Aversion to secrets?

[Sunfl0wer]

Hey, so I am trying to wrap my head around some things, thoughts ideas.

On the topic of secrets, I have often had a firm stance that I do not like secrets for the most part.  Had there been more honesty, awareness, transparency, much abuse would have not been able to be perpetrated, maybe some of it would have been revealed?

There seems to be an unspoken pact in families where abuse exists:
Never tell people our business
If people knew, you would be shamed
If anyone finds out, it will hurt worse, you will be in a worse situation

And other such unspoken, and even spoken "rules."

The idea of having secrets has always been a triggering one sided thing for me, yet I want to challenge this some so I can maybe think more dynamically about it.

Yes, to an extent, secrets are what helped maintain the covert dynamics that we all in the FOO secretly agreed to by assuming roles and behavior to relate.

Yet, secrets also can protect us?
Or discretion can?
Call it what you like.
Just looking for some competing ideas about what you guys think about what part secrets have in your past to present day life. 
Thanks!

[Notwendy]

I understand what you are saying as secrets are a part of the dysfunction in my FOO and also have resulted in  damaged relationships and hurt.

I also think we can distinguish between keeping a secret as a part of dysfunction and confidentiality/respect for boundaries.

In my FOO- we had both- people keeping secrets and not having or not respecting boundaries by not keeping confidential things confidential. And not letting people keep confidential information.

For instance, my teen daughter may have a crush on a boy. That is her private feelings. She can choose to tell me or not, she can choose to tell her best friend or not. Her feelings belong to her. If she chooses to tell me, she can trust me to keep this confidential- not tell someone, so she isn't betrayed or embarrassed. The other thing she knows is that if she were to tell me one of her friends was in any danger- drugs, depression, abuse- I would not keep that a secret. Because she is clear about my boundaries, and she has her own boundaries, she knows that something said in confidence to me will stay in confidence unless someone is in danger. My part in this- for her to trust/believe me, is that I have to stay true to my word.

In my FOO, I might have had a teen crush on a boy. I may or may not have wanted to tell my mother, but she would tend to pry for personal information. Eventually, I might end up telling her and she would promise not to tell. Then, I might walk by her room and overhear her discussing this with a friend on the phone and then chuckle about these silly teen crushes. Or someone may say " I heard you had a crush on ____" because word got out. Well, maybe they silly crushes to my mother, but it would matter to me and I'd be upset if it went around the school. On the other hand, my mother would also share TMI with me- and so this lack of boundaries also applied to her.

The more hurtful secrets involved triangulation. Mom would take another family member aside and say lets' discuss a secret about Notwendy. Then she'd say bad ( fabricated) things behind my back and swear them to secrecy. She isn't so discrete about this as she's even done it with my H- and he tells me about it.  My mother tends to see things from a "her side, other person's side" and uses this secret game ( kind of like grade school "mean girls" ) to rally people to her side.

One idea is that if people do something, they assume others are doing it too. My mother has assumed I have been "keeping secrets" from her and has rallied other people to let her know if they hear anything about me and the kids.

How does one deal with this. This game has broken family connections with me. Some members have believed her "secrets" and refuse to speak to me. I know how hurtful this is- and I have cried a lot over these broken connections. I have tried to speak to one cousin, and it took about 15 minutes for what I told her to travel to my mom. I don't feel I can trust them, but I miss them. I thought they cared about me. Now, I am not sure. Mostly  I have had to let go of this wish for things to be different. They are who they are.

I don't feel I can speak to them about her. Then it becomes a question of who to believe- her or me. Then, I feel I am also participating in this. They can choose to believe her, and they can also choose to get to know me. So far they have not chosen to do so.

What I can do is choose my own boundaries about who to confide in and who not to. This isn't keeping a secret. It is honoring my boundary to disclose or not disclose that which is personal to me. I don't "keep secrets" from my mother- I choose have boundaries and to only disclose things I don't mind her telling others, since I do not trust her to keep the boundary of confidentiality.

The big family secret is her dysfunction. To keep it, to pretend she is "normal" is to not be honest. It's a fine line between being authentic and not bad mouthing her, but I try to do this as I need to be authentic to me.

[HappyChappy]

Sunfl0wer You right secrets can hide abuse, but I agree with Notwendy secrets are also boundaries. My sadistic NPD relative has done some down right dangerous things to me, that required him to get hold of personal details. Since keeping secrets from him, no more attacks or “bad luck” as he would say.

A BPD has an excellent approach to encouraging secrets, they train us not to say anything that may upset the BPD, they make us walk on egg shells. BPD also use isolation, by making us mistrust each other, using triangulation etc... .but it’s not the secret keeping bit that’s wrong in all this, it’s the lack of empathy and selfish motives that hurt the most.

Our mother was dubbed the Gestapo, in that she would aggressively grill all my friends, bombard them with questions. I was brought up to believe I wasn’t allowed to keep secrets. Only when I learnt about BPD and how they use personal details against you, to gas light etc... did I realise, secrets are at times essential. But maybe that’s just me. Conversely, when someone closes up and wont give out any information, this is also a red flag, because NPD tend to do this.  

[Notwendy]

Boundaries can be too weak, or also too strong. Both are dysfunctional. Someone can reveal too much and others, not reveal much at all. Poor boundaries can impede close relationships.

This is something that can influence our relationships. If someone has poor boundaries, someone with healthy boundaries may sense this and not want to get involved, but someone who also has poor boundaries might not pick up on the dysfunction.

One of my siblings can not resist my mother's prodding. If she senses that she isn't being told something, she pushes and pushes until this sibling just breaks down to stop it.

I don't think we have unusual "secrets" as  a family. We would be a very boring reality show. But we have things we want to keep private. My mother will ask personal questions.  Then, she feels we are withholding something as if we are doing that to her, but these are things we want to keep private. But we still tell her things that we'd be happy to share with others.

One can also have too tight boundaries. I have a relative who at times has mentioned the family dysfunction- and she asks me about it. I have told her a bit about how I am doing. Then, she clams up and doesn't contact me for weeks. I'd really like to know more about how she is doing-so I ask her, but she doesn't respond. It's one way, so that impacts my sharing with  her.

We establish boundaries with everyone we meet. The boundaries we have with people at work are different from close friends or family. Have you ever just met someone who opens up and tells you TMI? It takes me aback. On the other hand, there are people who don't share anything, even with people closest to them and that feels like a barrier.

[Fie]

Hello Sunflower and everyone,

This is such an interesting  topic  for me !  Just recently I have been realizing that I don't like secrets. My FOO was full of them : everyone's disorder or alcoholism had to be tucked away and was  a secret.
Now I can really not stand it when  everyone f.e. pretends that my grandma is not an alcoholic.
It makes me feel like I am the disordered one, believing things that they state are not true.

So yes, this rings very true for me, I dislike secrets.
Of course Notwendy is right and also me I keep things private towards my family. But as she says, that's more about boundaries. For me, it's more that I don't like that things are not being  revealed as they are. So in a way, I am referring to 'secrets' as in 'truth', opposite  to 'lies'.

xx

[isilme]

I no longer feel I should be expected to keep the actions of my FOO a secret, and realize that the taboo about speaking out concerning what was happening in my home as child (I was taught to lie to school counselors who were going to contact CPS) both allowed it to go on longer and worse, and also allow it to continue behind other closed doors.

But I also don't like to shout everything of my personal business out to the world, either, like if H and I had a fight about breakfast on the way to work - no one needs to know that. 

Yes, we as individual beings need some boundaries around ourselves, while at the same time, should not be expected to keep the old secrets (or current for those not NC) of FOO related pain 100% locked down.

I think that talking about my parents is important.  I think people need to know that just because your dad presents himself as "a great guy" to the community, it does not mean he's a good man to his children, all of whom he abandoned in one way or another (as a child who lived with him longest, I think I got the honor of the most beatings, and later the most psychological abuse).  I need those I work with to know why I might run and hide if he decides to drop by (he's stalked me at work in the past - I know it's dumb, but I still feel fight or flight concerning him).  I need them to understand that no, I don't see my mom at the holidays - she's so BPD/toxic, I can't.  It not only hurts me, but spills over into damage to H's family, and I will not have that.  I need friends to understand that my being Child Free by Choice is not because I am afraid of baby poop or puke, but that I am afraid of being a terrible mother, and that my instincts are not healthy. 

So many people have no idea that family interactions are anything other than what they live with - and so I talk more openly, still trying to keep things light, about my life experiences. 

What you feel comfortable talking about or keeping secret is subjective.  Some secrets are not harmful, and I think are needed for healthy individualism.  Secrets that allow people to hurt others are not. 

[Needless2say]

Secrets... .my FOO was full of secrets.  My Mom was uBPD everyone talked about how 'crazy' she was but no one ever did anything about it and outside of my FOO everyone saw a different woman.  My Dad was an alcoholic.  It was a big secret.  Talk about Dad's drinking and you were shunned from the family.  My Grandparents were also alcoholics as was my aunt.  My one aunt was a child abuser and would beat the crap out of my cousin in front of everyone and all the adults would just look away.  I remember begging my Mom to tell someone about the abuse and her saying, 'Its not our business.'

I remember feeling like I was betraying my Dad by telling my therapist he was an alcoholic.  He had been dead for 10 years. 

Yes, I despise secrets.  My family has no secrets.  Now after reading some posts I see that I may be just as bad for my open book behavior but I would rather live the truth than live the lie I did growing up.

[Fie]

Hello Needless2say  

Now after reading some posts I see that I may be just as bad for my open book behavior

Why would you think that ?