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. Today you'll be hearing a conversation between myself
Speaker 1: and Lori Gottlieb, therapist, speaker, and New York Times best
Speaker 1: selling author of the recent book Maybe you Should talk
Speaker 1: to someone. I had the chance to talk with Lorie
Speaker 1: about the emotional toll of secrets. I hope you'll enjoy
Speaker 1: this bonus episode. In the meantime, mark your calendars for
Speaker 1: the season two launch of Family Secrets on Monday, August nine.
Speaker 1: I just want to have a conversation with you about
Speaker 1: everything you understand about secrets and sort of what you
Speaker 1: experience in your office in that way, and you know,
Speaker 1: just what you've learned about humanity the way that, um,
Speaker 1: how do we hold secrets as we walk through life?
Speaker 1: And what does these secrets due to us? Right right?
Speaker 1: That's such a that's such a great question. I think
Speaker 1: so complicated, because we all have secrets. I think even
Speaker 1: those of us who believe that it's best to not
Speaker 1: keep these kinds of secrets, I think we still have
Speaker 1: them anyway. And I think that the reason that we
Speaker 1: keep secrets is because partly it's you know, it's Carl
Speaker 1: June called secret psychic poison because they're so corrosive, and
Speaker 1: also they're they're often all about shame, but I think
Speaker 1: they're also about this question of, you know, will I
Speaker 1: do more harm by weathers to myself or to others
Speaker 1: by revealing the secret? Do we just let sleeping dogs lie?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that a better? You know, that's one
Speaker 1: of the questions I get all the time these days,
Speaker 1: is um, just would it have been better to not know?
Speaker 1: Or you know, are there some secret it's that are
Speaker 1: good to keep? A great example of that is, UM,
Speaker 1: something I see not infrequently in therapy, which is someone
Speaker 1: comes in and they say, Um, you know, I had
Speaker 1: this affair, but I realized by having this affair that
Speaker 1: I really wanted to be married to my to my partner.
Speaker 1: And if I reveal that I had this fair he
Speaker 1: or she will leave me, or or that here she
Speaker 1: will never look at me the same way or never
Speaker 1: trust me in the same way, or it will it
Speaker 1: will paint our marriage. Um. And you know there's that
Speaker 1: question of if this person never finds out, if my
Speaker 1: partner never finds out, Um, wouldn't it be so much better?
Speaker 1: Why should I put my spouse through this trauma um
Speaker 1: and all of this, you know, sort of like the
Speaker 1: harrowing uh, you know, a most a roller coaster that's
Speaker 1: going to follow if I revealed this thing that meant
Speaker 1: nothing to me and that and that actually made me
Speaker 1: realize how much I want to be married to this person?
Speaker 1: And where do you come out on that or does
Speaker 1: it depend on the person? I think it depends on
Speaker 1: the person. But I also feel really strongly that the
Speaker 1: truth comes out. I feel like we think we can
Speaker 1: keep secrets, but in this day and age, you can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, even before this day and age, it was
Speaker 1: hard to keep those kinds of secret. Things surface, But
Speaker 1: now you know your pernan will find a text and
Speaker 1: be like, what was that from ten years? You know,
Speaker 1: and then the affair is right there and why didn't?
Speaker 1: Why did you? You've been holding the secret for years
Speaker 1: and you never told me. It's even worse because then
Speaker 1: there's a betrayal layered on top of the betrayal, right,
Speaker 1: and and I think there's also aside from the practical
Speaker 1: issue of that, they're really it's very difficult in this
Speaker 1: day and age to keep a secret. Do you think
Speaker 1: that there's something subtler and more invisible than that that
Speaker 1: secrets do? I mean? I know in my story and
Speaker 1: you know, growing up being a secret and hearing so
Speaker 1: many stories of other people who have grown up not
Speaker 1: knowing the truth of their identity, not knowing the truth
Speaker 1: of their paternity or their maternity. There was those were
Speaker 1: secrets that were kept with everyone keeping them really believing
Speaker 1: that it was iron clad impossible for those secrets to
Speaker 1: come out, and at the time it was iron clad impossible,
Speaker 1: and yet there was a residue or a kind of
Speaker 1: leakage that those secrets would leave on you know, the
Speaker 1: child or you know this sense that so many people
Speaker 1: I've talked to have said versions of I always knew there.
Speaker 1: Something wasn't right, something didn't add up. So even with
Speaker 1: a lack of absolute knowledge of what that secret is,
Speaker 1: it was impacting everyone around it. That's such an important
Speaker 1: point because we have an intuitive sense when something feels off,
Speaker 1: and the person keeping the secret also is impacted by
Speaker 1: that secret. So in the case of the affair, that
Speaker 1: person still holds that experience and they're going to be
Speaker 1: different and changed because of it. It's not like things
Speaker 1: can just go back to normal. You can't just pretend
Speaker 1: it didn't happen. And so even if you think you can,
Speaker 1: and so your partner is going to pick up on that.
Speaker 1: And even with little kids, I think intuitively we are
Speaker 1: hardwired to kind of be able to suss out what
Speaker 1: is real and what is not real. That's why they
Speaker 1: always say, like parents things that they can kind of
Speaker 1: pretend certain things around their kids. Their kids know and way,
Speaker 1: whether it's something like what happened with you, um, you know,
Speaker 1: or I was just talking to um someone in therapy
Speaker 1: the other day and um, somebody and her family had
Speaker 1: mental illness and they were saying, no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: this person's you know, it's a medical it's like this.
Speaker 1: They don't want to say specifically what she was told
Speaker 1: because it's just specific, but you know she was told
Speaker 1: it was something else, and even as a four year old,
Speaker 1: you know, she was like, no, that doesn't seem right
Speaker 1: and and and and that was the worst part, was it.
Speaker 1: It was that enough, this is happening around her, but
Speaker 1: the secret made it worse. The secret made her feel crazy.
Speaker 1: It made her feel like, well, wait, I trust these adults,
Speaker 1: but at the same time something it feels like the barometer,
Speaker 1: something is like telling me that this isn't right, And
Speaker 1: then you have that internal thing about am I crazy?
Speaker 1: Can I trust myself? Um? It really it really affects
Speaker 1: the way that you navigate yourself through the world and
Speaker 1: think about you know, what is real and what is
Speaker 1: not real exactly. I mean there's almost an element of
Speaker 1: gaslighting to it, like just a sense of this doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me, or I'm feeling these feelings that
Speaker 1: I don't know why. And I think, particularly in children,
Speaker 1: but maybe in adults too, there's a way in which
Speaker 1: when we can't really make things add up for ourselves
Speaker 1: what we know something's not quite right, we tend to
Speaker 1: turn those feelings against ourselves because we don't know what
Speaker 1: else to do with them, that's right. We either say, well,
Speaker 1: something's wrong with me, right, Um, this feeling of uneasiness
Speaker 1: have to do with me, as opposed to it has
Speaker 1: to do with something out there that is really making
Speaker 1: me uneasy. But we but when you were saying, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what's making me uneasy. There's nothing to see here.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. The other night,
Speaker 1: during a Q and a. At a reading of mine. UM,
Speaker 1: someone in the audience asked me whether I think, of course,
Speaker 1: by having become this sort of accidental expert on secrets, UM,
Speaker 1: whether I think that there's ever a good reason to
Speaker 1: keep a secret. How would you answer that question? On
Speaker 1: the surface, I would say no, because I think that
Speaker 1: the truth is liberating for everybody, even if the truth
Speaker 1: is painful, even if the truth is hard. I think
Speaker 1: that again, we have a sense that something's off and
Speaker 1: we don't know the truth. UM, there's always a sense
Speaker 1: of weight, just something feels wrong. UM. Somebody wrote into
Speaker 1: my Your Therapist column the other day and wrote that
Speaker 1: this person was, I think, found there biological mother, and
Speaker 1: then found the biological father, and then had a really
Speaker 1: beautiful relationship with the biological father, and then found out,
Speaker 1: after I think a couple of decades of having this
Speaker 1: beautiful relationship with him, that she took a DNA test
Speaker 1: and found out that he's not actually her biological father,
Speaker 1: that the mother had given misinformation about who her biological
Speaker 1: father was. And and potentially because her guess is that
Speaker 1: maybe it was because maybe the biological father, maybe it
Speaker 1: was a rape, maybe it was you know who knows.
Speaker 1: She doesn't know. The mother is dead now, so she
Speaker 1: doesn't know, UM. And so this person is now eighty
Speaker 1: the father, and she was wondering, you know, do I
Speaker 1: do I tell him that he's not my biological father?
Speaker 1: And then if I do, do I what about the
Speaker 1: rest of the family and will they I feel like
Speaker 1: they spent all this emotional energy and welcomed me into
Speaker 1: the family and did all these things, but I'm not
Speaker 1: actually this person's a biological daughter. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: in those cases, a lot of times, when people are
Speaker 1: you know, old, and they might die soon, people re
Speaker 1: really wonder about whether the secret would be more disruptive
Speaker 1: to the person, whether it would kind of disrupt their peace.
Speaker 1: And I used to think differently about that. I used
Speaker 1: to think maybe it would, But now I think, o't
Speaker 1: bet that this person would welcome the truth and that
Speaker 1: he would still love her just as much. I don't
Speaker 1: think that it would be like, you know, a hallmark moment,
Speaker 1: because I think I'm sure it would be very discombobulating. Well,
Speaker 1: it takes it takes time, right like it. I think
Speaker 1: that that's one of the thoughts I'm having about someone
Speaker 1: who's elderly and that's I've heard similar stories. Um, as
Speaker 1: I've been hearing so many people's stories. I've heard very similar,
Speaker 1: a very similar story of a woman who discovered that
Speaker 1: her dad who raised her was not her biological father,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, he's in his eighties and she
Speaker 1: said it would break him. And so she now, because
Speaker 1: of the decision that she's made to hold this secret,
Speaker 1: has put herself in the position of being a secret keeper, right,
Speaker 1: And and it's a painful thing to be a secret
Speaker 1: keeper when you I think it's probably a painful thing
Speaker 1: to be a secret keeper full stop, but it certainly
Speaker 1: is if you sort of inherit a story or find
Speaker 1: something out and then feel that you have to keep
Speaker 1: the secret in order not to hurt other people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing about revealing secrets, especially later on after a
Speaker 1: lot has happened, is that you kind of have to
Speaker 1: rewrite the past in a different way. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the memories that you have look different knowing that there
Speaker 1: was this other thing going on at the same time.
Speaker 1: An example of that is like somebody finds out that
Speaker 1: their partner was having an affair and they were and
Speaker 1: their memory was we were on this beautiful trip to Rome,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was really romantic and at the
Speaker 1: same time you were having this affair with this other person.
Speaker 1: And now my memories of you know, that year or
Speaker 1: that trip or that experience is so different because this
Speaker 1: whole other thing was going on, and now you've robbed
Speaker 1: me of that memory that's I've heard like that. So
Speaker 1: there is this Any time there's the decision made to
Speaker 1: UM to reveal a secret, there is a reckoning that happens,
Speaker 1: and that is unavoidable and unavoidably painful. So I imagine
Speaker 1: that you probably encounter a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: resistance to going through whatever that unknown dark tunnel to
Speaker 1: the other side is going to be. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's fine to intellectually know on the other side there's
Speaker 1: liberation UM, which I certainly believe and know and know
Speaker 1: in my own case to very much be true. But
Speaker 1: there's the there's the going through what it's going to
Speaker 1: take to get there, the both hurting another person or
Speaker 1: thinking that you're going to hurt another person and wounding
Speaker 1: a relationship that's important, whether it's a father child relationship
Speaker 1: or its partners, and having somehow the faith that and
Speaker 1: the belief that on the other side of that that
Speaker 1: is actually going to be better, that everyone is going
Speaker 1: to be better for it. I think there generally is
Speaker 1: relief when you get through that tunnel that on the
Speaker 1: other side, what's waiting for you with some kind of relief.
Speaker 1: If you're the secret keeper, I think there are people
Speaker 1: to whom you'll reveal the secret who won't um, who
Speaker 1: won't acknowledge the secret. Um. And for those people, they
Speaker 1: might not even get in the tunnel. They don't want
Speaker 1: to go there. So it's it's more that for the
Speaker 1: secret keeper there's relief. UM. So if say somebody was
Speaker 1: abused as a child, right and like say someone was
Speaker 1: abused by their mother's boyfriend and they tell their mother,
Speaker 1: you know, years later like this happened, and the mother
Speaker 1: does not believe it, does not want to believe it. UM,
Speaker 1: there's relief for the person who tells the secret, even
Speaker 1: though it's frustrating. UM. But I think that for the
Speaker 1: person who still I think that in those cases, people know.
Speaker 1: I think those mothers do know, you know, in that
Speaker 1: particular instance that they generally have a sense, but they
Speaker 1: don't want to they don't want to go there. It
Speaker 1: would it would be too disruptive UM. And so it's
Speaker 1: not that they willingly say, oh, I know this and
Speaker 1: I'm going to pretend they don't know it. It's it's
Speaker 1: a very unconscious process. They're not even aware that that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. Yeah, could you talk a little about that,
Speaker 1: because that's UM. I mean, I read a lot about
Speaker 1: that while I was researching inheritance and the you know,
Speaker 1: the period of time in which my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: we're having fertility issues and conceived me, you know, via
Speaker 1: a owner. And the people that I found and that
Speaker 1: I continue to that continue to reach out to me,
Speaker 1: often in their eighties seventies, eighties, who they were told
Speaker 1: to forget that it ever happened. Right. An entire industry
Speaker 1: was kind of in service of, we're going to help you.
Speaker 1: If you would like to explode this secret into bits
Speaker 1: and particles so that you will never actually remember it
Speaker 1: and possibly even believe that it didn't happen, you can
Speaker 1: do that. We're gonna We're here to help you. And
Speaker 1: so one of the things that I've encountered again and
Speaker 1: again are people who discovered that they were UM donor
Speaker 1: conceived and they discover this, usually through a DNA test
Speaker 1: that they take kind of recreationally, and then when their
Speaker 1: mothers are living, they go to their mothers with proof,
Speaker 1: you know, in their hands, you know, genetic DNA proof
Speaker 1: and and and say, mom, I don't understand. I mean,
Speaker 1: what happened I was doing or conceived? Tell me about this.
Speaker 1: And most of the women of a certain generation, um,
Speaker 1: I would say, the women in their late seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties that I've heard about, they actually have the response
Speaker 1: of that didn't happen, that didn't happen. And and they're
Speaker 1: not they're not lying. It's something much deeper than lying.
Speaker 1: And it feels deeper than what we think of when
Speaker 1: we you know, we use the word denial. We throw
Speaker 1: the word denial around a lot, but it would seem
Speaker 1: to me that to be in denial about something you
Speaker 1: actually have to hold it as an evident truth and
Speaker 1: then deny it. This seems like something beyond that. It's
Speaker 1: it's very much you know, we can call it denial,
Speaker 1: we can call it something else, but it's it's very
Speaker 1: much not in their awareness. Um so, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's something that they truly believe did not happen. In
Speaker 1: no matter you can you can show them the Dno,
Speaker 1: the DNA test must be wrong, oh you need you
Speaker 1: need to do a different one, or that that technology
Speaker 1: has all kinds of you know, problems with it. Um.
Speaker 1: You know that's there. That's what they believe. They're not
Speaker 1: saying that because they feel like you're stupid. You know,
Speaker 1: there's emmett em it um. You know, they're saying that because, um,
Speaker 1: they truly believe that there has been a mistake. They
Speaker 1: could pass a lie detector tests right, like they could
Speaker 1: actually pass the polygraph. That is their beliefs. And so
Speaker 1: and especially in you know, in your case, Um, you
Speaker 1: know when you talk about how they mixed the sperm,
Speaker 1: that was why they did that. When they knew that
Speaker 1: the man was infertile, and you know, there was that
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be the one that worked, but they
Speaker 1: mixed it so that there's like that point o one
Speaker 1: percent chance and boom, you guys, this miracle happened. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's what they're told. Look, it were and and
Speaker 1: and it was your own um. And so that's what
Speaker 1: they believe. Even though you looked nothing like that, you know,
Speaker 1: even I mean it was even you look nothing like
Speaker 1: your father. Um, that that's what they believed, and and
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, there are times when there's
Speaker 1: a crack in the surface where you know that they
Speaker 1: might have thought, given all the comments that people make
Speaker 1: and all of that, um, and sometimes they might think
Speaker 1: for a millisecond like oh, I wonder but oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: the doctor told us, so we know that she's are
Speaker 1: right right, We're going to pause for a moment. So
Speaker 1: this self convincing or like, how much of this has
Speaker 1: to do with I mean, I guess the way I
Speaker 1: think of it in in so many of the secrets
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and so many of the secrets that
Speaker 1: I hear, is that there's this potent come a nation
Speaker 1: of there's shame, there's often trauma in some way or another,
Speaker 1: and there's desire in my parents case and in many
Speaker 1: parents cases, I think, just the desire to just believe
Speaker 1: that the child is biologically both of theirs and then
Speaker 1: just get on with it, you know, And what difference
Speaker 1: does it make? No one will ever know. In the
Speaker 1: case of different kinds of secrets, it feels like there's like,
Speaker 1: why would a secret be kept to begin with? There's
Speaker 1: something underneath that secret that um you said it a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago that seems to carry some sort of
Speaker 1: whiff of shame or you know, and then everything that
Speaker 1: goes along with shame, isolation, aloneness. No one has ever
Speaker 1: been in this position before. I guess the difference in
Speaker 1: you were talking about, you know, the idea of of
Speaker 1: partners where where one has had an affair. I guess
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of a difference. It's I don't
Speaker 1: know that there's necessarily shame involved there, although there could
Speaker 1: be more like like self preservation, preservation of the relationship.
Speaker 1: I just want to fix this. How can I fix this?
Speaker 1: What's the fastest and most painless way to fix this?
Speaker 1: And we can just move on and pretend it never happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think that, you know, when you talked
Speaker 1: about desire, that really resonated because I think sometimes the
Speaker 1: desire is so strong for something to be the way
Speaker 1: that it's not that people will go to great lengths
Speaker 1: to deceive themselves and pretend again they don't know they're pretending,
Speaker 1: they're deceiving themselves to really believing that something is as
Speaker 1: it's not. So you you know, this is um, you
Speaker 1: know the biological child um. This you know this didn't happen,
Speaker 1: This abuse didn't happen. Um, you know, whatever, the desire
Speaker 1: is so strong for the thing to be true that
Speaker 1: they cling to that. And it's interesting because you know,
Speaker 1: in the psychological literature, um, you know, we have diagnoses
Speaker 1: for things like you know, delusions and you know what
Speaker 1: we call psychosis, even right when you believe things that
Speaker 1: are clearly not true. Um. But these people are not
Speaker 1: people who more psychotic. It's that there is such emotional
Speaker 1: valence attached to these outcomes that for their emotional preservation,
Speaker 1: they they you know, concoct a reality that isn't there.
Speaker 1: And what's it like for you sitting in the seat
Speaker 1: that you're sitting in as a therapist when you see
Speaker 1: this playing out in your office? How do you help patients,
Speaker 1: I guess, break through that sense of let's just call
Speaker 1: it denial or sort of being dissociated about something or
Speaker 1: you know, just willing it, like willing it into not
Speaker 1: being when you're seeing it play out, you know in
Speaker 1: the patient therapist arena. Well, first of all, so often
Speaker 1: people come in with secrets that I don't know about,
Speaker 1: and so remember I'm only hearing one perspective unless I'm
Speaker 1: seeing a couple of family, um, in which case the
Speaker 1: secrets are much more easy to detect. So if someone
Speaker 1: comes in and they say, here's my version of the story. Often,
Speaker 1: you know, say they come in with like a lot
Speaker 1: of anxiety or depression. Often there's something that they haven't
Speaker 1: dealt with. And sometimes it's a secret that they haven't
Speaker 1: admitted to themselves. So they can't tell me about the
Speaker 1: secret because they don't even know that it's a secret.
Speaker 1: But eventually it does come out because they can't remember
Speaker 1: these self selected group because they came for therapy. They
Speaker 1: didn't come to talk about a secret that they weren't
Speaker 1: even where they were keeping. But they came because something
Speaker 1: was you know, secrets really affect every area of our lives.
Speaker 1: They play out and behaviorally and emotionally. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: if they can't get air, they're going to find a
Speaker 1: way to manifest. And so it could be manifest in
Speaker 1: like insomnia, depression, anxiety, short temperateness, inability to get close
Speaker 1: to me, all kinds of things. So they're coming in
Speaker 1: for some kind of problem like that. And often what
Speaker 1: we find through the work as that there was some
Speaker 1: kind of secret. Either they were the secret keeper or
Speaker 1: they were the person from whom the secret was cut
Speaker 1: and that they had a sense of it right right,
Speaker 1: and so the pain that drove them to pick up
Speaker 1: the phone or send an email and contact the therapist
Speaker 1: like that, you know, I need help, you know, like
Speaker 1: when no one no one does that easily. I don't
Speaker 1: don't think very many people, except like in Woody Allen movies,
Speaker 1: um seek there seek therapy because it's like recreational or
Speaker 1: fun or you know, this is just you know, something
Speaker 1: cool and interesting to do. It's work and it's and
Speaker 1: it's coming. You know, the desire to be in therapy
Speaker 1: or the need to be in therapy originates in some
Speaker 1: kind of pain. So when someone comes in and you know,
Speaker 1: presents as anxious or fear fearful or short tempered, is
Speaker 1: there part of a sense that you have that well,
Speaker 1: I feel like this is almost an obvious question, but
Speaker 1: like that there's more going on there that there's It's
Speaker 1: not these symptoms are not free floating. Here's here's how
Speaker 1: it might play out. Someone comes in and they say, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was a child, my dad died
Speaker 1: in a voting accident, and I was really close to
Speaker 1: my dad and it was horrible. And I feel like
Speaker 1: I've never been able to have relationships with men um
Speaker 1: where I really trust them. I always kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always like messing it up. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I always think that they're like not telling me the truth.
Speaker 1: Things like that. Won't be that direct, but there are
Speaker 1: ways that they're sort of sabotaging relationships because they're always
Speaker 1: kind of looking for what's what's going to go wrong,
Speaker 1: And then they it's like, you know, you can't fire me,
Speaker 1: I quit um, you know the wave before um the
Speaker 1: person can break up with them because of this behavior
Speaker 1: that they're doing, and don't they're really having trouble and
Speaker 1: relationships and here's my family history and whatever, and they
Speaker 1: don't connect it to a all um. But then as
Speaker 1: you sort of talk to them more, you find out
Speaker 1: and it's just little little kind of things that they
Speaker 1: float out there that make you think, like, wait, did
Speaker 1: he die in a boating accident? Does this person believe
Speaker 1: that is true? And and and the person really believes
Speaker 1: firmly that he died in a boating accident. But as
Speaker 1: you work with them more, you start to see that, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this little thing that they grow into the conversation
Speaker 1: about you know, maybe you know he was depressed, but no,
Speaker 1: I don't really know. I mean, you know, those kinds
Speaker 1: of things. And then and then factually it comes out
Speaker 1: that this person has suspected for quite a while, even
Speaker 1: though it wasn't in her awareness that her father might
Speaker 1: have committed suicide. And then sep searching and find out indeed,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of there's a lot of evidence,
Speaker 1: even though some people aren't really talking about it that
Speaker 1: way and some people refused about it that way, that
Speaker 1: that he did commit suicide, and no one will ever know,
Speaker 1: you know, in this particular case, we'll ever know. But
Speaker 1: all sort of investigation leads to that conclusion. And when
Speaker 1: she was able to kind of pay that, oh that
Speaker 1: makes so much more sense. It was such a most
Speaker 1: horrible but it was the relief to her. It made her.
Speaker 1: It was such a relief that oh, so many things
Speaker 1: that didn't add up now add up in this way
Speaker 1: that even though it's so sad and so horrible, it's
Speaker 1: better than the other stories. Yeah. I think so much
Speaker 1: of what family Secrets mean this podcast is about, episode
Speaker 1: after episode, is the liberation and relief that ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: if they can stand there in the gale, you know,
Speaker 1: and let the let the wave crash over them and
Speaker 1: go through everything that is involved in the revelation, whatever
Speaker 1: the revelation is, um that sense ultimately of oh this
Speaker 1: makes so much sense. I mean, that's not necessarily comfortable.
Speaker 1: It can feel actually like you know when you get
Speaker 1: a new pair of glasses and it's a really intense
Speaker 1: prescription and for a little while, they're your eyes hurt
Speaker 1: because everything is too sharp and too clear. Like that,
Speaker 1: to me is what that feeling is. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I see, I see God, It's really hard
Speaker 1: to see, but I see, and I'm glad I'm seeing.
Speaker 1: And and I feel like just about everybody that I
Speaker 1: talked to reports that. And yet there's also a world
Speaker 1: of people like I. I did this event last week
Speaker 1: at a country club in New Jersey, and after I spoke,
Speaker 1: the audience had um index cards that were gathered with
Speaker 1: their questions, so they weren't actually getting up and asking questions,
Speaker 1: which I think allowed them to be a little more
Speaker 1: pointed and bolder in their questions because they weren't on
Speaker 1: the spot. I was just getting the index cards and
Speaker 1: reading them, and I was leafing through them as I
Speaker 1: was standing there, and there was this one index card
Speaker 1: and it read what good is it to know? And
Speaker 1: I didn't have to take that question. It felt a
Speaker 1: little bit almost hostile in its kind of intent, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't resist. I was like, Okay, what good is
Speaker 1: it to know? Where can I begin to answer this question?
Speaker 1: And I think I probably went on like a five minute,
Speaker 1: impassioned speech about all the reasons why it's so good
Speaker 1: to know. And that doesn't mean that it's comfortable, but
Speaker 1: that that's I mean. In every episode, I ask my
Speaker 1: guest towards the end, do you wish you hadn't known?
Speaker 1: And I still don't have a guest who said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish I hadn't known. And you know, even even
Speaker 1: ones that are in their story and are in a
Speaker 1: lot of pain about their story have the sense that
Speaker 1: you know what because it's true, because it's real, because
Speaker 1: it's my story, and because ultimately, you know, the the
Speaker 1: old trope of you know, the truth will set us free.
Speaker 1: Actually there's really something to it. Yeah, And it's not
Speaker 1: just it's not just the truth to some kind of
Speaker 1: isolated thing out there. It's the truth of who you are.
Speaker 1: So if you don't know the truth of who you are,
Speaker 1: you can never be truly comfortable in your own skin.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't even have to be something that directly
Speaker 1: happened to you. Like in my column a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: UM I answered a letter where somebody wrote in and said, Um,
Speaker 1: I am now married to this man who I knew
Speaker 1: the mother when she was alive, and the mother had
Speaker 1: had another kid that she put up for adoption before
Speaker 1: she was with this man, and then they got married
Speaker 1: and they had this son. Now this son is an
Speaker 1: adult and he nobody ever told him that he had
Speaker 1: this half sibling out there who knew about them, And
Speaker 1: I'm a church knew about them, but who had this
Speaker 1: half sibling out there and this other family? And um,
Speaker 1: you know, should we tell him? And she said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm worried that like one day, we're we're the only
Speaker 1: people who have this secret. We nobody else knows this
Speaker 1: as far as they knew, and we are worried that
Speaker 1: he will find out after we die. But we're also
Speaker 1: worried that if we tell him will really upset him
Speaker 1: that he never knew we had a half brother out there.
Speaker 1: And maybe you know, who knows where this person is
Speaker 1: and maybe he would want that. And and now what
Speaker 1: I said in my response was that this is part
Speaker 1: of his story. It's not just the mother's story and
Speaker 1: what she did and giving up the sun for adoption.
Speaker 1: It's his story. He has a half brother out there,
Speaker 1: and it gives him information about himself and is placed
Speaker 1: in the world, and who he is related to, and
Speaker 1: also who his mother wasn't And maybe what you know,
Speaker 1: the mother was always depressed in her life, the letter said,
Speaker 1: and maybe there was some connection, because you know, there
Speaker 1: was some She had a lot of feelings about having
Speaker 1: given up that child for adoption, and he might have
Speaker 1: personalized those feelings. And now it might make more sense
Speaker 1: to him why his mother struggled so much. It just
Speaker 1: flashes out his story and there will always be answers
Speaker 1: that he won't have, but at least he will know this,
Speaker 1: and then he can make a choice about what he
Speaker 1: wants to do with that information. That in the intuitive way,
Speaker 1: I think that people know, you know, he knew something
Speaker 1: was wrong with his mother, but then we make up
Speaker 1: stories to kind of make the stories make sense. But
Speaker 1: if we just had the information, it would be so
Speaker 1: much better. It's like that woman who discovered that her
Speaker 1: father probably committed suicide. She used to buy suicide books,
Speaker 1: you know, books like memoirs of people who there were
Speaker 1: there have been suicide in the family, and her boyfriend
Speaker 1: at one point remarked, like you read a lot about
Speaker 1: suicide before been able to acknowledge that maybe this would
Speaker 1: happened to her father. She didn't make the connection at all,
Speaker 1: but she would was always fascinated by suicide after her
Speaker 1: father's even though she never made the connection that maybe
Speaker 1: he had commit suicide. Right. It's like it's almost the
Speaker 1: difference between going through life and missing a couple of
Speaker 1: colors like from the palette, right or um, or just
Speaker 1: with this sense about oneself, like that there's something, there's
Speaker 1: something that doesn't add up. There's a subtle disconnect in
Speaker 1: some way. UM. And you know, we can go through
Speaker 1: life that way and even have possibly somewhat contented um
Speaker 1: and successful lives that way, but there's always something like
Speaker 1: this woman buying these books about suicide or you know,
Speaker 1: in my case, all of my books thematically, all my
Speaker 1: novels were about family secrets. Why you know, like I
Speaker 1: if you had said said to me, why um, I
Speaker 1: would have said, I don't know, it's just those are
Speaker 1: my themes. That's what I write about. My parents had secrets,
Speaker 1: and I would create, I had created narratives about what
Speaker 1: those secrets were. They were just not the big Cahuna secret.
Speaker 1: They were different versions of this. Here's my story about
Speaker 1: why my dad was depressed. Here's my story about why
Speaker 1: my mother was angry. Here's my story about why they,
Speaker 1: um we were, you know, unhappy with each other. All
Speaker 1: those stories were in fact true, they just weren't the
Speaker 1: whole truth. We're going to take a quick break. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. The other thing, too, is
Speaker 1: that secrets travel through the generations. So um, you know
Speaker 1: when you say you know the theme in your books
Speaker 1: was all about family secrets. Um, if you hadn't unearthed
Speaker 1: the secret, that might have passed along somehow to your
Speaker 1: son in some ways that we can't know. In my family, UM,
Speaker 1: my father discovered when he was very young, he was
Speaker 1: in the i think the attic of his parents house,
Speaker 1: and he discovered this box with all this, you know,
Speaker 1: like children's things that were not his or his older sisters.
Speaker 1: And one of them said Jack, and he said, just
Speaker 1: Barrens who's act and they didn't tell him that that
Speaker 1: was the brother who had died. Um. And he still
Speaker 1: doesn't know of what or he thinks that you know,
Speaker 1: with some like a flu or pneumonia or something like that.
Speaker 1: UM that he doesn't know where he's buried. He doesn't
Speaker 1: know where, he doesn't know anything. But he eventually like
Speaker 1: a neighbor at one point he remembers, like me to comment,
Speaker 1: you know that, um something that that the mother then
Speaker 1: sort of like changed the subject and he would There
Speaker 1: would be different things throughout my father's life where he
Speaker 1: kind of put two and two together and thought, we
Speaker 1: I think there was another person here and that boy
Speaker 1: in the picture was my brother. When he later found
Speaker 1: out that was in that the case. UM. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and I didn't know this.
Speaker 1: When I was a very little kid, one of the
Speaker 1: things I was fascinated by when I would write little
Speaker 1: stories myself was about like a dead child in the family.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it didn't happen, you know, it
Speaker 1: didn't happen to me and my brother, but it was
Speaker 1: just something there. I don't know whether that's a coincidence
Speaker 1: or not, or whether that secret was kind of like
Speaker 1: living in our d na um in the way that
Speaker 1: secret do travel through the generations. And when I found
Speaker 1: out about this story, when my father told it to me,
Speaker 1: I never wrote about that anymore. It was like there
Speaker 1: was something I was working out that I didn't even
Speaker 1: know I was working out. Right, Well, you know, writing,
Speaker 1: I think, or any kind of art making is one
Speaker 1: of the ways that we, you know, kind of work
Speaker 1: out our unconscious stuff and and we don't know that
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing. So then there it is. There's
Speaker 1: there's this body of work that you did as a child,
Speaker 1: and you were done with it because that thing that
Speaker 1: you were digging for in some way without knowing it
Speaker 1: was answered. And I mean, to me, that's so fascinating
Speaker 1: in terms of just the power of the conscious to
Speaker 1: do that. So is what you're describing there in terms
Speaker 1: of like secrets being carried through the DNA, which is
Speaker 1: such an amazing idea. Is that is that what epigenetics are,
Speaker 1: is that the that is that the study of epigenetics.
Speaker 1: Epigenetics is fascinating and we don't know a lot about
Speaker 1: it yet, but we talked about it sometimes in terms
Speaker 1: of like a surrogate tearing a baby UM whose DNA
Speaker 1: is different from that of the curroguit, right um, and
Speaker 1: will the or were in the other direction, Say a
Speaker 1: mother who used an egg donor and she's carrying the baby,
Speaker 1: but it's not her egg, right UM that you to
Speaker 1: make the umbryo. So they're saying that there's some way
Speaker 1: that the d NA UM, somehow, UM can I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this wrong. So, but there's some
Speaker 1: way that the d NA UM can be part of
Speaker 1: this child even though this wasn't her egg, right that
Speaker 1: the DNA because she's carrying the baby. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it all works, but I do think that
Speaker 1: there's like UM. You know, Carl, you talked about sort
Speaker 1: of like the collective unconscious, right, and you think that
Speaker 1: there's like a collective unconscious of a family, which I
Speaker 1: don't think he talked about, UM. But in terms of secrets,
Speaker 1: I think there is this like the way we carry
Speaker 1: the UM like the programming from our family. And if
Speaker 1: the programming is a programming of secrecy, we carry that
Speaker 1: through the generations. Sometimes we reenact it with our own kits,
Speaker 1: you know. We keep secrets in ways that our parents
Speaker 1: did um. But sometimes like a secret that loves over
Speaker 1: a family gets carried on um in ways because people
Speaker 1: know that something's off, but they just don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, and everybody in the family feels a little
Speaker 1: bit like uneasy and they don't know why. That's so interesting.
Speaker 1: So in that case, again, it's such an argument for
Speaker 1: secrets coming out because then presumably if if a secret
Speaker 1: is revealed in the light of day, it can't do
Speaker 1: that particular kind of haunting in a collective, unconscious way
Speaker 1: of a family because we see it because we know it,
Speaker 1: right and so and so that's why when people say,
Speaker 1: which is what you asked initially? Which is you know?
Speaker 1: Is there a reason to keep secrets? And I should
Speaker 1: say first that there's a difference between secrecy and privacy.
Speaker 1: Right We all places that need to be private for ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: We don't. We don't say every single thing that crosses
Speaker 1: our mind to another person. We don't share every piece
Speaker 1: of ourselves with another person. We need to keep some
Speaker 1: private spaces for ourselves. That's healthy. But the secret is different.
Speaker 1: The secret is something that is toxic um and it's faster,
Speaker 1: and that's different private. See, it's really healthy and feel good.
Speaker 1: Secrets you feel bad. So are there reasons that we
Speaker 1: should keep secrets? We can come up with a million
Speaker 1: reasons that we should keep a secret that all make
Speaker 1: very rational, intellectual sense, but it doesn't make emotional sense
Speaker 1: because in the end, that secret is going to affect people,
Speaker 1: even the people you're trying to protect, whether you like
Speaker 1: it or not, by virtue of being secret. And if
Speaker 1: you reveal the secret, people will have feelings about it.
Speaker 1: It might be hard for people, but ultimately, every single
Speaker 1: person who has ever heard a secret, even if it
Speaker 1: was something that really didn't want to be true, ultimately
Speaker 1: that I've heard um, they they say they wanted to
Speaker 1: know that it was better to know that it freed
Speaker 1: them up in all kinds of ways, in all areas
Speaker 1: of their life, in a way that the secret was
Speaker 1: limiting them and keeping them constrained or trapped. And you
Speaker 1: get the line. Family Secrets is an i Heart Media production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.