Keeping Secrets From Our Children

A deep wound gets created when we keep secrets from our children in what we deem their best interest.

I want to say that the story I will share is rare, but when you have as many clients as I do with the same story, it cannot be that unique.

Here is the story, a child is adopted and not told they are adopted.

Or the child's biological parent leaves when they are young, and the single parent meets someone new when the child is a baby, and we call this person dad/mom without giving the whole story.

Not being truthful is always done with the parents' most profound care, but it is not helpful for the child.

When secrets are kept from us when we are little, we know in our intuition that something is wrong, but we do not know what it is.

Children perceive this secret on a very base level and then proceed to make stories for themselves to cope with this felt misalignment.

The stories are typically I don't fit in, I don't have worth, I am unloveable.

It may seem that these beliefs should not occur or don't make sense rationally because the child is loved by the adoptive parents or the new stepparent.

But they do make sense on a sensing level.

Children feel something is off, and unconsciously, they adopt these beliefs.

All clients I have who have experienced this suffer from unknown shame and deep levels of abandonment.

The secret was blown for all of my clients, and never how the secret holders had hoped for this information would be shared.

The wound becomes more complex when the truth is found out because now we have trust issues with those we love the most.

These untruths and secrets are honestly more to keep the parent from feeling shame, loss, guilt than it is to help the child bond with the new parent figures.

If this is your story or you are the secret holder, you probably have some processing to do.

Come in for a free consultation, and let's sit to help you reframe the damage done no matter what part you played in these scenarios.