The Delicacy of Secrets
Delicacy: noun
1. fragility, the quality of involving great care or tact
2. requiring careful speech or action so as to avoid offense
3. a thing of sophistication or distinctiveness
I keep hearing ads for one of those online therapy services. The therapist boasts about what she calls “I’ve never told that to anybody!” moments, and I cringe each time. To be fair, she goes on to explain that self-disclosures reflect the client’s sense of safety in the relationship, and sharing with another person can be very powerful. Which is very true.
Still, it doesn’t sit right with me. It reminds me of a supervisor who coaxed us to get our clients to cry. It became a rite of passage- the first client-crying moment (followed by a whole debate over whether or not to pass the tissues, but I digress). Of course, these are honored and sacred moments, when a client feels they can be vulnerable in session. But that they have to cry? Some people cry a lot. Some people almost never cry. The goal of it seems a little… manipulative. Again, to be fair, the real lesson was to create and hold space for clients to open up, to feel things. In casual conversation, we don’t do that, but in therapy, we do. Sometimes a good cry is just what the doctor ordered.
Secrets are similarly delicate. Wegner once likened keeping secrets to keeping “an obsession in a jar.” Secrets serve many functions. Psychological functions, social functions. Protective functions. Therapy, when it works, might be just the right place to open up.
I recently heard Susan Burton talk about Empty, her memoir about her eating disorder. She wrote the book and was mid-publication when her therapist noticed with some alarm that she had never told anyone, not even her husband, about her decades-long eating disorder about which she was publishing a book. I think she hurried home and told her husband.
This evolved into a bigger conversation; now the book was about her eating disorder but also about secrets- why she had kept hers for so long, and why others do the same. Moved by her story, people called her to share their own, and it became a whole big thing (a podcast, probably). Many women reported spending years not talking about their disordered eating, even to their therapists.
This really struck me. I assume my clients don’t tell me everything. But I started to think more about why.
Just a few reasons not to tell:
Shame. Fearing that others don’t share your behaviors and experiences. Fearing you are the only one. Fearing you will be labelled (as shallow…sick…selfish…you name it). Fearing there might be a name for it. Fearing there isn’t a name for it. Believing it’s something you should be able to handle on your own. Not having the words to describe it. Not even realizing you are omitting things, perhaps the most important things. Minimizing.
Some good reasons to tell:
Being alone is worse than whatever you are hiding. Sometimes naming things helps to understand them. Some things are too hard to handle on your own. Sometimes the very most important thing is to work through shame and to have another person bear witness to just what it means to be a human being.
For Burton, her memoir-sized disclosure was not so much a decision but more like a frenzied urge driven by “desperation, obsession, anger…a longing to be known and understood.” Now, there’s your online therapy service advertisement.
In my practice, I always wonder, what am I missing? Am I asking the right questions? What if we are not talking about the thing that matters most? Maybe I can just slide in a “to be honest” moment here and there. To be honest, how much are you really drinking these days? To be honest, what’s the hardest part for you these days? To be honest, what else do I need to know to really help you?
When working with younger people (whose parents often wish to expose all of their dysfunctions, vices, and bad habits), I might say to them, I don’t need to know your secrets. I need to know what you think is important and what might improve your life. Of course, this applies to kids and adults alike. We can only ever help with what you decide to bring in the room. When you don’t bring it in, think about why, and when you feel safe enough, be sure to share yourself. We are all human, and we need each other to get by.
Ps. Then there are the secrets that belong to those around us, and that’s another story altogether. I stumbled on yet another mind-blowing podcast, Family Secrets, based on Dani Shapiro’s book of the same name. There you will find some real doozies! Along with more amazing discussion about the complexity and power of secrets: