Sharing Secrets Is the Key to Removing Shame

Privacy Can Accidentally Breed Shame

I grew up in a family that valued privacy. Not everyone needed to know our secrets. Knowledge is power and who knew how private information could or would be used?

Maybe it’s because of the hypomania of my bipolar disorder, but I was considerably more open as a young adult – but only about my personal information. Family secrets were still family secrets.

In fact, in misguided attempts to create relationships and deep connections, I usually spewed out my most intimate details very early on. Within three interactions (tops), everyone knew that my sister died when I was a teen, that I am a sexual assault survivor, and many of my counter-cultural experiences and hijinks.

The best way I had to hide secrets from others was to shield them from myself.

Most of those people never turned into actual friends. Not because I shared personal details, but because I shared those details too early into the relationship. It was too heavy for them. They didn’t know how to respond.

Over time, I finally realized this point and pulled back. I decided my parents were right and stopped sharing more of those details with anyone. It got to a point where very few people in my life knew even my more mild secrets.

I Hid My Secrets From Myself, Too

What did this ultimately mean for me and my life? That I felt invisible. No one knew the “real me.” The best way I had to hide those secrets from others was to shield them from myself, so not only did no one else know me, I no longer knew myself, either.

How do you let someone into your shame?

Hiding away in the dark, those secrets molded and fermented. They transformed from facts into shame about my life and my past. The shame took place in my heart and then wormed its way into my identity.

If no one else would like me because of my secrets and the darkness in my soul, then how could I ever be loved?

I didn’t understand this at the time. I didn’t know that one of the reasons I felt so yucky was that my identity was founded, in part, upon shame.

Here’s the thing about shame: like mold, it can’t handle sunlight. Sunlight is the ultimate disinfectant. It dries up the shame, shrinking it until it disappears altogether.

But how do you let someone into your shame?

For me, this started in therapy. The one commitment I made to myself when I began therapy was that I would not lie. Period. If a thought made me feel guilty and my impulse was to cover it with (what I perceived to be) a socially acceptable perspective, I would call myself on it.

It’s one thing to leave those thoughts in your mind and another thing to hear them spoken aloud. There’s a bizarre magic to voicing the ugliness that hides in our minds: Often, those thoughts that feel so irrevocably, unquestionably true reveal themselves as silly or false when brought into the light.

Therapy, when done right, is a safe place. Those ugly ideas are received without judgment. A better therapist will create space for the words to sit in the air before guiding a process of challenging them.

There’s a bizarre magic to voicing the ugliness that hides in our minds.

There are some secrets only my therapist knows. Someday, I may choose to share those other secrets with more people, but for today: my therapist is enough.

Our Inner Circle Can Help, Too

I know many people who have found comfort in their inner circle. Many of us have at least one person we feel safe with, someone who has demonstrated compassion and trustworthiness to us in the past. My advice and encouragement are to start there, even if it’s scary.

The conversation doesn’t have to be dramatic. It doesn’t have to be a big reveal. On the other hand, if you prefer setting it up as a Big Deal, go ahead and do so. It’s your secret; reveal it as you wish.

I remember working with Mike, my therapist, when seemingly out of nowhere, the story of my rape came up. I felt a lot of shame over the experience and its aftermath, which I didn’t realize until I vomited up the story in a Kleenex-soaking haze.

Dan is my safe place. Our marriage is my refuge. I was still terrified.

It took me a few sessions with Mike before the emotional intensity of the story reached a level that I felt I could share with Dan, my husband. All he knew was that I was working my way through the story in therapy. I’d never shared the details with him.

Soon after, Dan arranged a little overnight getaway for us. Going into the trip, I had no intentions of telling him the story. I didn’t set up a conversation with him to have it.

However, that first night we had some of those conversations that deepen the connection between partners. It emboldened me so that the next morning, I shared with him the details.

Dan is my safe place. Our marriage is my refuge. I was still terrified.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that he responded with grace and compassion. “Wow,” he said. “That’s so much worse than I thought it was.”

I gained a deeper and stronger relationship out of sharing my ugliness with him. I trusted him with a piece of the mold that grew in my spirit, and he accepted it – and me. His response was the equivalent of spraying bleach on my shame. Mold surrenders to bleach, just as shame surrenders to acceptance.

I’ve found the same in other relationships, too. Each time I share a bit of my darkness with someone in my inner circle, they’ve honored it. Each time, a little more of the shame dissipates. Now, I don’t feel any shame over those stories.

Mold surrenders to bleach, just as shame surrenders to acceptance.

The sacred space and acceptance by my inner circle granted me disinfected my soul. By accepting the worst of me, my friends taught me to accept myself.

I am seen and loved, warts and all.

Sharing our secrets isn’t easy. It may be the scariest and most challenging step in a relationship we ever take. The reward for the risk is stronger relationships and a healthier view of ourselves.

You don’t have to live with shame.

Who do you share your secrets with? How do you fight shame?