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"We're Only as Sick as our Secrets"

Writer's picture: Ruth WiseRuth Wise

Originally posted in July, 2021; updated on August 12, 2024 "We're only as sick as our secrets."

 

When I heard this statement at an Al-anon meeting, I was incredulous at the applicability, clarity, brevity and accuracy related to my experience and current situation. As soon as I started speaking about dysfunctional and abusive patterns and behavior, I began to heal. It was not a matter of exposing any person (I have tried to protect the identify of parties involved… but it becomes more and more difficult when there is no response to ongoing efforts to confront cruelty and repair relationships). It was a matter of exposing the abuse itself.

 

More recently, my highly trained and experienced therapist told me that SECRECY is always proportionate to DYSFUNCTION in a family, and even secrecy and pathology are directly correlated. We are taught to cover others, and I agree***. But this can easily and inadvertently become covering up abuse.

 

One example: I grew up with frequent threats of suicide from a person I felt responsible to please. My adolescent needs couldn't rival the crises of slit wrists, swallowed bottles of pills, etc. Years later, threats of suicide gradually became a near constant in my married life, again from a person for whom I felt responsible. If the threat of suicide is sincere, one should be held by professionals until determined safe to oneself**. If such threats are manipulative - an attempt to force a person to comply with another person's wishes - that is emotional abuse.

 

Telling an older person about threats of suicide from a family member just before my wedding helped my fiance and I to be clear that we were not responsible for that person's emotional well-being, safety or choices. Telling my doctor about more recent threats of suicide from a significant person in my life helped me to realize that this was abuse. No longer allowing secrecy, but rather speaking out, helped this dysfunction to at least decrease my involvement in the toxic situation... and staying in such a dysfunction can cause many forms of illnesses. [Adding this on August 12, 2024 – Speaking out has also resulted in painful ostracization from much of our family and church community – which only affirms how unhealthy those communities were and still are.]


A nearly essential ingredient for abuse is secrecy. Sadly, a group of people may actually tolerate abuse (when that group has culty dynamics).... even broadly, such as an extended family or an entire organization. I believe in such cases, others outside the group need to become involved for the abuse to stop. Sadly, the whistleblower may be deemed as "uncovering" one's "sins"... but actually the person speaking out is seeking help, wanting and needing abusive behaviors to stop.

 

How about we only keep secrets that are beautiful and healthy? How about making whatever is hidden simply hidden because it is too special and intimate to openly share? As the Bible says, how about we give and pray in secret, where our Father alone can see...? What about everything behind our closed doors being love... though love may sometimes take the form of fierce conversations? What if we all admitted our mistakes, failures, and weaknesses - that are no surprise if we acknowledge that we are human beings...? I know that the people I have met as I have become mutually authentic about our stories and shortcomings... they have been so brave and beautiful and lovable and healing for me. And I hope I am a factor of healing for them, too.


Opening requires trust that we and our loved ones won't be judged or shamed. I think this is a big reason there is so much secrecy, dysfunction and related pathology. People don't want or need to be judged, despised or criticized. We don't need more pain. If there is dysfunction in our intimate relationships, we need honesty, and care, support, and healing. I believe we all are generally doing our best, but we need one another to do and be even better. Hopefully we have that effect on one another as we share our human journeys.

 

We are not alone in the struggles, but if we keep our dysfunction and painful experiences a secret, we will feel alone, and loneliness is toxic. We will remain as sick as our secrets.

 

Here is an article/blog to complement what I have written today: 10 Signs of a Dysfunctional Family by Carol Anderson (2021). [This no longer seems to be available, on August 12, 2024, so I found another more current posting: 10 Signs of a Dysfunctional Family (Chris Massman, April 10, 2023).]




 

[**If there is any thought or risk of suicide in you or in someone you love, please call

988 - Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.]

 

*** In my former church community, a Bible story is used a lot as a warning about not “exposing others.” It is the story in Genesis 9, of Noah being drunk in his tent. One of his sons (Ham) saw his father’s nakedness and told his brothers; the other two sons of Noah went in backwards and covered up their father’s nakedness in his tent. After this, Ham was cursed.

 

Covering others’ looseness, not gossiping about someone’s failures, but rather covering what someone may be embarrassed about, is beautiful. However, being drunk and naked in one’s tent is not a sin, or at least, it is not violating the safety, health, or well-being of another person. If Noah had been abusing or otherwise violating someone in his tent, I don’t think God would want his sons to go in backwards and cover up his misdeeds so that the wounding of another person could continue. God is just. He does not ask us to ignore the plight of the vulnerable, the broken-hearted, the abused. God does not condone cruelty. He doesn't care about the "image" of His people; sins of His people are exposed throughout the Bible. Sin is mercifully exposed and dealth with, so that there can be repentance, restoration and healing - of both the victim and of the perpetrator of the sin (if s/he repents).

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