Session Confessions, Episode 2

Another Monday, another therapy session. This morning, two weeks since my last appointment, I returned to the serene security of C's office. My dilemma of the hour? The issue of feeling "fragmented." As I explained to C, for the last few months I have been feeling fragmented--split, splintered, pulled in a dozen different directions, even fraudulent--because there are only two people on Planet Earth who know the "real" me. Take a wild guess who those two people are. Give up? Well, I'm married to one of them, and I suppose it should comfort me to know that my devoted spouse chooses to remain married to me despite the fact that he knows just about everything there is to know about me--including almost all of my very darkest secrets. The one other person who knows the "real" me is, of course, C herself, my $110/hour confidante (truthfully, C knows even more about me than my spouse does, but that's partly because she knew me before he did). To everyone else in my life, I only reveal certain carefully selected aspects of myself. To make a long story short, I tend to play whatever role I think a particular individual is counting on me to play. As much as I've wanted to believe that I have ditched my former "people-pleaser" personality, I must admit, I still make it a point to pursue the approval of each person I consider a "friend."

I don't like the fact that I work so hard to avoid creating any significant controversy among those people I choose as friends. What is so awful about my authentic self? Is my relentless "pleasing" some sort of indicator of wavering self-esteem or, even worse, actual self-loathing? I posed these profound questions to C this morning.

C's answer? DRUMROLL PLEASE...We all tend to reveal certain aspects of ourselves to some people in our lives but not to others. And that's fine, because no single person can be everything to us, and so why should we feel compelled to reveal everything about ourselves to any single person? (...well, okay, that's not an exact quote; C worded her response far more eloquently...)

That made a heck of a lot of sense to me. Granted, it seemed much more comforting hearing it from C's mouth this morning than it is writing about it now, but hey...the bottom line is, we can be true to ourselves without telling the truth about every single little detail about ourselves.

So...what secrets about yourself are YOU hiding from each of your closest friends and/or family members?