Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: Danny Shapiro and this is a special bonus episode of
Speaker 1: Family Secrets. As we prepare the new season with ten
Speaker 1: brand new episodes. From time to time we're able to
Speaker 1: drop a really powerful conversation with a great thinker, an
Speaker 1: illuminating voice, especially for Family Secrets listeners. So it is
Speaker 1: my great pleasure to share with you today's bonus conversation
Speaker 1: with esteemed psychoanalyst Dr Galit Atlas. Galt's latest book is
Speaker 1: the brilliant Emotional Inheritance A Therapist, Her Patience and the
Speaker 1: Legacy of Trauma. How did you come to become a psychoanalyst?
Speaker 1: I think I was born a psychronost, but I think
Speaker 1: it starts for many people. We we are first patients
Speaker 1: and we get from that chair into the world of
Speaker 1: therapy or psychoanalysis, and then slowly, you know, we moved
Speaker 1: to the other chair of the therapist. And I think
Speaker 1: for me, I became a patient when I was twenty
Speaker 1: years old, and I still remember the first time when
Speaker 1: I came to psychoanalysis and my therapist asks, so why
Speaker 1: are you here? As we all ask, and I looked
Speaker 1: at her and I said, I don't know. I really
Speaker 1: had no idea, And so as you can imagine, years later,
Speaker 1: I understand in retrospect why I was there, and I
Speaker 1: help other people also why they're there. Yeah, gosh, that
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. And I would imagine it's just
Speaker 1: as you were speaking, I was almost picturing like a
Speaker 1: lock and a key, that feeling, that feeling of something
Speaker 1: being unlocked, or like a light getting switched on, and
Speaker 1: something that was sort of unknown to you becomes a
Speaker 1: little bit more knowable. Yeah, this this thing that you
Speaker 1: you feel but you don't know, and you don't even
Speaker 1: know if it's real. It's a feeling that you have,
Speaker 1: and I think that's how I entered in my therapy.
Speaker 1: But it's true for for any anything, right, and especially
Speaker 1: for secrets, right, and something we feel but but we
Speaker 1: don't really understand what that feeling is. Well, and what
Speaker 1: you just said of like we don't even know if
Speaker 1: it's real. I think that that is so universal. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that that that feeling, And you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things about family secrets is that, UM, so
Speaker 1: often with my guests there was a period of time
Speaker 1: where they were haunted by something myself included without even
Speaker 1: knowing what it was that was haunting them, which of
Speaker 1: course makes the haunting that much more haunting. You write
Speaker 1: in your book at one point, you know, demons tend
Speaker 1: to vanish when we turn on the lights, and you know,
Speaker 1: if we're if we're stumbling around in the darkness. Um,
Speaker 1: we just don't know what it is that is forming
Speaker 1: our behavior, in our in our inner lives, right right.
Speaker 1: And I think that I really call it ghosts, the
Speaker 1: ghosts of the unsaid and the unspeakable. It's those things
Speaker 1: that actually haunt us. So the tagline for for family
Speaker 1: Secrets is, and I thought about it often when I
Speaker 1: first read your book, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. Um, so let's let's start with the
Speaker 1: secrets that are kept from us. What is you know?
Speaker 1: This is such a I mean, that's a question you
Speaker 1: could probably spend two hours answering, But like, what what
Speaker 1: is a legacy emotionally of the secrets that are kept
Speaker 1: from us? Do you know the secrets that are kept
Speaker 1: from us? Are are could be very very different, right,
Speaker 1: I really focus on secrets that are purposely kept from
Speaker 1: us and secrets that we are you know, we're kept
Speaker 1: from us, but it's there there, but we just never
Speaker 1: are not allowed to talk about them. And and of
Speaker 1: course those are things that happened sometimes before we were
Speaker 1: even born or very early in our lives, and times
Speaker 1: when we cannot even remember and know anything about, and
Speaker 1: that there is a decision that made that this is,
Speaker 1: this might hurt us, this might hurt the children, or
Speaker 1: this might this is something too shameful to share. And
Speaker 1: I think when we talk about legacy is how those
Speaker 1: secrets are actually alive inside our minds and how we
Speaker 1: hold them as our own material, as if there were
Speaker 1: they belong to us. Yeah, you you write in your book,
Speaker 1: um you quote the psychoanalysts Maria Torrek and Nicholas Abraham
Speaker 1: saying what haunts are not the dead, but the gaps
Speaker 1: left within us by the secrets of others. I think
Speaker 1: this is the second kind of secrets, that are six
Speaker 1: things that we consciously are aware of. Right you know
Speaker 1: where you where your family came from, or in the book,
Speaker 1: I talk about my my own family trauma that I
Speaker 1: know that my mother lost her brother and he drowned
Speaker 1: when she was a child, and he was fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: And this information is known to me. It's not a secret,
Speaker 1: and yet it is kept as a secret, which change
Speaker 1: that I'm not allowed to talk about it. This is
Speaker 1: an emotional material or you know that is not almost
Speaker 1: there's no permission to discuss and therefore you have to
Speaker 1: keep it in an isolated place in your own mind
Speaker 1: and kind of dissociated, right it didn't forget about it
Speaker 1: and and not not remember and keep it almost as
Speaker 1: a secret from yourself. I imagine that must come up
Speaker 1: for you a lot in your practice. You know, that
Speaker 1: feeling of people coming to therapy not quite knowing why
Speaker 1: something just doesn't add up, or something doesn't make sense,
Speaker 1: or there's a kind of pervasive or general feeling of
Speaker 1: unhappiness or or anxiety or whatever it might be. How
Speaker 1: do people get at that? What is that kind of
Speaker 1: untangling process? Like, I'm sure it's different in every in
Speaker 1: every instance, but what, um, how do we explore that
Speaker 1: which we don't even know we're trying to explore. It's
Speaker 1: a good question because, as you said, people come to
Speaker 1: therapy with what we call the presented problem, and that
Speaker 1: is the problem that anyone who comes to therapist as
Speaker 1: I come to therapy because I suffered from or because
Speaker 1: like when when my therapist asked me, why are you
Speaker 1: here right? What is the presented problem? And and I
Speaker 1: actually think in retrospect that for me, the presented problem
Speaker 1: was that I didn't know right. That was the problem
Speaker 1: that I presented right away in the first session. I
Speaker 1: think that that is that is true for most people.
Speaker 1: We come with some something that we want to explore,
Speaker 1: and the secrets are actually and they find their own
Speaker 1: way into this room and the secret keep themselves, but
Speaker 1: they also explore themselves at some point and things come up,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think that's part of it, is
Speaker 1: that in the process of therapy, part of what I
Speaker 1: listened to is the gaps. The gap, Those gaps the
Speaker 1: things that somebody tells you something and you follow them
Speaker 1: and you listen to what they say, but she also
Speaker 1: listen to what they don't say, where some some moment
Speaker 1: there is something that goes somewhere else and you feel
Speaker 1: it's almost in your body, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That something is missing there, and that listening to the
Speaker 1: gaps is where we look for the secrets. We look
Speaker 1: for the secrets where where there are gaps. M hmm.
Speaker 1: I love that. Um. That makes so much sense. So
Speaker 1: what about you? You're you're talking about the kind of
Speaker 1: secret that maybe is within a family UM that is known,
Speaker 1: known but not known, there's no permission to talk about it,
Speaker 1: what not? The kind of secret that really is um buried, like,
Speaker 1: is not not visible, really unknown? What does that do
Speaker 1: to people? Mm? Hm? You know those secrets and are
Speaker 1: the secrets that are on purposely are kept us right
Speaker 1: with with the fantasy, I would say that people can
Speaker 1: actually keep secrets from each other. And we know that
Speaker 1: we communicate with each other in so many ways detachment
Speaker 1: and unconscious communication and the way that we live inside
Speaker 1: each other and and really feel each other. And so
Speaker 1: if I go back to the gaps, that is something
Speaker 1: that we we feel and we don't always know where
Speaker 1: it comes from. We have that feeling that you describe
Speaker 1: and we don't know what it is. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is something that you see even in therapy.
Speaker 1: It's something that we talk about. But but those secrets
Speaker 1: are are not visible even even to the therapists and
Speaker 1: the patients until they appear on their own, until something happens.
Speaker 1: And and you know, in the book, I talk a
Speaker 1: lot about about our own investigation. People go and ask
Speaker 1: family members, for example, and they have a theory about
Speaker 1: what happened, and they go to their mother or their
Speaker 1: father and discibling, and suddenly new information appears. But in
Speaker 1: order to be ready to know, for us to know,
Speaker 1: to go ask and actually be ready to hear the answer,
Speaker 1: and very often there should be some process that leads
Speaker 1: us there two to the right question and to the
Speaker 1: capacity to know the answer. I think many times we don't.
Speaker 1: Even One very common example that I can give you
Speaker 1: is that people tell me that very quickly they have
Speaker 1: what we call a her moment. And I think that
Speaker 1: that is actually about those family experiences that they knew
Speaker 1: about but never put them together, never actually made the
Speaker 1: link between two things. And so I think that's another
Speaker 1: way of secrets to come up, because some of the
Speaker 1: work on secrets is about making connections. It's about about
Speaker 1: listening to something and saying, oh, actually I know something
Speaker 1: from my history, and now I can link it to
Speaker 1: something that is happening in my life now. And that
Speaker 1: requires a couple of things, right. The idea of distrusting
Speaker 1: one's own stealings like distrusting one's own reality and and thinking, well,
Speaker 1: maybe that's not real, you know, the denying that feeling.
Speaker 1: So there's there's that, and then there's also readiness. I've
Speaker 1: now had these deep conversations I think seventy of them
Speaker 1: at this point for for this podcast with people who
Speaker 1: have you know, contended with really intense secrets in in
Speaker 1: all different kinds of ways. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I've seen because I'm always looking for in a way,
Speaker 1: what what the threat is between you know, all of
Speaker 1: the stories, because all the stories are so different. But
Speaker 1: one of them is that when we find out feels
Speaker 1: at least as critical as what we find exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: and I think we need to be ready for that
Speaker 1: because sometimes this is it is it is too traumatic
Speaker 1: to find out a secret. So I think when we
Speaker 1: find out is very crucial. And of course in the
Speaker 1: process of therapy, a lot of what we do is
Speaker 1: preparing ourselves to finding out the the unknown and being
Speaker 1: ready to make to make those links that that into
Speaker 1: some degree open our eyes. Elly. Do you think that
Speaker 1: every family has secrets? Yeah, I do think that secrets,
Speaker 1: the siccrets could be very different from each other. Right,
Speaker 1: It could be because you anything we can't face becomes
Speaker 1: the secret, and from others an altar from ourselves, but
Speaker 1: anything that is shameful. And therefore many secrets are about
Speaker 1: sex and sexuality, affairs and sexual identity, and of course
Speaker 1: trauma often becomes a secret. And so many families actually
Speaker 1: have secrets that are related to a history of trauma.
Speaker 1: You know that the parents do not want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, we have a lot of material
Speaker 1: that we cannot face and don't feel comfortable with, and
Speaker 1: that material, emotional material, is pushed, you know, to to
Speaker 1: some secretive parts of our mind and and become the secret.
Speaker 1: And I think, I think we're hardwired not to want
Speaker 1: to hurt our children, have our children know things that
Speaker 1: might be painful. We're hardwired to protect our children. And
Speaker 1: I think so often parents when they when they keep
Speaker 1: a secret, are keeping that secret because they think that
Speaker 1: they're doing their children, they're doing the right thing for
Speaker 1: their for their children, you know, in the name of love,
Speaker 1: when in fact there's really secret seep. There's there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as a kept secret. Ultimately, they they have
Speaker 1: an impact act even when we don't, even if even
Speaker 1: if we can't kind of see them or name them
Speaker 1: or apprehend them. Yeah. Absolutely, I think that that is
Speaker 1: really the main thing that I hear from patients, those
Speaker 1: who find out about the secrets and those who keep secrets,
Speaker 1: is that they frame it around protection. I think. I
Speaker 1: think people usually don't tell themselves that they try to
Speaker 1: protect themselves actually, And you know, I think remembering, for example,
Speaker 1: a trauma is very painful, so you don't only want
Speaker 1: to protect your children from your trauma, you also want
Speaker 1: to protect yourself from remembering. And you prefer to forget
Speaker 1: and even shameful things, right, There are things from people's
Speaker 1: history that that they prefer to forget and they prefer
Speaker 1: to not tell anybody, and that becomes a secret, which
Speaker 1: means also not to themselves. But I totally agree with
Speaker 1: you that one of the main reasons, at least the
Speaker 1: rationalization around it, secrets between parents and children is meant
Speaker 1: originally to protect the child from a knowledge that the
Speaker 1: parent thinks might be too complicated. And think about it,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of efferent when we think
Speaker 1: about reproduction, right and these days, how children are born.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things that people don't know
Speaker 1: and we'll never know, you know, about ideas idea for example,
Speaker 1: for many many people, that's the secret. Many many children
Speaker 1: do not know that they were born through ideas, and
Speaker 1: the parents prefer to keep it as a secret. And
Speaker 1: I think there are many other ways that you know,
Speaker 1: even you know what things that happened early in life
Speaker 1: when when we were babies, we will we might never know, right,
Speaker 1: but those times really impact our lives. They shape our lives.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. What do you see as the
Speaker 1: cost of secret keeping? You know? One of one of
Speaker 1: the things that um, it's heartbreaking that I hear often
Speaker 1: it's sort of a two fer. It's a double whammy. Um.
Speaker 1: Someone makes a discovery that a secret has been kept
Speaker 1: from them, and then perhaps they they explore that or
Speaker 1: they go to someone in their family and say I
Speaker 1: found this out. And then they're asked then to keep
Speaker 1: the secret from others. They're they're asked to hold it.
Speaker 1: So they have a combination of of having it been
Speaker 1: kept from them and um, the conundrum or the dilemma
Speaker 1: of whether they can speak it. Yeah, and the burden
Speaker 1: right of keeping it's keeping a secret and asking right,
Speaker 1: but they're having that responsibility. Something really interesting that you
Speaker 1: said is that sometimes people tell themselves what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this, I'm keeping the secret to protect you know,
Speaker 1: X person or why person, when in fact that's very
Speaker 1: noble and you know, kind and loving and of course
Speaker 1: the way that we all want to think about ourselves.
Speaker 1: But um, often it's really that they're keeping it because
Speaker 1: they're protecting themselves because they don't want to They don't
Speaker 1: want to think about they don't they don't want to
Speaker 1: feel it again, they don't want to re traumatize themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to define themselves around that, right,
Speaker 1: if you think about right, many many secrets are about
Speaker 1: infidelity and affairs and and things that happening marriages. If
Speaker 1: you don't define yourself as a cheater, you would and
Speaker 1: if you and if you cheat it you want to
Speaker 1: forget it. She don't want to remember that you have
Speaker 1: done that. So I think that that is one reason
Speaker 1: that we want to forget. We want to keep secrets
Speaker 1: because it's kind of attacks are identity and the way
Speaker 1: we think of ourselves. If something terrible happened to you
Speaker 1: on the street, right and you were you know, you
Speaker 1: were attacked, you know, many people keep those things as
Speaker 1: a secret. And I think some of it is the
Speaker 1: shame and the embarrassment of being a victim, especially in
Speaker 1: the past. And if you think about Holocaust survivors, there
Speaker 1: was many years where people didn't talk about it. It
Speaker 1: was it was it was shameful to be a victim,
Speaker 1: because being a victim is being so helpless, and and
Speaker 1: there is something deeply shameful about feeling helpless and to
Speaker 1: be defined that way, or to be afraid of being
Speaker 1: defined that way. Yeah, even by yourself. It's about identity.
Speaker 1: It's about who who I am. And I think often
Speaker 1: those things that happened to us are those that are
Speaker 1: so to speak, and not me experience. Right, they're outside
Speaker 1: of the way I define myself. And then and then
Speaker 1: I have to struggle with that. The best emotional way
Speaker 1: for me to do that is to erase it from
Speaker 1: the right, from my memory, I would say, to dissociated,
Speaker 1: to deny it, to use to use defense mechanisms to
Speaker 1: really push it away and not even remember it, right,
Speaker 1: and definitely keep it as a secret to nobody else
Speaker 1: will ever see me that way and know that I
Speaker 1: am back because it's it's and not me experience. What
Speaker 1: is the mechanism um with which someone can really tuck
Speaker 1: a piece of knowledge, a secret away, to the extent
Speaker 1: that they really don't consciously hold it anymore. They could
Speaker 1: pass so lie detector test. Where does it go and
Speaker 1: how does it act in that kind of situation. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. You know. We have we have a
Speaker 1: line of defense mechanisms, right of defenses that service in
Speaker 1: that way from dissociation. Really, and I think the dissociation
Speaker 1: is a big one when it comes to trauma, for example,
Speaker 1: to repression and denial, and those are really you know,
Speaker 1: those are very effective mechanisms that allows us to forget
Speaker 1: anything that feels threatening to our psyche anything. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's very interesting because our mind will basically attack any
Speaker 1: information that makes us anxious or or too afraid or
Speaker 1: two or too threatened if especially if it threatens the
Speaker 1: the you know, if if if it could cause us
Speaker 1: some kind of fragmentation or breakdown, our mind will really
Speaker 1: help us in that way. I think the problem with
Speaker 1: that is that many of those secret go go into
Speaker 1: our body and are expressed through our body. Right, So
Speaker 1: I like to think about it or describe it as
Speaker 1: like a secret contract that our unconscious has with our body,
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, let's make sure that she
Speaker 1: doesn't know that. So let's let's keep it, you know,
Speaker 1: let's keep it away from her consciousness, and then some
Speaker 1: of the material is expressed through the body. That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: How does that manifest itself when our minds remembers our
Speaker 1: bodies are we have to forget because otherwise our bodies
Speaker 1: have to remember what our minds cannot remember. And in
Speaker 1: what and what kind of ways does that express itself
Speaker 1: in the body of the mind has shut it down.
Speaker 1: I think that what it's what we call symptoms, right,
Speaker 1: headaches and all all those somatic symptoms that are real.
Speaker 1: We don't make them up. That really our body will
Speaker 1: express for our back pain, headaches, is even obsessions and
Speaker 1: all of those things that we know that are the
Speaker 1: symptoms that are either held through the body or we
Speaker 1: don't understand in other ways emotional symptoms and the understanding
Speaker 1: it really when that is when that when the mind remembers,
Speaker 1: the body is allowed to forget. But as long as
Speaker 1: the mind cannot remember, and that's what you were talking about,
Speaker 1: the defense mechanism, right, as long as the mind is
Speaker 1: not allowed to remember this because it's too threatening, then
Speaker 1: the body has to do some of that work right
Speaker 1: of remembering. It plays itself in the body. And I
Speaker 1: didn't know that the body keeps the score right. The
Speaker 1: body is there is a system there, and the body
Speaker 1: is there to help the system survive. So I would
Speaker 1: imagine that's where symptoms of anxiety or panic attacks come from,
Speaker 1: like a big red flashing light warning warning. Yeah, panic attacks, anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I think I'm talking even about things that are
Speaker 1: even less less obvious than like wright and back pain,
Speaker 1: eggs Ama. You know all of these things that have
Speaker 1: that are connected to our right, that express our mind,
Speaker 1: on our skin, on our in our bones, in our
Speaker 1: many many kind of illness and physical illness. That is
Speaker 1: the burden of the the unknown and the unspeakable on
Speaker 1: our body. I'm going to quote you back to yourself.
Speaker 1: There's um from the from the introduction of your book.
Speaker 1: These are your words. The secrets we keep from ourselves
Speaker 1: are meant to protect us by distorting reality and to
Speaker 1: help us hold unpleasant information far from our consciousness. In
Speaker 1: order to do that, we use our defense mechanisms. We
Speaker 1: idealize those we don't want to feel ambivalent about. Identify
Speaker 1: with the parent who abused us split the world into
Speaker 1: good and bad. In order to organize the world as
Speaker 1: safe and predictable. We project into the other what we
Speaker 1: don't want to feel or what makes us too anxious
Speaker 1: to know about ourselves. Yeah, so could you talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about this idea of projection which I think
Speaker 1: people so often you know here and don't really understand.
Speaker 1: And you know, this way we have of organizing the
Speaker 1: world so that, you know, so that we can tolerate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the secrets well keep from our selves and
Speaker 1: our defense mechanism that is so effectively helps us with
Speaker 1: that is based on the really the the idea that
Speaker 1: of surviving, right, we need to feel safe, We need
Speaker 1: to survive. We need to think that the world is
Speaker 1: not so scary, that our impulses are not so overwhelming,
Speaker 1: that people are not so dangerous, and that we could
Speaker 1: differentiate between good and bad that we will. And I
Speaker 1: think these days when the world, you know, after this
Speaker 1: really intends a few years, the world became even to
Speaker 1: some degree or even more chaotic, and aggression is everywhere,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I think we use even more
Speaker 1: of our defenses because we want to make sure that
Speaker 1: we're safe that and that we could differentiate. For example,
Speaker 1: splitting is one defense mechanism, right between good and bad.
Speaker 1: I want to know, like in the fairy tale, who's
Speaker 1: the good mother, who's the bad mother? Where is it
Speaker 1: safe and where where the danger is? And if it's
Speaker 1: too mixed then you know, like Children's fairy tale for
Speaker 1: children's right, they are they help the children organize the world,
Speaker 1: organize it and divide it into good and bad so
Speaker 1: the child can really feel safe. And that's where it
Speaker 1: comes from, right there, This is what the goal of
Speaker 1: that making sure that we feel safe in the world.
Speaker 1: And so when we talk about projection, projection also supposed
Speaker 1: to help us feel safe in the world and and
Speaker 1: supposed to help us deal with our own unpleasant feelings
Speaker 1: about and things that we don't want to know about ourselves.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to know that I am a
Speaker 1: very jealous person, let's say. And so I look at
Speaker 1: you and I say, oh, Jenny is so jealous. She's
Speaker 1: always jealous. She's jealous of me, right, and and that's
Speaker 1: how I get rid of that feeling, and I basically
Speaker 1: put it on another person. The beauty of that mechanism
Speaker 1: is that it is sometimes so effective that I will
Speaker 1: choose somebody who actually can take it on and will
Speaker 1: start behaving the way I would like them to behave
Speaker 1: those those emotional mechanisms are are really profound, you know.
Speaker 1: And it is based on the understanding that people actually
Speaker 1: know each other more than we think they do and
Speaker 1: communicate with each other unconsciously, you know, communicate with each
Speaker 1: other unconsciously, and that communication she can go from one
Speaker 1: person to another without passing through consciousness and without awareness
Speaker 1: or or even intention, and so I could communicate with
Speaker 1: you something. And with couples, you see, that's the most
Speaker 1: how couples are actually giving each other where you see
Speaker 1: these couples that one person is so gentle and sweet
Speaker 1: and the other person is the aggressive one. And you
Speaker 1: see how the person that is afraid of aggression, well
Speaker 1: activate the person that is less afraid of aggression to
Speaker 1: express aggression for them. You know, these couples that one
Speaker 1: is the good and one is the bad, right, and
Speaker 1: it is based on how much each of people feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: For example, if you're talking about aggression, if I'm really
Speaker 1: really afraid of aggression, I can and I cannot be
Speaker 1: I can't have confrontations. I know how to how to
Speaker 1: recruit my partner and and you know, and do something
Speaker 1: that they will unconsciously take that aggression for me, express
Speaker 1: it for both of us. Is that what happens in
Speaker 1: an unhealthy relationship or do you think that to some
Speaker 1: degree that happens in all relationships. I think it happens
Speaker 1: in all relationships, and to some degree it happens in
Speaker 1: healthy relationships, right, because I think about how how productive
Speaker 1: that is in a good, good couple will allow each
Speaker 1: other to to use each other in productive ways. Right,
Speaker 1: And I think good or a bad couple if we're
Speaker 1: splitting here, right, if there is a good or a
Speaker 1: bad right, part of it is really about how productive
Speaker 1: things are or how destructive they are. It's all on
Speaker 1: the spectrum of of productive or destructive. And and I
Speaker 1: think that that is one way to evaluate if something
Speaker 1: works or not, or how much there is And you
Speaker 1: see that there are couples where there is a lot
Speaker 1: of power struggle and a lot of a lot of them,
Speaker 1: you know, negotiation about no, you're bad, No you're bad,
Speaker 1: No you did this? Then you right? Then they throw
Speaker 1: it back on each other because imagine what happens when
Speaker 1: both people cannot do something, cannot they cannot afford feeling something,
Speaker 1: and nobody wants to hold it. So I think, to
Speaker 1: your question, sometimes it is actually productive that we hold
Speaker 1: things for each other. It's almost inevitable. I have twins,
Speaker 1: you know, my twins are. It's amazing to see it,
Speaker 1: how they hold things for each other. One of them
Speaker 1: is always this, and the other is that, and then
Speaker 1: they split. And when they used to be baby, is
Speaker 1: only one of them used to cry when they're hungry.
Speaker 1: They always they always shared the responsibility and so, and
Speaker 1: what you're describing is also this kind of um switching,
Speaker 1: like switching of roles, right, like sometimes it's you, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's me. Right, then that is more healthy, usually right
Speaker 1: when there is more when there is more flexibility when
Speaker 1: we could switch. But you know, in some cases, when,
Speaker 1: for example, when somebody is really afraid that that will
Speaker 1: they become overwhelmed when they feel angry, sometimes they choose
Speaker 1: unconsciously somebody who knows how to do it for them
Speaker 1: and represent them in the world, and they kind of
Speaker 1: the kind of and that is not necessarily unhealthy. You know.
Speaker 1: It really depends, it really depends how productive it isn't
Speaker 1: how much it works for both people, and that they
Speaker 1: don't write that it just works for them. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment with more family secrets. There's this
Speaker 1: passage in your book, Um, an important question comes to
Speaker 1: the surface. Is it better for the next generation of
Speaker 1: trauma survivors, the inheritors, to know or not know? Does
Speaker 1: it even matter assuming our ancestors trauma finds its way
Speaker 1: into our minds anyway? And you know I found that
Speaker 1: a really Trenchian, you know, kind of provocative question. UM.
Speaker 1: There's a phrase a little bit later in your book,
Speaker 1: the phrases raw wordless form. Um. You know, when it
Speaker 1: comes to talking about trauma, we always walk the delicate
Speaker 1: line between too much and not enough, between what is
Speaker 1: too explicit and what is secretive, what is traumatizing, and
Speaker 1: what is repressed, and thus remains in its raw wordless form.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that that is like such
Speaker 1: a powerful idea for for people. The whole question of um,
Speaker 1: you know, is it like I remember when my book
Speaker 1: Inheritance was out and I was UM speaking to audiences
Speaker 1: a lot. At one point during the question and answer period, UM,
Speaker 1: people put questions, they wrote them down, and they were
Speaker 1: all handed to me on index cards, and there was
Speaker 1: this one question that was written down in this sort
Speaker 1: of shaky hand, and the question was what good is knowing?
Speaker 1: I kept that. I kept that index card. I still
Speaker 1: have it um like somewhere on my desk because it
Speaker 1: was such a powerful question and if I felt like
Speaker 1: such a plaintive question, almost an angry question, like what
Speaker 1: good is knowing? So I would pose I would pose
Speaker 1: that to you as as my final question for you,
Speaker 1: what good is knowing? It is a fantastic question, you know,
Speaker 1: you know in emotional inhert sence, I present the conclusion
Speaker 1: that we inherit even family traumas that we were not
Speaker 1: told about. And I think that the question what's good
Speaker 1: in knowing is a complicated one because it brings us
Speaker 1: back to the issue of regulation. How do we regulate?
Speaker 1: How do we regulate in general, and how do we
Speaker 1: regulate trauma and traumatic experience and emotions? And I think
Speaker 1: that knowing and what is too much and what is
Speaker 1: not enough? Right? And I think that on one hand,
Speaker 1: the fact that we know anyway so many things, and
Speaker 1: we often think that something is wrong with us when
Speaker 1: it is not confirmed in reality. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of gas lighting around it. I mean in one of
Speaker 1: the stories in the book, I really talked about Nowell
Speaker 1: for example, that he feels like he headed brother and
Speaker 1: his mother always stop with this, you know, with these
Speaker 1: crazy fantasies. You have enough. And so these kids, these
Speaker 1: sensitive kids that actually sense things are often called crazy
Speaker 1: and irrational. And you know, so there is something about
Speaker 1: that when things are very close to consciousness, it is
Speaker 1: such a relief. People that are they are so relieved
Speaker 1: by awful information that they learned, right, and you're thinking like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is like I'm so happy to
Speaker 1: know that actually my father committed as died by suicide, right,
Speaker 1: And it is like this is such a relief for me.
Speaker 1: And I think about that piece too, and of course
Speaker 1: the other it's very it's a very very relevant idea
Speaker 1: of the issue and about you know it, can it
Speaker 1: be too much to know for us even or why knowing?
Speaker 1: If it could really overwhelm us? And and is there
Speaker 1: is there too muchness in knowing? And I think the
Speaker 1: answer is yes, because anything, any secrets, any secret that
Speaker 1: is we knew as a way that is thrown on
Speaker 1: us right in a way that the other person we
Speaker 1: talked before about getting rid of something information as a
Speaker 1: way it is not fully processed, that is not fully
Speaker 1: thought through, and it's just alrone on the other person.
Speaker 1: It could be pretty devastating. And so I think when
Speaker 1: we talk our regulation, and maybe that's the conclusion of
Speaker 1: this answer, we have to go back to processing. Processing. Processing.
Speaker 1: You know, when you get a processed secrets, it's usually
Speaker 1: a gift. You know, it is packed, it is you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean
Speaker 1: it goes both ways, doesn't it Like a processed secret
Speaker 1: and the capacity to process a secret, Yes, it's yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: A processed secret is packed and wrapped and delivered in
Speaker 1: a way that is very different than if somebody gets
Speaker 1: you something and just say and just throws it on you,
Speaker 1: even if it's the most precious thing thing, it is
Speaker 1: too much. It's like throwing up on you. And I
Speaker 1: think the processing and our own and our own processing.
Speaker 1: I always ask my guests if they're coming on the show,
Speaker 1: they're coming on the show because they have processed something. Um,
Speaker 1: they've already I'm not here to process it with them.
Speaker 1: They've processed it and we're here to unpack it. And
Speaker 1: and I always ask my guests, and it doesn't always
Speaker 1: end up on the show. Most of the time it doesn't,
Speaker 1: but I always at the end ask are you do
Speaker 1: you wish? Do you wish you didn't know? And in
Speaker 1: seventy people, not one person has said, yes, I wish
Speaker 1: I didn't know? Um And I think that that in
Speaker 1: large parts that that doesn't mean that no one would
Speaker 1: ever feel that way. I think it has to do
Speaker 1: with exactly what you're talking about, that that sense of
Speaker 1: something having been worked through on on on both sides,
Speaker 1: so that what it ends up feeling is illuminating and liberating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think those people who feel that they
Speaker 1: wish they didn't know, which I believe some people feel
Speaker 1: that the majority of people don't, but some people feel
Speaker 1: that way, and I think that is because they have
Speaker 1: no way to process that thing that they knew that
Speaker 1: they know. Again, it's about process, and they cannot process it,
Speaker 1: and they're then they're stuck with it, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like processing is digesting, it's suggesting, it comes
Speaker 1: one way and and goes another way, and there is
Speaker 1: a movement in it. When you're stuck with something, it's
Speaker 1: like swallowing something that you cannot digest. And I guess
Speaker 1: I mean, is that available to all of us, that
Speaker 1: capacity to process over time? You know, I think that
Speaker 1: it is part of our capacity, is humans to process,
Speaker 1: but we we I think that it is very difficult
Speaker 1: to process things on our own, and so I think
Speaker 1: the it is much much easier to do it with
Speaker 1: another mind. I would say that that that is a
Speaker 1: witness to our process, and that helps us digest it
Speaker 1: and and sits with us. It's very it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to do it alone, you know. Yeah, that's sometimes right.
Speaker 1: That's part of why secrets are not processed, because the
Speaker 1: secret they've kept along in the dark. As you said before,
Speaker 1: quoting that, you know, turning on the lights. For more
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