You might find it hard to believe but for most of my life I never told anyone anything. I never admitted to being afraid. I never cried.
I didn’t tell anyone of my deepest hopes, dreams or fantasies. I hid my shame, my anxieties and my mistakes.
I thought that if I kept everything inside it would make me impervious to pain. I thought it would make me more popular. I thought it would make me successful.
I was wrong.
When I got sober and went to therapy in my mid 30s, I stopped keeping everything bottled up inside me. I told my AA sponsor and my therapist things I had thought and had done that filled me with shame and regret. Sometimes they laughed and said, “Everyone did that.” Sometimes they helped me figure out how to make amends. Sometimes they said, “You’re going to have to let that go.”
Within a year of getting sober, I was telling others some of the (previously) most shameful parts of my past – if I thought it could help them. That’s a big part of how AA works.
In time, I was speaking to large audiences and doing the same thing.
Out in the real world, I found that my relationships with other people were deeper, richer and more meaningful because I was willing to express my fears, my mistakes and my feelings if in doing so, it would help them.
There’s a line between “confessing all” or “oversharing” and being open and honest. I’ve crossed that line before. (It’s pretty obvious when I see the look of horror on my unintended victim’s face as they back away from me). I’ve learned to temper this with a sense of timing and tact.
Today, I don’t cross that line very often.
People with whom I’m most open are those I know and trust. They know me too and are ready for my occasional, inadvertent 2×4.
In this blog, I write candidly and openly about many of my experiences. Most of the time, I’m thinking that if someone reads this and is thinking/feeling the same way, it might help them to realize they are not the only one.
Many times, I’m attempting to figure out exactly what I think and feel about something.
I have purposely not deleted any posts where, in hindsight, I was clearly not thinking straight because:
- I want to remind myself that I’m not always right.
- Reading how I was wrong and then adjusted might help someone else.
- It’s part of my own learning process for the next time I am in a similar situation.
But even here on this blog, I am trying to employ a sense of tact and timing. Some of the thoughts bouncing around in my head are best left unsaid until I can work through them. Often, by the time I do, I’ve realized that what I was thinking was completely irrational – driven by emotions, fear, anger or misunderstanding.
Those deep dark secrets are best kept in my head until I am able to deal with them calmly and rationally. Or even better, discarded entirely.