Privacy is good, secrets are bad, at least for me. There’s a 12-step saying – when you’re doing well, your addict is doing pushups in your basement. For me, secrets are a sure-fire way to strengthen “my addict.” Worse, they’re actually both a tell that my addict is in town, and they’re prima facie evidence of him/it: one way I have of understanding my addiction is that if it’s to anything, it’s to secrecy.
So whenever I find myself keeping secrets – not just limiting the audience with which I share them, but keeping them all to my lonesome? Look out.
Very well said in very few words. I have a tell when my addiction/obsession is getting the upper hand. My secret keeping skills, honed over a life time, get sloppier and sloppier. If the addiction keeps me running around trying to patch sloppy secrets, it can look for a way to break through and not be my addiction any more but be me.
You and I are different – for me, my secret-keeping skills don’t get sloppier, they get better. When I’m doing well, I don’t keep secrets. Period.