Keeping trauma a secret has real consequences.
The research is clear.
Trauma memories that you keep a secret,
That you never speak about,
Can lead to increased psychological and physical problems,
Including a heightened and overactive stress response,
Bouts of unexpected and often uncontrollable anxiety and fear when you are triggered by the past,
Shame,
Self-isolation and difficulties forming and maintaining healthy relationships.
Keeping trauma a secret hinders the healing process and creates a sense of ongoing victimization.
I was recently on the phone with a second cousin and we spoke about the sudden and unexpected death of her older brother.
Her brother died of an accidental drug overdose when she was in her 30s.
It was at a time culturally when we as a society kept secrets.
We kept the truth hidden.
Hidden out of shame and embarrassment.
Hidden out of a lack of knowledge of what to do.
Because we create secrets when we don't know how to deal with trauma,
Abuse and the truth.
I learned of my relative's tragic death when I was a teenager and I remember being told that he died of a heart attack.
Likely there was some truth in that,
However it certainly wasn't the whole and honest story.
On the phone that day my second cousin detailed how she was recently feeling sad and down and yet carried on as she always did ignoring her feelings for the most part and telling her husband and children she was fine.
When this tragic event happened no one talked about the truth.
No one spoke of it.
It was sealed and put away and only an ever-present sadness remained of this tragedy.
No one spoke about their feelings,
Their pain,
Their grief.
It was all swept under the carpet like it didn't exist.
Traumas are quite often horrific.
They affect the human psyche in ways that we can't even begin to comprehend until much later because the first response is to survive.
All of us have different coping mechanisms and learn behaviors that somehow made it possible for us to get to now.
What is so very valuable is the change in mindset that we currently hold.
Mental health is not stigmatized as it once was.
We are encouraged to talk and share openly about our mental health and the challenges we experience.
Trauma is a word that we speak about.
We name the experiences that have been traumatizing and we are encouraged to talk,
To find the right help,
To not keep the secrets of childhood and any of the past.
Because secrets keep us vulnerable to shroud ourselves in guilt,
Sadness,
Fear,
Blame,
Emotional and also physical suffering.
All of which can be avoided because in naming and talking about what bad things have happened,
And more importantly,
What we can do to heal from our experience,
We can release trauma's shadow and its obtrusive grip that changes who we are and how we react in the present.
Let me step into a detailed look at the consequences of keeping trauma a secret and then I will share how you might best begin to unpack what has happened in a way that doesn't require you to feel tortured by reliving it without relief.
There are seven main conditions or consequences of keeping trauma secrets and likely many more ways that you are impacted without realizing.
The first,
Shame and isolation.
Secrets,
Especially those related to trauma,
Can reinforce feelings of shame and isolation,
Namely because you may believe that you are alone in your experience and you can fear judgment or rejection if you disclose the trauma and also without the right tools it can become debilitating to your self-esteem and self-worth.
Second,
Keeping it a secret makes it difficult to process trauma.
Keeping a trauma secret hinders the brain's instinctive need to make sense of what has happened,
To have answers and the truth and to heal.
Without support and validation,
Without having a way to talk about what happened constructively and without focusing solely on the trauma itself,
Rather learning effective strategies for healing,
It becomes difficult for someone to make sense of what happened which leads to ongoing distress and confusion,
Unending sorrow and even,
As my cousin described,
An inability to address her feelings and to acknowledge the need for help.
Third,
Trauma secrets create psychological problems.
Research shows that keeping trauma secrets can and does lead to various psychological problems including depression,
Anxiety,
Eating disorders,
Obsessive-compulsive tendencies,
Cognitive impairments and difficulty forming healthy relationships.
Trauma,
As we know,
Is also the source of post-traumatic stress disorder and its different subtypes,
That is,
Disassociative PTSD,
Uncomplicated PTSD,
Complex PTSD and comorbid PTSD.
Fourth,
Keeping your trauma experience a secret creates physical symptoms.
The emotional toll of keeping a secret can manifest in the physical symptoms such as headaches,
Backaches,
Nervous twitches,
The inability to self-soothe,
Digestive issues and can also contribute to the development of chronic pain.
Fifth,
Trauma secrets impact your relationships.
Secrecy can create distance and distrust in relationships.
Depending on the nature of the trauma and if it was a reoccurring event,
Survivors often struggle with intimacy,
Communication,
Sexual relationships and certainly trust,
Impacting their ability to form healthy connections and to feel safe in their existing relationships.
Sixth,
Keeping trauma a secret carries the potential for re-traumatization.
Avoiding reminders of the trauma can lead to hypervigilance and difficulty managing triggers,
Further perpetuating the distress one feels.
And if the trauma continues in a current relationship and one continues to live in secrecy of this abuse,
The individual is reliving trauma and experiencing re-traumatization daily.
And seventh,
Self-blame and shame.
Keeping a trauma secret can cause you to internalize blame for the trauma,
Especially if you are subjected to manipulation or coercion.
This typically leads to feelings of guilt and shame,
Making it even harder to seek help and support.
And I want to clarify one term.
It's called trauma blocking.
Trauma blocking is different from the choice we make or a learned behavior of keeping traumatic experiences secret.
Trauma blocking is defined as the brain's way of walling up traumatic memories in order to help cope with distress by distancing the individual from the event.
It is different from the behavior,
Of course,
Of choosing to keep trauma a secret.
Next,
What can you do if you have kept a trauma experience secret?
I'm going to give you my best recommendations.
You may need to do these in parts,
In steps,
And my recommendation is to do them with the help of a trained professional so that you can expedite the process that well may have been decades in the making.
First,
If you have never really looked at a trauma from the perspective of healing,
It can be a momentous task that quite likely feels overwhelming and impossible.
Many people already avoid talking about the past because it is so very painful,
And also because talking about it on its own doesn't actually heal the trauma event.
There are important psychological barriers we have to overcome,
And in truly setting ourselves free from the past event,
The tragedy,
Even ongoing abuse,
And to which may never be truly forgotten,
You need the right tools and also a reckoning of why this has happened.
I can remember a client's healing journey as an incest survivor.
She wanted to have answers.
She needed to understand why,
For example,
Was she singled out in a family of five children,
And how this could have happened by someone that she trusted and loved.
In her case specifically,
And as it can be in the case of abuse of a family member,
There was also fear inflicted upon her to keep the secret and the threat to never speak about it.
The important answers that you arrive at in therapy are to help you make sense of what has happened.
The truth sets you free,
Even when it is so difficult.
The aim of healing is not to continue to relive the past.
In fact,
As you make sense of what has happened,
And as you reconcile that you are not to blame,
That you did nothing wrong,
And as you learn invaluable tools for understanding and then processing the experience in a way that informs and empowers you,
You can arrive on the other side of a trauma experience without reliving all of its painful details as you once did.
And even as you may think of the trauma,
I can tell you the experience of that memory and the feelings will have shifted.
It will not be as impactful,
It will not be as debilitating,
It will feel as though you have control of yourself.
In the case of my second cousin,
She had received a few sessions of bereavement counseling when another death occurred in her family.
Her son-in-law died of cancer all too young.
The significant loss,
Including the months of visits to hospital and supporting her daughter,
Triggered waves of emotions that affected her far more intensely than what would be considered reasonable.
Having bereavement counseling at that time helped her to connect the dots back to the earlier unspoken,
Unhealed tragedy of losing her own brother,
And as he too was in the prime of his life.
As we spoke on the phone that day,
My cousin realized that the sadness that she had recently felt was likely triggered by yet another dear family member's recent death.
Trauma and grief are going to stir up earlier unhealed experiences and,
Most certainly,
The experiences of what we have never talked about.
Like the metaphor of peeling the layers of an onion,
One can be ever so amazed at what may be found.
Because healing needs to happen consciously.
I believe that we can never reasonably expect all of healing to be reconciled in a matter of a few sessions of therapy,
And as it was for my cousin after decades of living with the trauma memory in silence.
What you can do is begin with identifying what experiences continue to feel raw,
Unresolved,
Unhealed.
What memories continue to surface unexpectedly?
What continues to trigger you?
Write these in point form,
And if you are able,
Note how the past experience continues to impact you.
This first level of healing is a state of acknowledging what continues to be painful.
The next step is to notice how you have historically reacted when triggered.
Do you shut down?
Do you become anxious,
Afraid?
Do you lash out?
Do you,
As my cousin did,
Deny her own feelings as a result of the learned expression of downplaying the true tragedy,
And in effect denying yourself from the true feelings of your experience?
Here you have the starting places for which to talk to a professional,
And to receive the careful and guided help of processing now,
In the present,
What has happened,
Together with a new layering of expression of identifying what you need in order to heal,
And the psychological tools that can offer deep healing.
Each part of this healing journey includes naming what happened,
Being willing to answer the questions you have,
Seeking greater clarity and understanding,
And being willing to talk,
To admit,
To feel and express what emotions live within you,
And all with the right therapeutic care so that you have the new tools to be able to calm and soothe yourself,
And to feel supported as you walk the steps back to what I call wholeness.
The idea that bad things have happened,
Indeed they happen to all of us,
And yet in spite of this you can feel whole and complete and healed.
And if you would like my help in your journey of healing,
Please reach out to me.
Thank you so much for listening.
This is Dorothy Sonoye Juno.
Namaste.
