Anatomy of a Secret Life

Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie - Gail Saltz, M.D.
We all have secrets. They are part of our identity. They allow us freedom to discover who we really are. They are "the currency of close relationships, the coin of exclusivity, sometimes the key to love itself" (2). Secrets can be a source of intimacy but they can also be a source of shame, guilt, anxiety, and despair. We often battle "between the image of ourselves we want to present to the world and the more sinister image we try to harbor out of sight" (39). There are two kinds of secrets: (1) the secrets we keep to ourselves and (2) the secrets we keep from ourselves. Secrets begin when we are children and learn there is a world outside of our parents. Through secrets children navigate new landscapes and discover "that with the manipulation of information comes power. One way to manage information to one's own advantage is to lie, and by the age of five most children have become adept at this" (14). Sometimes it is painful when secrets are exposed. One the other hand, "[s]ometimes, when a secret life does get exposed, it was actually ready to die, and exposure isn't all that hellish. When the pain of keeping it alive becomes greater than the pain of surrendering its existence, then the revelation of the secret can create a sensation of release... The cycle of needing to conceal but wanting to reveal, of wanting to reveal but needing to conceal, has finally been broken" (170). Saltz has a beautiful passage where she connects the surrender of all secrets to love: "And when you find someone in whom you can confide all your secrets, and who in turn can confide all his or her secrets in you, then for the first time since infancy you will have found a person who seemingly knows everything about you, and that is what we might call love" (22). This is a beautiful definition of complete acceptance and intimacy, and since it involves a complete knowledge of the other, it can only be fully realized in a relationship with the Divine. Only God fully knows us and still fully accepts and loves us. In a relationship with the God with whom there are no secrets, we can surrender our shame in the unyielding warmth of divine embrace.