Home→Forums→Emotional Mastery→Emotionally on the fence
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November 6, 2015 at 10:42 pm #86905
LayceeParticipantHi all! I’m new here, so I don’t know anyone in the community yet. I hope to meet some new, good, positive people! And do what I can to help others or at least make them smile.
Anyway, I am in an uncomfortable situation, sort of. I am only 21, but I am really trying to move on in life with positivity and allow myself things that I feel unworthy of. The problem is, to get past some of these negative blocks, I feel I need to be open with these family members that I am trying to have a good relationship with. I am keeping one big secret, and from time to time it bothers me which adds to all my negative struggles (depression, anxiety, lack of personal motivation).
This secret has the potential to tear apart the different branches of my family, and the stress it would put onto my elderly grandmother will never be worth it to me, no matter how much relief I will feel once I let it out. I guess I’m still trying to figure out if I should say anything at all, or just keep it a secret from the rest of my family like I have been, and deal with the personal stress and healing on my own. I am trying not to do everything on my own because I always do, and I feel that I need to accept that sometimes I do need help. With this, I need some help. But is the stress it’ll put many other people through worth me simply feeling better and maybe helping me “achieve my full potential”?
I want to tell my Mom because we are finally working out our relationship, and I think she deserves to know what is upsetting me because she cares so much. That being said, she will have every right to be angry towards my Dad. Really angry. They are not together, but they are friends and I don’t want to break that up, though I also know I can’t control the actions of other people. Then my other grandmother (On my Mom’s side) will probably end up finding out, she also has a right to know in the same way that my Mom does. I really don’t want that grandmother to find out because her knowing adds to the “I’m not sure if it is worth it” issue. I wish this situation didn’t involve 3 separate branches of my family, 4 if I count my own small group.
Right now my only plan is, if I ever say anything, I wait until my oldest grandmother dies so that I don’t cause her any more disruptions in her life, now that so many negative situations and people are no longer in her life. But I still don’t know if I can let myself tell this secret. I have no right to disrupt the lives of people that have done a lot recently to help me and actually bond with me, like a family.
Do I say something, like I feel that I need to, or do I just simply ‘let it go’? I know I can’t just ‘get over’ what happened.
Any advice guys? I know I didn’t give much information about the situation, it is really difficult to deal with, personally. Thank you in advance for any responses!November 7, 2015 at 1:18 am #86913
jockParticipantWell, I think like most people reading this, I would like to know the secret. because then I can better understand your angst and therefore give better advice.
November 7, 2015 at 4:47 am #86915
InkyParticipantIt sounds like abuse or an affair.
What I would do (let’s say it’s a creepy uncle who made a pass at you or is cheating on his wife):
Say to him, “I know about/I’m still upset about (blank). CUT IT OUT or I will tell Aunt/my parents.”
He has had a warning. You don’t upset anybody. He will probably stop. If not, you can truthfully say, “I didn’t want to upset the family, but this has to end. Don’t kill the messenger. I’m sorry he made his choice.”
You get your power back. He gets scared straight.
Is this close to the secret you’re talking about?
November 7, 2015 at 9:43 am #86928
AnonymousGuestDear Laycee:
The secret is very significant, so significant that it has been causing you much anxiety, depression and lack of motivation. Keeping the secret is taking a toll on you. You already tried to not tell it (hence it is a secret…), you tried your best to “let it go” and it didn’t work. Trying again and again to let go is going to not work for you again and again.
This secret, the emotions tied to it, are not going to go away. They will keep exacting the price: anxiety, depression and lack of motivation. Until you do something you didn’t do so far, something different than what you have done.
You are afraid of the guilt you will feel for upsetting the different people in your family. You feel anxious, depressed NOW, but you imagine feeling the guilt of telling the secret is going to add misery to you.
The way I see it, there are only two ways to go for you IF you have your own well being as top priority. One way is to physically leave, move away from all your family and live away, your own life OR tell the secret, disrupt the people’s as-is life. These two options are the only things DIFFERENT that you can do, as far as I see.
If so, and if you chose the second option, there are ways to minimize your guilt by going about it in the most considerate ways when dealing with the innocent parties to the issue. You can tell the truth and be gentle in the way you tell it. (I am practicing this very principle these very days, I am realizing now).
What you resist will persist as it has. The motivation part of you will remain dormant because it is saying something like: what is the point of me wanting anything? here i want to tell my secret, I want my deep hurt/fear/ distress to be acknowledged, to be seen, and you are not attending to THIS motivation, the motivation to make me MATTER, so why want anything at all?
Do you agree, disagree… thoughts?
anita
November 7, 2015 at 11:24 am #86935LayceeParticipantAnita and all,
Thank you for your responses. The big secret was my cousin raped me for a period of time when I was in 1st grade. In the end, my Dad ended up being told. This is what happened;
Officials pull me out of school, question me about the incident because a ‘friend’ living with me said something at school. Problem is she lied, and brought it up at a bad time. The abuse was no longer going on, it had stopped a few years before, and I had buried the incidents in my head because I didn’t know enough about much of anything to work through it. I also lived with the person that did it for many years, off and on during my life. When I talked to the officials I was in 5th grade. I told them simple ‘No’ that situation wasn’t happening, but I was clearly scared. I had anxiety and depression as a child, and I actually couldn’t control me being afraid or not so they at least should have noticed. They never asked again, or anything else. My friend was also lying, so I wouldn’t have agreed with what I was being told anyway.Anyway, the school and officials told my Dad, he was the only one that came to the school. He asked me ‘Why did no one tell me about this?’ I told him because I didn’t want to get in trouble. I never told because I truly was afraid of being in trouble. My Dad never said a word to me after that. No questions. But he knows, and if my Mom knew that she would lose it herself.
So technically, my Dad and the person are keeping the secrets too. I guess I’m not really alone. I am still working on improving my life by working on myself, this has just been the only thing I can’t ‘fix’ by myself. (I don’t believe that people ae broken and need to be fixed, just an easy way to put it).
November 7, 2015 at 12:35 pm #86939AnonymousGuestDear Laycee:
i have to run and would like to write more later, but for now, my thinking is: your father is good at keeping this a secret all these years, not even asking you questions or mentioning it to you or to anyone. This means if you confront him alone about what happened- about his silence to you on the matter, about his inexcusable, wrong behavior of ignoring what he should have attended to, giving you the empathy you needed, and giving the cousin the consequences he deserved-
if you confront your father alone, it will not get to everyone else in the family, he WILL keep it to himself, just like he has all these years.
This is incomplete thinking here, what do you think? This at least should be done, confronting him… and the cousin. Later:
anita -
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