"Thinking" by Annalogue75 © 2023 with Creative Fabrica Spark™
How many of us have secrets that aren't necessarily needed to be kept from anyone, it just happened?
I'm not talking about regular or sudden forgetfulness, or overlooking to tell someone something. That's human nature and natural. I am talking about something else, let's call it an unintended secrecy.
I have a few unintentional secrets, and they usually stem from an uncertainty of the informations importance. Sometimes I have also wanted to avoid emotional impact and kept things quiet that aren't a big deal in general, but might have been in that specific situation. The difference between a secret and a forgotten disclosure is, simply speaking, the conscious intention. You made a choice or you couldn't choose but wanted to.
Other secrets are selective - some people are in the know and some people are being kept in the dark.
These secrets can on one hand be very innocent and understandable - like when the parents know what presents their child will get on their birthday, but the child has no idea.
On the other hand, this type of secrets can be vicius and sinister when the intention is to cause disruption, grief, or harm. For example, to force a secrecy by presenting it as a matter of false confidentiality, "Don't tell anyone, but...", and play on peoples sense of guilt, or to blalantly exclude individuals or groups of people, knowing that they will be negatively impacted by the secret when it is kept from them.
Yet another kind is the absolute secret, consciously kept and buried deep.
The first thing that comes to mind here is trauma, but also thoughts and fantasies of violence, damage, and cruelty that aren't appropriate or can be harmful. But there can be other reasons too.
The secret can be kept because of fear, it can also be because of shame, and in some cases it can be to protect others or oneself from harm.
I would say this type of secret is the most harmful one for the individual, as it causes a lot of stress and anxiety, and there's really no good way to escape those effects and keep the secret.
Lastly there's the secret that isn't a secret anymore.
The relief when a secret is revealed and the truth can come out - it's like the butterfly breaking free from the chrysalis and flutter away with haste. Sometimes it's the consequences of the secrecy that warrant for it to be revealed, other times it just isn't needed to keep the secret anymore. Either way it's a relief to come clean and let it go.
It's easy to be cruel when there are secrets around, and it's easy to be blamed for keeping them and for telling them too. Damned if you do - damned if you don't... So when they say it's best not to keep or create secrets they have a good point.
The occasional little white lie (Remember Santa and the tooth fairy?) is likely harmless, but even those need to be closely monitored so they don't have unintended negative consequences.
Secrets are tricky and comes in many forms - it's definitely better the fewer we have.
/Annalogue75
