Breaking the Back of Secrets
I have forever talked with my patients about the weight of secrets. The burden, the sadness, the anxiety and ultimately the shame. But the sneaky and most corrosive thing about secrets is that they are lonely.
The nature of the human condition is to gather. To have friends, to connect with people and feel seen and heard. To feel known.
The hardest part of secrets is that it forces humans to be solitary. Because secrets are like so many things- you cannot have just one. It is important to say that there are some good secrets. Good news that is too soon to share, early pregnancy, job expectancy, getting into college, these are secrets that feel like a “jinx” to share until we know they are safe and secure, and we are ready for the world to know our truth. But those secrets are filled with pride and joy and expectation. I am talking about the secrets we keep out of fear. Fear that we have done something wrong, fear that we have been unkind, embarrassment and shame, a gut-wrenching anxiety that we have made an unforgivable mistake.
But here is the problem with secrets. We keep the first, and in order to maintain the first, we have to tell a second. Then a third. Then the secret itself has a life of its own. We must lie and shape the truth to keep the secret intact. But in so doing we are stuck on an island, alone with the secret of our own design that we now cannot escape from. Yet as it grows, we struggle to hold the burden of its weight. We alienate the people we love, those that support us. The house of cards we have built on the back of this secret begins to shudder and sway as the base of this house is exposed- for being foundation-less.
These are the moments when so many people come to my office. Alone, fearful, defensive. In fact, the secrets have often gotten so mixed in with the truth that is becomes unclear what is real and what is not. My specialty and the work I love to do is eating disorders. The entire structure and nature of eating disorders is formed around secrets. Small white lies that prevent our families from knowing the truth about what we are doing. Secrets become a way of safe-guarding our illness, and allowing it to grow.
What I tell my patients, and what I try to follow is to use the instinct to keep a secret as a cue. A sign that I am doing something that is not lining up with my integrity. I am doing something that I am not proud of, something that I don’t want people to know about.
And then I do the opposite.
I tell someone. When I feel badly or even odd about something I share it with someone because then I have broken the back of the secret. I am not alone, I have support- even if that person may be initially disproving, I have the respect earned by being truthful. I have been honest with myself and someone I love. We then stop the cycle before it begins.
Think about your own cues? When do you instinctively hide and how can you manage that moment differently? The more we do that, the more we live a life that is integrated and full. A life where there are fewer compartments and sections and pockets of loneliness. The goal is to live in a way that feels real and clear and consistent. What gets in your way of doing just that?
