Answering The Question: What Secret Are You Keeping?
Processing our secrets in our first week journaling together. PLUS, some other shit.
Hey, it’s Friday! You made it! Everyone’s proud of you, even Meryl Streep.
How was your week though? Productive? Restorative? Challenging? Joyful? Whatever it was, I hope you got what what you needed from it. You tried, and that’s all that matters. You showed up.
But let’s get to why we’re here. This week, we were making our first shared attempt at journaling, kicking off with this prompt:
What secret have you kept, or are you keeping?
I’ll come clean: this topic was one I already had loaded up and ready to go for my own purposes, so I had a secret in mind. This secret is a bit of an uncomfortable one for me. Not because I’m ashamed of it, but because there’s no way for me to bring this secret to light for the person I’ve kept it from. Let me tell you about it.
While I’m open with most people in my life (99.99999999%) about my journey with therapy, there’s one person who has no idea I’ve ever seen a therapist. In fact, this is the person whom my relationship with is the origin story for many of the reasons I needed to seek out care: my dad. And unfortunately, my dad passed in 2020, so there’s no way he’ll ever know about it either.
When I started therapy, in 2013-2014, much of the trauma I had to unpack was related to my father, his style of parenting, and my way of reacting to and processing that. In fact, the catalyst for me going to therapy at that time was my first anxiety attack (a term I’ve only been able to slap on that recently), which was brought about by a colleague’s actions towards me that triggered unhealed trauma from my relationship with my father.
That a lot to lump on you? Sorry, but you signed up for this!
Are We In The Wrong With Keeping Secrets?
I found myself drawn back to the same question several times when journaling this week: was keeping this secret the wrong choice?
Listen, if keeping a secret prevents you from experiencing physical or emotional harm then absolutely keep it. Nor am I here telling you to air your personal business to the world if you’re not ready.
What I DO want to say is that sometimes we keep a secret because we forecast/project what someone’s response might be, decide we don’t like it or need to experience it, and thus find ourselves holding back the information.
For instance, what was my narrative? I told myself my father would be judgmental. He had previously and regularly expressed disdain for therapists. (Is that because the one time he went his shrink told him to “take the stick out of his ass”? Well, we can never know for sure.) I told myself he would accuse me of being critical of him and the past, and being a baby about my upbringing.
So rather than experience that conversation for the umpteenth time, I withheld this development in my life from him for several years and, now, for good.
In short, I took an action, assumed what his response would be, decided I didn’t want to deal with it, and kept the information to myself.
But thinking about it with the comfort of space and time I find myself turning over one question again and again: did I rob him of the chance to have his response to this news, and for myself to break a narrative?
My father never negatively reacted to the fact that I was in therapy. Simply, I told myself he would. What did this do? It incentivized me to keep information to myself, to create another layer of disconnection in our relationship. It prevented him from having an opportunity to exhibit growth to me, denied me the opportunity to see him act in a way that would break an internal narrative I had, and put me in a position to have to ask these questions nearly a decade later.
So if you took the time to think about secrets this week, I want you to take a moment to consider why you’re keeping this secret, and if it’s because there’s a safety/security reason, or simply because you’re being avoidant (I know I was). As difficult as it might be to go through, I’m convinced it’s better to let someone prove you right or wrong than to never give them the chance in the first place, locking yourself into assumption and uncertainty.
Anyway, were you able to journal this week? Did you forget about it until I sent you this note? If you sat with the question, how did it feel? What did it bring up for you? Would love to hear about your experience, drop me a note.
Reader Reflection: This Could Be YOU!
This is a placeholder for now, but my hope for the future is that one of our fellow writers comes forth and (anonymously or otherwise) shares a bit about their journaling experience or response to that week’s question to be featured in future newsletters. Interested? Drop me a note anytime!
Something For The Weekend
We’re doubling up on music because this week I absolutely have to share YAMS, a monthly R&B playlist curated by Dante Nicholas. I’ve had this on repeat for the past 48 hours or so since he dropped this month’s tracks, and I think you should do the same.
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That’s all for me, and for today. Have a restful and restorative weekend. See you on Sunday for the next question.
P.S. Have a question you want to submit? I’d love to hear it!
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