Do you remember playing hide and seek as a child? Sometimes I still play hide and seek with parts of my story, parts of my heart, and areas of my life. Like a child that covers his eyes and thinks that because he can’t see anybody, no one can see him.I think that if I ignore the pain and trauma in my life I’ll be able to hide it from everyone around me. The truth is, as I try to hide things, I become a slave to the things I am trying to hide. And while I may be able to keep people from clearly seeing what I am hiding, They somehow know that something is there.
The things in our lives we fight the hardest to hide always become the bondage we can’t seem to escape from. I have shared the story many times of how I fought to hide my addiction. I found myself fighting so desperately to protect my reputation that I lost the ability to experience life, family, and friendship. I refused to seek help. Literally no one knew exactly what my problem was, but everyone knew I had a problem. You may be different, but I found that I couldn’t keep my game going forever and eventually my attempt to hide failed miserably. Much to my surprise, I found that when the game stopped is when the freedom began. Hiding can provide a short-term escape from consequences but real freedom is never found until we learn to walk in honesty. So, Dr. Roberts, I agree with you that hell always grows strong in secrecy. And I know that you agree with me that freedom is always found in honesty.
I’m not suggesting that you share everything with everyone, but I am saying that you need to share everything with someone. If you need a safe place to be honest about life, struggles, trauma, if you need help mapping out the path forward, feel free to reach out to me. rwcoaching2@gmail.com