Month: July 2017

What would life be like if none of us held onto any secrets? For me, it wouldn’t make a single bit of difference, because I don’t have any anymore. But for others who do, I’m sure it might create total chaos in their life for a while. Yet what many who harbor secrets don’t understand is how they are still creating a world of chaos within themselves by holding onto them.

“We’re only as sick as our secrets”, that’s what I heard when I first began my recovery work from alcohol and drug addiction. I didn’t quite get that statement initially and especially didn’t grasp that concept in all the prior years before coming to recovery either.

In fact, I lived for a very long time holding on to one secret after another until the anxiety and depression of keeping all that muck suppressed within finally caught up with me. Hiding all my of addictive behaviors caused me to live in a constant state of fear, guilt, and doubt. I had to always watch what I said and was concerned that somehow my partner or anyone for that matter would discover a few things about me that I knew wouldn’t put me in a good light.

It has brought me great freedom though to be fully honest these days, notably so in my writing here in this blog. I divulge the full truth of my life in the words I type and even do the same when I speak as well. The freedom from not having any secrets to worry about ever seeing the light of day is pretty amazing.

In stark contrast to that freedom was all that fear I used to have when I was regularly engaging in highly sexualized connections with others while in all the prior committed relationships to the one I’m in now. I always worried that I might slip up and say something to the people I was dating that might reveal the secret of my toxic behaviors. Or I also worried that I might run into one of the people I was doing those behaviors with and have to somehow find a way to keep the secret covered up.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of the many secrets I used to carry around and the more I did, the more I had to lie to cover them up. And the more I lied to cover them up, the more I became spiritually sick. And the more I became spiritually sick, the more I became mentally and emotionally sick as well. And the more I became mentally and emotionally sick, the more I experienced anxiety and depression. And the more I experienced anxiety and depression, the more my body fell into disrepair, eventually becoming physical sick too. Thankfully all that physical sickness led me to finally see the truth about harboring secrets, which is why I’m so blatantly revealing about my life now, as I don’t want to cause myself any more health issues.

So, that’s why I’m not concerned if somehow the world suddenly had a switch flipped where none of us were able to hold onto any secrets anymore because I no longer have anything to hide. And ultimately, I think that’s precisely what our Higher Power wants for each of us, to get fully honest in every area of our lives and see that we truly are only as sick as our secrets…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson