Secrets
“You’re only as sick as your secrets” is a well-known recovery mantra. I have come to know the gravity of this statement throughout my work with addicts and eating disordered people. Unfortunately, many of us grow up in families in which we are taught to put on a “happy face” and pretend that everything is hunky-dorry. Out of the best intentions, we are often taught that talking about difficult things will only make them worse and that it is best to ignore them. Many parents feel pressured to present a strong, happy exterior for the well-being of their children. While their intentions are honorable, the truth is that children then learn to deny their true feelings and present a false exterior. However, when parents demonstrate healthy emotional expression and regulation, children also learn how to relate to and express their own feelings.
In many families in which addiction resides, parents and children alike feel the need to present a false front to the outside world. Hence, the child experiences one thing at home and something completely different when around outsiders. Perhaps there is violence, anger, adultery, or shame at home but the teachers at school and the friends across the street see a close, loving family. This sets up a confusing dichotomy for the child.
Children in this situation have trouble trusting their intuition. While their gut is telling them that something is wrong, they are hearing that everything is ok. Their accurate instincts are met with invalidation and rebuttal. Over time, this creates a disconnect between body and feelings. A child learns that she cannot trust the intuitive sensations she feels in her body. She learns to stuff them way down deep or to ignore them altogether. After all, they are inaccurate and untrustworthy. Everything is fine. This disconnect is a set-up for disordered eating because the child does not learn how to identify, trust, and regulate her feelings. Her body sensations become cut-off. She learns to live in her head and rely on her thoughts and logic instead.
When their are secrets or addiction within a family, there are usually unspoken rules about what can and cannot be talked about. Children learn not to talk about dad’s drinking or mom’s love affair with the mop and vacuum. Children learn really quickly how to sweep things under the rug. They learn how to look right past that big pink elephant in the room. Nobody notices the piles of poop that are stinking up the entire house. Without open and honest communication, the child resorts to stuffing down feelings and living the lie that everything is ok. She gets really good at slapping on that happy face.
So these feelings don’t just go away. They pile up inside without a safe place for expression. This is when the eating disorder comes in as a survival mechanism. What cannot be expressed with the voice is inevitably expressed with the body. ”That gallon of ice cream sure tastes good and it works wonders to settle the nerves in my stomach. I better keep stuffing my face with food or I’m gonna blurt out something that really won’t go over well. Focusing on calorie-counting and obsessing about miles run sure feels better than watching mom and dad fight. It’s not safe to voice what I really want to say, so maybe if I’m sick enough someone will notice that I’m not ok.” These are some of the things that a person with secrets unconsciously tells themselves. The eating disorder becomes a great hiding place and a wonderful relief.
And so, we really are as sick as our secrets. What is required is truthful expression of what has been held in the deep, dark places of the soul.
“There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs”. Luke 12:2,3
“ He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light.” Job 12:22
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