TRANSCRIPT
When I was a little kid, I learned early on that there were certain things that were going on inside of my family that I was not allowed to talk about outside of my family. My mother explained the word for this to me. She said those were family secrets. These were things that happened inside my parents’ relationship, inside my parents’ relationship with me, that were not to be discussed with other people who were not my parents. And basically, I didn’t even realize it then, but these were things I wasn’t really even supposed to talk about with them. So it wasn’t just that the outside world wasn’t supposed to know about it; we weren’t even really supposed to talk about it. They were just things that happened that we had to forget about or pretend that weren’t going on.
I remember one of the first times that I can recall that I was told that something was a family secret and we weren’t supposed to talk about it outside the family was that my parents had really ugly fights with each other. And they weren’t physical fights, but they were verbal and emotional fights. They said really nasty things to each other. They were very hurtful to each other. But more, it was on the subliminal level that I knew about full well because I knew my parents really well. It was in their tone. They were mean to each other. They didn’t love each other. They were manipulative of each other. They were having horrible power struggles.
The first few times that I can remember this happening, I remember being emotionally overwhelmed. I remember feeling horrible. I remember feeling scared. I remember feeling in a sort of state of shock that these people who I thought loved each other clearly, in some way, at certain times, didn’t love each other at all. And I guess logically, it would have brought up all sorts of questions for me, like did they love me? And I think it was pretty obvious because I think I tried to intervene in some of their fights early on, tried to get them to stop, trying to get them to be reasonable and love each other. And what I knew in those moments is I was not important. They did not listen to me. They didn’t care what I had to say.
I don’t remember actually—well, no, I actually kind of do remember feeling devastated. I remember this whole experience was very emotionally devastating to me, confusing, but in a way clarifying. And it was pretty obvious in these moments who my parents really were when they took off their masks, when they took off their false self, when they took off their personas. They were like really angry, kind of immature, nasty people in some ways. And I think it would have been very logical to consider that I might have wanted to talk about this with somebody. I have no idea who I would have talked about it with. Maybe I could have talked about it with my friends, maybe my teachers in school. I was probably five, six, seven years old. Maybe it probably happened earlier. I don’t remember.
Well, as I grew up, I saw more bad things inside my family, more bad things happen, more confusing and painful things, more ugly things, weird sexual things going on, strange things in my parents’ relationship with each other, lies that my parents told. They both told lies. And it’s like somehow, as a kid, I knew they were lies because I heard them say things that I just knew weren’t true. And it was like I wasn’t to talk about that. And again, in line with what I just said about family secrets, it’s not like it was a family secret just to the outside world. It was like it was a personal secret. It was like I was actually alienated from my family too. I couldn’t talk about any of this with them because I think if I talked about any of the stuff with my parents, they would have really not been happy with me because these things that were going on were their flaws, my parents’ weak sides, my parents’ unresolved traumas that they were acting out with each other, with me, with the world.
And it was like to survive in my family, I had to pretend it was all okay. I had to be fake. And later, many years later, I heard this that I really appreciated: you’re only as sick as your secrets. And in the case of my family, it was really true. We were only as sick as our secrets. We had a lot of really good things going on. A lot of people liked us. My friends liked coming over to the house. But it was like mostly my friends didn’t see these disturbing things, as far as I know. My parents hid these disturbing things from their friends, from their colleagues. It’s like, so basically, my dad, they hid it from their own parents, my parents hid it from their siblings. So it was like really my parents were very isolated people.
It was like the family became a place where they could be themselves more honestly, their good selves and their sick selves. In the outside world, they were allowed to better be their good selves. I mean, and they really did have a lot of good qualities. But this really sick stuff that was going on, these weird dynamics, these very unresolved, frustrating, disrespectful behaviors and attitudes and emotions, the world didn’t know that. The world didn’t see that. But I saw it. And over time, I think I had to learn to discern what I was allowed to talk about inside our family, outside the family, and what I wasn’t allowed to talk about. And it’s like I had to somehow develop judgment, and I had to actually incorporate my parents’ morals and my parents’ values.
And what that did to me is, in effect, that rendered me isolated from the world. It, you know, it rendered me alienated from other people, isolated from a lot of personal relationships. It left me not very open to intimacy because I couldn’t let people know these things. And also, another part of it was I had no experience talking about weaknesses. I had no experience talking about negative feelings. I had no experience talking about my insecurities because I wasn’t allowed to talk about my parents’ weaknesses and their flaws and their insecurities. So I grew up to say, in that way, I grew up unable to function in whole certain areas of life.
And I wasn’t cast forth into life with tools for having good, healthy relationships with people, with having really good friends who I could talk about stuff with. I learned even with my friends, my best friends, we didn’t talk about this stuff. We didn’t talk about any of this personal stuff. I didn’t confide in my friends about the horrible things that were going on. Well, actually, do I take it back? Because some of my friends did spend the night at my house, and I remember one friend of mine at least once witnessing my parents having a really ugly fight with all this nasty stuff going on. And my friend was really disturbed. He was shocked. And I think it was kind of interesting to me to watch my friend. He cried. Even yet, I never talked about it with him.
And then when I went to his family, I saw really disturbing things too, horrible things, and I never talked about it with him. And I saw things in other of my friends’ families, really terrible things. And so what I think when I reflect more in a bigger way on this family secrets thing, I think most families do this. Probably all families do this to some degree. And well, aside from the fact that it’s abusive to children, it’s like maybe this is what our society is made of—all these families that have all these disturbing things going on and they don’t let anyone know. And probably these disturbing things are a lot more common than we realize.
And I’ve had the experience now being a therapist, and I did that for 10 years. Well, what is a therapist in terms of this conversation? A therapist is someone who other people come and tell their family secrets to. So I made a career of it, in a way, of listening to other people’s family secrets. And also what happened to me is starting in my early 20s, after I’d been away to college for a couple of years, after I started traveling on my own, after I started hitchhiking, after I started meeting people who were…
A lot more honest than my family. A lot more open. Sometimes healthier, more friendly, more kinder to me, more respectful to me. I started realizing, wait a second, the family that I came from was a little sick. And slowly, it took a long time, slowly I did it. But I started talking about my family secrets. I started talking about my family secrets with my friends. And what I found early on is that my friends were also interested in hearing this stuff because they all had sick families too.
And I think it threatened them. It was like, wait, wait, why is Daniel suddenly talking about all this really ugly, unpleasant taboo stuff? And it wasn’t like they reciprocated. Some of them listened, maybe they were curious, but I don’t remember them meeting me halfway. That took longer. That took until I got older, until I found people who were more open and more honest. And I started making friends, definitely my twenties, definitely by my late 20s. A lot of people who I could really talk about these family secrets with. And people, when I talked about them, said, yeah, I had certain family secrets that were like that, or they talked about family secrets that were really different from mine, weirder things, other things, or things that my family had that were sick, their family was healthy. And ways in which my family was healthier, they were disturbed. And it was interesting to compare notes and to contrast notes.
I think this is a big part of why I became a therapist, because I realized the value in sharing. I realized the value in feeling safe to talk honestly about what had really happened, what I had gone through. It was like I was a thirsty person. I was dying of thirst. I was overheated, and here was a cup of cool water that I could drink. And I realized I didn’t have to hide stuff. Yes, I was only as sick as my secrets. I was only as sick as my family secrets. And when I talked about it, I felt relief. I could cry about it. I could return to loving myself in ways that I couldn’t love myself when I was a kid because it wasn’t allowed.
I was allowed to not have to put so much energy into filtering what came out of my mouth. I could just speak honestly. I didn’t have to think, well, how is it going to affect this person? And how are they going to treat me if they find out that I said this about something that they did to me that wasn’t even my fault? And I realized I didn’t have to go through all that mental process and all that mental mathematics. I could just say what happened, be honest. And I realized, wow, it was wonderful to tell the truth. It was easy. And guess what? The more that I told the truth about who I really was, the more people liked me.
The other thing is, the more I told the truth about the disturbing stuff that had happened in my life, the disturbing parts of me, the more I found that the healthy parts of me came out. And I was like much more able to just really be myself and be honest. But my family never liked it. They never said, “Daniel, you’ve become so honest. You’ve become such a more real, authentic person. Wow, it’s amazing, you’re like a flower that bloomed.” They didn’t say that. Instead, it was like, why do you do that? Why are you doing that? Or very upset. Or the other thing that they did is they started closing ranks with each other. They’ve all started talking with each other, even my extended family. What’s going on with Daniel? Why is he doing this? How can we stop him from doing this? Daniel’s disturbed. Does he have a psychiatric diagnosis? Mmm, I think he’s bipolar. He’s this, he’s grandiose, he’s a liar. How do we defend ourselves against it? Should we all say, you know, he’s not telling the truth? Well, he isn’t telling the truth, of course. And then they would start lying to each other and pretending the stuff that happened never happened.
And suddenly it was like when I hung around with them, it was uncomfortable. It was awkward in a way that it had never been. And suddenly I started feeling like I’m not a part of the system anymore. And sometimes they don’t like me, and they do overtly mean things to me, and they gang up on me now. And I thought, ooh, they don’t like me becoming healthier. And what did that do for me? It’s like I started reflecting back in my life and thinking, wait, if I’m a 25-year-old and they’re hurting me and making me feel disturbed because I’m being healthy, how would it have been for me when I was two and a half and they did those same things to me? I thought it must have been so much harder. There must have been so much more painful if they treated me this way in my 20s when I really didn’t need them as much. I could live away from them. I didn’t have to see them. I didn’t need people in my life who hurt me. I had friends who loved me. I was starting to develop a family of choice, a chosen family of people that were my friends who we had such a good relationship, we like family.
I started realizing, wait, this new family I’m in doesn’t treat me this way. They’re nice to me. And if they did treat me this way, I wouldn’t want to be around them. And it made me question, well, why do I want to be around these people who are my biological family? They hurt me so much. And then it made me go back to again when I was a very little kid, when I was 1 or 2 or 3 years old, 4 years old, 10 years old. I couldn’t afford to have them reject me. I couldn’t afford to be outside the family. I didn’t have the social skills to be able to develop friendships that really nurtured me in the way that I needed. I didn’t know how to develop intimate relationships. Actually, I was learning about intimacy from my parents. And part of what allowed that intimacy to stay alive with them, this intimacy that fed my soul, was that I had to not tell the family secrets. I had to obey these disturbed rules.
I wanted to say crazy rules, but then I wanted to protect them because I don’t want to call my family crazy. But it was crazy. It was crazy in the way it made me crazy. And it was like I had to thaw out of craziness when I got out of my family. I really had to like break that ice. And the way that I broke it was through grieving. And grieving was like an expression of all these long buried feelings coming out through tears, through sadness. Did my face just freakin’ down? The mask just melted away. And it was like through this process, I really did become less and less a part of my family. And I also felt, wait a second, my salvation is about talking about what happened.
I started to think when they imposed this dictum on me that I wasn’t allowed to share family secrets, they were actually killing my spirit. They were trying to kill me in a way. And it’s like it worked. They did kill a lot of my spirit in a way. I became frozen. I became someone who didn’t have feelings. I became someone who wasn’t connected to my sadness, wasn’t connected to my frustration, my anger, my confusion. I wasn’t connected to my ability to look at myself and say I have problems, I need to do something about it. I couldn’t see my own hypocrisy. I couldn’t see how I was acting out disturbing behavior. I was always, always defending myself. And that’s what my parents did. They always defended their bad behavior. And it was really a setup for me to have an unhappy life if I had continued on that path.
I didn’t want to have an unhappy life. I didn’t want to be isolated. I didn’t want to be lonely. I realized also that protecting my parents from their own bad behavior, protecting my parents from knowledge of how it made me feel what they did to me, wasn’t going to help me. It was going to help them stay dishonest. It was going to help them stay shut down.
Going to help them keep their false self and their grandiose images of themselves, but it wasn’t gonna help me be happy. It wasn’t gonna help me be honest. It wasn’t gonna help me find better friends, and it certainly wasn’t gonna help me be useful in the world. Because I think all these lies, family secrets, aka lies, don’t really help anybody.
[Music]