Unglorifying the Secret Keeper
How relational drama will drain your life force, vitality and creativity.
I prided myself on being the secret keeper.
Throughout the secret keepers life, there are repeatable things said to her:
“You are the only person I have ever told this to.”
“No one has ever known this about me.”
“You have safe energy, I could tell you anything.”
When she is the secret keeper, she is a role, not a person. She is asked by fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, to hold the words they would not dare conceal to the direct sources of their relational suffering. The secret keeper has been a psychological tacit of patriarchy, a way that relational immaturity gets passed into certain members in a family. Without much psychological maturity, the secret keeper may feel special. She gets the inside information, the invisible truths often locked in people's hearts.
A large part of being in the role of the secret keeper is triangulation.
Triangulation in psychology, particularly in the context of family therapy, refers to a situation where one person (the "third party") is pulled into the conflict between two others, often leading to dysfunctional relational dynamics.
If you are the person who others consistently go to with their relational drama with other people, you may have to wonder at some point…what is this person not telling me about how they feel about me behind my back?
When I was a teenager, I felt special because my father would come to me with how he felt about my mother. She would come to me to speak about her worries with my father. I was the one that got to hear about all the ways they didn’t like each other, or were worried about the other. In the moment, I supposed I was lucky that they felt safe enough to tell me how they really felt about one another. As I emotionally evolved in my work as a therapist, and in my own therapy, I realized that this dynamic crippled my life force.
Woman's creativity, life force, power and beauty is thwarted when she is placed in the role of secret keeper.
This set-up of being a secret keeper, spilled over into most of my relationships in my early adult life. I thought that being a friend meant listening to my friends' problems, with their other friends, partners, family— the interpersonal relationships that they did not have authentic relationships with.
I had not considered that I didn’t enjoy conversations like this until I looked squarely at my earliest childhood memories with the support of MDMA and my therapist. Once I began to feel all the repressed memories of childhood abuse, I began to realize how much of my life force had been stolen in my life by my parents' relational immaturity. Because my relationship with my parents is where I first learnt to relate, most of my subsequent relationships were also based on me playing the role of secret keeper.
I was not aware that there are ways to relate, with other humans, that aren’t centered around their relational drama. I didn’t know, until I did, that some people in this world are in full responsibility in their relationships and liked me, for me– because I exist.
I didn’t know that encounters with other humans did not require me to listen to their relational drama. That depth and closeness could look like a single star of eye contact across the grass plains, or dancing beneath the blue sky, or grappling on Jiu Jitsu mats, or reciting poems, or cuddling into linen sheets.
As I uncovered my family secrets, lies and repressed memories, in my relationship with my therapist, I began to feel less need to talk about relational drama. In fact, relational drama began to cease in my personal life. I began to have clearer boundaries with who and how I spent my time.
This is the power of the therapeutic relationship. It is a place where we go with our deepest wounds to learn about our interpersonal survival strategies and reclaim agency and responsibility.
I used to have several friends who were fellow healers. We came to one another with each other's relational drama. This was leaky energy. Because we were not directly in a therapeutic container, our connection became a place for us to emotionally dump our resentments toward others in the name of “healing our trauma.” It became an echo chamber of victimhood, negativity, and complaint.
Those friendships ended the moment I named that I did not want to relate through talking about relational drama anymore. The relationships were based on our survival strategies, not genuine connections. These women did not care about me as a person but as a projection. They wanted me to be the love they never had. I played along because I liked feeling the need to be needed. It gave me a false sense of value. One day I woke up and realized how empty it was to get my value from listening to others' relational drama.
To be clear, I needed a contained place to explore my relational hurts, history and wounds. I needed a place to process my relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners.
However, processing these things in my friendships was not helpful for me. I needed the structured setting of weekly therapy with a person who was more emotionally mature than I was. This ensured that I was focusing on recovering from my relational trauma rather than staying stuck in cycles of relational drama.
The difference is that therapy helped me get to the roots of my unnecessary suffering so I could end it. Whereas, showing up in friendships with our relational drama keeps us in cycles of endless gossip.
I didn’t know that being the secret keeper was crushing my soul, and draining all my creative energy out of me, until I did. And then, I needed to grieve, for a long time. I had to feel the sorrow of thirty-plus years of lost life.
When I was younger, I wanted to be an artist and a musician. Instead, because of this role of secret-keeping, I became a therapist. Nine years ago, when I first journeyed into being a counselor, I was in an act, a role. Unfortunately, many therapists are playing roles rather than being themselves. Yet, being a real human is where the true medicine is.
I have since fallen in love with my work as a psychotherapist. Psychotherapy has become an art, a listening for poetics, a celebration of connection, a place for those who walk through my doors to unravel the truth, to come home to their flesh and blood, the radiant essence of who they truly are.
My practice is ambitionless, which I learned through apprenticeship. Being ambitionless with my clients is not something I learned on a weekend retreat, in a yearlong training, or in a mass cohort of EMDR or IFS training. My style of therapy was learned in a steady relationship with my mentor for years, where I was on the receiving end of his agendalessness and humanness.
Once in a while, I like to hear about certain friends' emotional processes or the things they haven’t shared with anyone else. What’s different, though, is that our relationship is not based on their relational drama, and if I don’t want to hear about it, I feel confident enough to name that or shift the conversation.
I also don’t receive self-value from being the place others go to with their relational drama. I don’t need to be needed. I got me.
Reflection Questions:
Have you ever noticed yourself feeling special because you are the one people come to, to tell their secrets to? Were you ever this person in your family system?
If you were not the secret keeper, was there a person in your family who was? What was your relationship with them like?
Are there particular people in your life that you notice yourself chronically talking about behind their back? If so, what boundaries, or direct communication may you need to assert to protect your vitality?
As you read this, did you notice yourself contemplating any other ways you may relate with others that are based on a survival strategy, rather than your authentic self?
Think about your conversations with others, what are some common threads you see in how you relate? Is that really you, or is it an automatic habit?
Lastly, oftentimes the secret keeper is a young girl, or a woman. However, I’m curious if any of you men out there relate to this post? If so, what has it been like for you as a man?
Excellent piece Tara. I didn't have this experience as a kid—I was kept on the outside—but when I got into spiritual/therapy communities I thought being vulnerable meant talking about all our problems. No thanks :)