Post Secret

Last night, we attended a talk by Frank Warren, the founder of Post Secret. This blog contains some of the hundreds of thousands of secrets that Frank has received over the past four years since he started it all as a community art project in DC. Ever since I came across the site, I've been hooked. And here's why:

When I was learning how to do group therapy, we read and followed one of the classic interpersonal process group therapy texts, written by Irvin Yalom. We learned how to do various activities, how to help groups process information and emotions and support one another, and how to facilitate - at least as much as you can learn these things without doing them for years. So, one of the activities that I always liked is a "share a secret" activity in which group members anonymously write their deepest secret on a slip of paper which is then mixed up and distributed to another group member to read silently. The group members then offer thoughts and support in a general way, as they don't know the identity of the secret-holder. It's a safe way to share. And what Yalom found, from years of group work, is that:

"The most common secret is a deep sense of inadequacy - a feeling that if others really knew the person, they would discover his or her incompetence and see through his or her intellectual bluff. Next in frequency is a deep sense of interpersonal alienation." (Yalom, 2005)

The more we can share these feelings, the more we can all fight them. And Post Secret is a place where people are sharing some of the secrets they've buried inside themselves, the secrets that have been keeping them stuck.

Frank discussed the fact that suicide is nearly twice as common as homicide in the United States, and yet we hear a lot more about crime than we do about mental health. We channel more of our tax money toward crime-fighting than we do toward mental health. We took away state-run institutions under the Community Mental Health Act in 1963, and then we never really funded the community mental health centers that were created to meet the people who need help right where they are. As a result, our population of homeless and incarcerated people has ballooned with these individuals who really need help and simply aren't getting it. But I digress...

Some of the secrets are haunting.


Some are Frank's own. Some were banned from publication (but shown at talks) for various reasons. Some are funny, some aren't. Some make you think, some make you remember (last night, it seemed that there was a theme of how terrible kids in fourth grade can be to one another, and how some of those experiences can shape you as you grow up).


Frank also gave the audience time to share some of their secrets. A Duke sophmore shared that she lied to get accepted to the university. One young woman said that she's a women's studies major, but she also declared a major in political science because when she tells people that she's a women's studies major they don't take her seriously. A girl stood up in a t-shirt and said that it was the first day in a long time that she could wear short-sleeves because she has been able to handle her pain in a way that doesn't involve cutting herself. Another said that she only colors the Elmo's ducks with white crayons because she's afraid of what others will think about her inability to stay inside the lines.

Sharing secrets in a safe place, no matter what kind they are, is such a therapeutic way to challenge our almost innate fears of failure and loneliness.

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