| UNSOLICITED ADVICE COLUMNS by Carol R. Doss, Ph.D.
OUR SECRETS No matter how independent you are, other people are still important to you. While you may not want to, you care what others think. Even the most self-sufficient individuals still exist in a social world and there are moments when they struggle with both wanting to be known by others and fearing being known. This ambivalence can be strongest when you are dealing with a secret that haunts you. Held close and never talked about, this secret can grow to become a tremendously heavy burden. While some Catholics fear and avoid the confessional booth, it also offers a private moment when you tell another human being your greatest secrets. In the Catholic belief, this secret is being received on God's behalf, but there is a human behind the confessional screen, too. Secrets, however, reflect our fears that we really are unacceptable individuals and our shame is too great for others' to understand and forgive. This fear may come out of our own confusion regarding our behavior and our own conviction that we are flawed, deviant human beings. Sometimes the sense of shame is overwhelming. Through the years, some individuals have become prolific diarists, writing volumes of private reflections and personal memoirs. While these contain more than secrets, they reflect a human desire to record, to share, something beyond our own minds. We long to be known. Keeping a diary, or these days blogging on-line, can help us sort through our feelings. In addition, we get to maintain a level of anonymity, of safety. Private out-pourings in a very public arena. We long to be known. Telling secrets can be a liberating experience. Just knowing that someone else knows, seems to ease our own self-condemnation. It also scares the hell out of us. An ongoing community art project appears on-line at PostSecret.blogspot.com, serving a significant need for many. Accepting submissions through the mail, this website posts various creative, confessional works of postcard-sized art every week. Because it meets such a human need, the website has yielded two books of postcard confessions, some of which are whimsical and some heart-breaking. All of the secrets posted are intriguing and interesting. All reflect our human desire to be heard. We need someone to know us, even when we're too frightened to be known.
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