ridicule, guilt, fear of consequences. Some of those dreaded consequences might be rejection, disappointing someone or believing that they will discover you are not the person they think you are. What happens as a result is living a covered up life; covering up the poor choices we made with lies, withholding information, fabricating stories to keep those choices secret. This complicates rather than corrects the problem and usually results in a double betrayal of our self and of the other person.

Sometimes is it guilt (or the feeling of ENOUGH IS ENOUGH) that helps us to share our secret. But if we feel shame, we are unlikely to reveal. Shame focuses on other people’s perception of us and reinforces that there is something wrong with us. Guilt allows us to do more self-examination as a result of feeling remorseful and can help us along our way to resolve what we did.

Revealing secrets can have important positive consequences for both the person who does the revealing and for others. Still it is not easy because we cannot hide just one thing. When we hold a secret there are other aspects of our true self that are also hidden. It can define us in our own mind and we never get to express who we really are.

We can start slow. For some people it is helpful to write in a journal or create art about it. We can reflect deeply about what we want to do, perhaps reach out to people and if it feels right, make amends. And talking to a therapist can give us satisfaction and comfort in being honest with ourselves.