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"Joan and Mike Alman* came for their first family therapy session with their obviously unhappy 16-year-old son, Kyle, and his younger brother, Jerrod, 11. &amp;quot;Kyle&amp;#039;s in trouble again,&amp;quot; his father told me wearily. &amp;quot;We just don&amp;#039;t understand,&amp;quot; Joan said. &amp;quot;Most of the time, he&amp;#039;s a great kid. He plays sports, gets good grades, has friends. But every year, a couple of months after school starts, he turns into someone else. We just hang on until after Thanksgiving, when Kyle is his regular self again.&amp;quot; Kyle slumped further and further in his chair, pulling his jacket over his head when Jerrod chimed in to describe how his brother had destroyed his favorite video game. I was intrigued by the pattern: Every November, Kyle became the family monster, and each year his behavior worsened; this time, he&amp;#039;d stolen a teacher&amp;#039;s wallet and come home drunk on several nights. Joan expressed fury one minute and seemed to defend her son the next: &amp;quot;Well, all teenagers drink, don&amp;#039;t they?&amp;quot; Shaking his head at his mother&amp;#039;s mixed message, Kyle broke his silence for the first time. &amp;quot;I feel confused when my mother does that,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;But that&amp;#039;s nothing new.&amp;quot; When I tried to find out more about the family&amp;#039;s relationships in general \u2014 beyond the immediate problem \u2014 and about each parent&amp;#039;s family of origin, Joan and Mike courteously stonewalled, quickly refocusing attention on Kyle. And when I asked whether anything else important to the family had happened in November, they insisted there was nothing. As a family therapist for 35 years, I&amp;#039;ve learned that when a child exhibits troubling behavior at around the same time every year, it&amp;#039;s often tied to an unmentionable anniversary. And frequent uncomfortable silences, along with swift subject changes, are signs that a secret is being kept. What would I discover, I wondered, if I saw Joan and Mike without the boys? When the three of us met, I gently asked the couple, &amp;quot;Is there anything you can tell me about your family&amp;#039;s history that might help us to help Kyle?&amp;quot; With much hesitation, Joan finally responded. &amp;quot;Mike isn&amp;#039;t Kyle&amp;#039;s dad,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s Jerrod&amp;#039;s dad. Kyle&amp;#039;s father, Alan, died in a car accident when Kyle was a baby.&amp;quot; It was an icy November night, and Alan was drunk. Ten months later, Joan met and married Mike, a responsible and successful man who adopted Kyle immediately. The central secret was born when Joan&amp;#039;s new husband, her parents, and her friends persuaded her not to tell Kyle that Mike wasn&amp;#039;t his biological father. Alan&amp;#039;s parents cut themselves off from Joan and Kyle, but they lived nearby, and Joan told me she was terrified they&amp;#039;d turn up one day. Other family members and friends knew the truth, including cousins Kyle&amp;#039;s age. The chances were great that Kyle would discover the secret in an unplanned and damaging way. As I worked with Joan and Mike, I learned that the secret of Kyle&amp;#039;s paternity was intricately connected to other secrets, as so often happens in families. Joan&amp;#039;s parents had forbidden her to date Alan because of his wild ways \u2014 but the two teenagers had sneaked out anyway. When Joan became pregnant with Kyle, both sets of parents heaped shame on her. Alan and Joan married at city hall with no family present, and soon after, Alan was killed. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve never talked about this to anyone, not even Mike,&amp;quot; Joan said, weeping, &amp;quot;but every November, I just get so sad.&amp;quot; Mike nodded. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve noticed,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;but I was afraid to say anything.&amp;quot; Here was the link to Kyle&amp;#039;s behavior. No doubt he also noticed his mother&amp;#039;s annual sorrow. And since most children prefer a mad mom to a sad mom, he went into high gear to distract her. We began working on a plan to tell the secret to both boys. How Secrets Happen Every family keeps secrets, usually about things they consider shameful: A successful businessman loses his job and pretends to his family that he&amp;#039;s still working; a brother and sister won&amp;#039;t let their school friends visit, afraid their mother will be passed out drunk on the couch. If you have a secret of your own, you know that often they&amp;#039;re created with the best of intentions \u2014 the desire to protect ourselves or others. But maintaining them requires lies and subterfuge that get in the way of clear and meaningful communication. Problem-solving becomes impossible when crucial subjects can&amp;#039;t be discussed. Family conversations become stilted and trivial; fear replaces ease. Those privy to a secret become uncomfortably bound to one another, while those outside it feel excluded, though they might not know why. Distinguishing toxic secrecy from healthy privacy can be confusing. Here are the differences: Secrets involve shame, while private matters do not. Secrecy makes us anxious and unhappy, while privacy does not. When we&amp;#039;re denied information we have the right to know, we&amp;#039;re in the realm of secrecy, not privacy. Kyle, for example, had a right to know who his biological father was; his mother was being secretive, not private. When our ability to understand our relationships and make informed decisions is handicapped, then secrecy, not privacy, is in play. A child born from donor insemination has a right to know his history; your infertility treatments, however, are private and not the business of your neighbors. I counsel people who are considering opening up a secret to think about not just risks but potential benefits. Imagine yourself with family members and dear friends after you&amp;#039;ve shared what has been hidden. Let yourself see the positive changes that are likely \u2014 anxiety vanishing, shame lifting, authenticity and trust returning to your relationships.  One of my clients was a woman who for 26 years had hidden her history of sexual abuse by a family member. She divulged this secret first to me. Slowly she considered who else in her family she wanted to tell. When she shared her story with her two sisters, she discovered that they, too, had been abused. Though it was painful at first, this new honesty brought them closer than they&amp;#039;d ever been. &amp;quot;Now I feel light!&amp;quot; she told me after the revelation. &amp;quot;The shame I&amp;#039;ve carried all these years flew out your window.&amp;quot; Breaking the Silence If you&amp;#039;re thinking about getting something off your chest, remember that the deeper relationship issues embedded in a secret won&amp;#039;t be resolved instantly. Introducing new information may rock everyone involved until a new equilibrium is negotiated. When Sam told his wife, Ella, that he&amp;#039;d been having an (unconsummated) Internet &amp;quot;affair,&amp;quot; he assumed there&amp;#039;d be no need for further discussion. &amp;quot;I told her, and I stopped. Why do we have to keep talking about this?&amp;quot; Sam wanted to know in our second therapy session. Ella, on the other hand, was questioning his loyalty and trustworthiness \u2014 the very bedrock of their marriage. I was able to help Sam see that simply announcing to Ella that the online relationship was over didn&amp;#039;t address what his actions had meant to both of them. Over time, the couple acknowledged a deeper emotional secret of distance and loneliness that preceded Sam&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;affair.&amp;quot; Each had been afraid to express feelings of emptiness \u2014 but until they did, they couldn&amp;#039;t rebuild a relationship in which they felt connected to each other again. Telling the secret was the first step in a healing process that called for time, patience, and a willingness to accept change. Opening secrets successfully requires an atmosphere of empathy and acceptance. And since not every family has these qualities in abundance, if you&amp;#039;re considering telling a secret, you might think about how best to enhance them. You could start by rehearsing the revelation with a family member, friend, or therapist. (Be sure your friend or therapist knows that you&amp;#039;re not asking for advice about whether to tell, but a space to try out the telling.) Think about who&amp;#039;s likely to be reliably supportive. You may, for instance, decide that you want to tell your sister to gain an ally before you tell your mother. You might invite a trusted member of the clergy to serve as a witness or guide and to help create a receptive environment wherein thoughtful telling and careful listening are possible. The Power of Sharing Timing is important when you&amp;#039;re uncovering what&amp;#039;s long been hidden. Children, especially, need to adjust to life-changing information. When Joan and Mike finally told Kyle about his birth father, they did it during a school break. Predictably, he was angry at first. Joan explained how her own parents had counseled her not to tell, and that she&amp;#039;d believed she was protecting him. She told Kyle how Alan had died, and how much it frightened her to see Kyle drinking now. But she also talked about why she&amp;#039;d loved Alan, and shared wonderful stories about him. She gave Kyle adventure books and a backpack that had belonged to his father \u2014 things that even Mike didn&amp;#039;t know she&amp;#039;d kept. &amp;quot;I always knew I would pass them on to Kyle someday,&amp;quot; Joan said. Soon, Joan and Mike told Jerrod the true story of his brother&amp;#039;s early life. I met with Kyle alone to check on how he was doing with this powerful new knowledge. When I asked him if he had known the secret, he told me, &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t know what it was, but I always knew they were keeping something from me.&amp;quot; Children sense when there are secrets, and often respond negatively to their confusion. Not surprisingly, Kyle wanted to meet his paternal grandparents. Though his mother was scared, she reached out to them, and they responded with joy at the prospect of meeting their grandson. The family finished their work with two important rituals. When November came around again, Joan, Mike, and the boys visited Alan&amp;#039;s grave, openly acknowledging his life and his death. A month later, at a celebratory party that included all the grandparents, Kyle and Mike re-adopted each other as father and son. Kyle&amp;#039;s November madness disappeared, never to return. Evan Imber-Black, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Families and Health at New York City&amp;#039;s Ackerman Institute, and the author of The Secret Life of Families. *To protect privacy, all names and identifying details have been changed. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/wellness/advice/a18679/family-secrets-telling-the-truth/>