Mona's Radio Blog
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Show Air Date: December 28, 2008
Privacy is something that can only happen to the individual. When an intrusion of privacy occurs, the privacy itself is made void. Again, just as secrets can be harmful, so can over protectiveness - called privacy.
When people defend their privacy they are not talking about the huge skeletons in the closet; for example, a man who will keep one or two other families without the knowledge of either of the women. Or the women who will never tell a man that the ëchildí he is busy fathering is someone elseís.
Who needs to tell their partner that they always over-budget so that they can have extra money to spend on themselves? I overspend and my parents or spouse donít know, but they will be held accountable.
Who wants to tell their husband or wife that they wished he or she performed like so and so in bed?
Some people will tell you that there is no need to keep anything from your partner.
What is intimacy? In- to- me- I- see! Then I can see into you!
If you usually tell the same to your best friends, then you can tell it to your spouse?
Are you a Welcomer or Blocker of Truth?
Are you Emotional or Feeling?
Mona's book and workbook...î Invisible Warfare î will show you how to process this.
When your partner knows that there is nothing you can hide from them, they will also not have reason to hide anything from you. That way, there are no barriers or power struggles!
As The Story Goes - Darth Vader started in the light then got lost in pain and confusion as he was seduced by the dark side. He was fooled into thinking that going to the Dark Side would save his wife because he secretly married her. It was his deep-rooted concern for her safety that became his greatest weakness, one that others were able to exploit.
Although fictional, like Darth Vader, we can all get lost in the dark because we donít process our pain or confusion.
Our power source as human beings comes from the blending of the light and dark, the gentle and powerful. Power can be used to create or destroy. Destruction can be seen as positive or negative. Darkness can be terrifying or magnificent.
Your deeper self knows that ëcreatingí is a constant dance between heaven and hell, yin and yang, intuitive and rational, head and gut and heart. And, in that dance, there is no right and wrong - no like and dislike; there is simply being and dancing the passionate dance.
The dark side is a label attached to psychological material that lies in the shadows of consciousness and even deeper, buried in the unconscious. Your dark side's memories, feelings and behaviors hold some of the most fertile ground for your creative expression.
You can call the dark side by a variety of names, including shadow self or disowned self, which means those parts of self that the Inner Critic / Self Beat, deems too much for someone to face. The Inner Critic will force you to ìdisownî what could be the truest part of you. For your disowned shadow or dark side holds some of the most vital parts of what makes you -> you.
In this light, then, you might call your dark side or shadow material your True Self.
If you know a secret the rest of the world doesn't, it can drive you nuts.
Secret keepers may become uncommunicative, withdraw from others, exhibit strange moods and even isolate themselves completely.
Secret keeping is immensely stressful; it has well-documented effects on things like immune function and even longevity.
Does knowing this information make my inner life feel brighter or darker?
If you're holding a malignant secret, you may feel as though other aspects of your life are being pulled down into darkness. This is the case for many people who've been abused or the victim of serious trauma. After decades of silence, the secret will still dominate the center of their consciousness, dimming their capacity for openness and intimacy.
Am I afraid that keeping this secret may allow someone to be harmed?
Before I give someone information, I make sure they have skill to understand and process this information first. That's why people hurt themselves or even kill themselves when receiving information.
There is a responsibility to giving and receiving info.
Do I find myself in situations where I often want to tell?
The gravitational pull of secrets works both ways. Opportunities to reveal dark secrets seem to come up repeatedly, in part because these secrets so dominate our psychological landscape.
Ignoring opportunities to tell won't feel honorable -- it usually feels like lying. It divides you from others and makes you avoid certain subjects or even people. (The only honorable silence involves keeping harmless gossip to yourself.)
If you're troubled by a secret talk about it with an unbiased counselor -- such as a mental health professional, trusted religious adviser, or attorney.
Taking a safe person into your confidence dulls the isolating edge of a secret -- defuses the desire to gossip.
Secret keepers are people whose secrets have power over them and make them misbehave, become sick, or violate others. Often hard-working professionals or family men and women, they are high-functioning on one level but in bondage to deeply held secrets on another. We read about these folks who steal hours away from their productive lives in the daily news:
A university professor of religious studies is found with more than 4,200 Internet photos of child porn on his work computer
A hard-working mother with three children hides bottles of vodka in the laundry room, then binges when the kids are at school.
An elected legislator files for bankruptcy from gambling debts and the public learns of his taking off hours from work weekly to visit casinos, wearing clever disguises.
A PTA chairperson arrives late to important meetings because she can't leave the house until checking to make sure her stove is turned off dozens of times and the water taps are turned extra tightly.
Each of these troubled people lives a double life because of their unhealthy secrets. Now think of the 80 million similar Secret Keepers worldwide who steal hours away from their public lives to act out their secret behaviors or passions, sometimes for decades, but who never get found out.
A bulimic
A pathological gambler
A cross-dresser
A shoplifter
An incest perpetrator
An executive in credit card debt
A captive to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
The wife of an exhibitionist
A secret heavy drinker
Sex always feels like abuse
My best friend is always high
My friend died and I feel like I killed him/her
My parents hate me
I'm scared of who I will be if I become successful, so I keep sabotaging everything good
I date-raped someone when I was drunk, but I'm not a rapist.
I hate myself.
I do really beautiful things and I want credit and praise so itís ruined anyway.
I saw ìsomeoneî with so and so...
I lost control of my bladder so I won't go out anymore
I cut myself...
I won't tell the truth about my career
I'm a waitress or work a 9-5 job, and act like I'm powerful or famous person
I hit my kids and lock them in their rooms, but out in the world I speak lovingly of them
I have cosmetic surgeries compulsively
I'm not religious anymore and my family is
Why do people have secrets?
How does it affect your life?
What is the difference between secrets and privacy?
You cannot be empowered with secrets because...A secret makes you feel...How does this secret make me feel about me? This secret makes me act like...
The state of being private; retiring a thought, feeling or behavior sometimes creating a seclusive feeling.
The state of being free from intrusion is to have no disturbance inside and hopefully outside one's private life and affairs. You need rights to have privacy.
If privacy becomes secrecy, that's another story.
The condition of being hidden or concealed.
A secret is kept hidden from knowledge or view and concealed. It is dependably discreet. This can make my life operate from a hidden or confidential manner and become or attract a secret energy. If a trauma exists this can become paranoia, phobic, and projections. If the secret is not expressed and lives inward, the secret thoughts will live on.
I will then live secluded and wandering about the secret. Life is lived beyond ordinary understanding and is lived mysteriously.
I gossip about otherís insecurities, fears, issues and I donít own, they are really my issues.
Everyone who survived Junior High / High School has experienced secret/privacy/gossip problems.
When is it inappropriate to keep a secret?
Understanding when it is inappropriate (or ill advised) to keep a secret is perhaps the most important things to learn.
Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast answers for this.
Generally speaking there are several general circumstances where keeping a secret may be inappropriate:
When keeping the secret will harm someone else...someone innocent.
When keeping the secret does more harm than telling the secret would.
When the secret itself is illegal, covers up illegal activity, or relates to illegal activity.
When the secret is about something grossly inappropriate or dangerous matters.
When the secret is something that cannot be kept and will eventually come out anyway.
Keeping secrets breedsí shame; but having self-boundaries is being private.
Secrecy is full of guilt and shame.
Privacy is full of understanding self-awareness and boundaries with no ìcareî or ìworryî!
"Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie," Gail Saltz, M.D
"Family Secrets" John Bradshaw
"Invisible Warfare" Mona Miller
Show Air Date: December 28, 2008
Secrecy creates insanity!!!!
Privacy needs rights, and has boundaries!!!
Privacy is something that can only happen to the individual. When an intrusion of privacy occurs, the privacy itself is made void. Again, just as secrets can be harmful, so can over protectiveness - called privacy.
When people defend their privacy they are not talking about the huge skeletons in the closet; for example, a man who will keep one or two other families without the knowledge of either of the women. Or the women who will never tell a man that the ëchildí he is busy fathering is someone elseís.
Who needs to tell their partner that they always over-budget so that they can have extra money to spend on themselves? I overspend and my parents or spouse donít know, but they will be held accountable.
Who wants to tell their husband or wife that they wished he or she performed like so and so in bed?
Some people will tell you that there is no need to keep anything from your partner.
When is it healthy to share all of ourselves?
What is intimacy? In- to- me- I- see! Then I can see into you!
If you usually tell the same to your best friends, then you can tell it to your spouse?
Are you a Welcomer or Blocker of Truth?
Are you Emotional or Feeling?
Mona's book and workbook...î Invisible Warfare î will show you how to process this.
Can you show and tell all?
When your partner knows that there is nothing you can hide from them, they will also not have reason to hide anything from you. That way, there are no barriers or power struggles!
As The Story Goes - Darth Vader started in the light then got lost in pain and confusion as he was seduced by the dark side. He was fooled into thinking that going to the Dark Side would save his wife because he secretly married her. It was his deep-rooted concern for her safety that became his greatest weakness, one that others were able to exploit.
Although fictional, like Darth Vader, we can all get lost in the dark because we donít process our pain or confusion.
Our power source as human beings comes from the blending of the light and dark, the gentle and powerful. Power can be used to create or destroy. Destruction can be seen as positive or negative. Darkness can be terrifying or magnificent.
Your deeper self knows that ëcreatingí is a constant dance between heaven and hell, yin and yang, intuitive and rational, head and gut and heart. And, in that dance, there is no right and wrong - no like and dislike; there is simply being and dancing the passionate dance.
The Creativity is faithfulness to the art of mirroring your Dark side.î
The dark side is a label attached to psychological material that lies in the shadows of consciousness and even deeper, buried in the unconscious. Your dark side's memories, feelings and behaviors hold some of the most fertile ground for your creative expression.
You can call the dark side by a variety of names, including shadow self or disowned self, which means those parts of self that the Inner Critic / Self Beat, deems too much for someone to face. The Inner Critic will force you to ìdisownî what could be the truest part of you. For your disowned shadow or dark side holds some of the most vital parts of what makes you -> you.
In this light, then, you might call your dark side or shadow material your True Self.
If you know a secret the rest of the world doesn't, it can drive you nuts.
Secret keepers may become uncommunicative, withdraw from others, exhibit strange moods and even isolate themselves completely.
Secret keeping is immensely stressful; it has well-documented effects on things like immune function and even longevity.
Does knowing this information make my inner life feel brighter or darker?
If you're holding a malignant secret, you may feel as though other aspects of your life are being pulled down into darkness. This is the case for many people who've been abused or the victim of serious trauma. After decades of silence, the secret will still dominate the center of their consciousness, dimming their capacity for openness and intimacy.
Am I afraid that keeping this secret may allow someone to be harmed?
Before I give someone information, I make sure they have skill to understand and process this information first. That's why people hurt themselves or even kill themselves when receiving information.
There is a responsibility to giving and receiving info.
Do I find myself in situations where I often want to tell?
The gravitational pull of secrets works both ways. Opportunities to reveal dark secrets seem to come up repeatedly, in part because these secrets so dominate our psychological landscape.
Ignoring opportunities to tell won't feel honorable -- it usually feels like lying. It divides you from others and makes you avoid certain subjects or even people. (The only honorable silence involves keeping harmless gossip to yourself.)
The right way to tell...
If you're troubled by a secret talk about it with an unbiased counselor -- such as a mental health professional, trusted religious adviser, or attorney.
Taking a safe person into your confidence dulls the isolating edge of a secret -- defuses the desire to gossip.
Secret keepers are people whose secrets have power over them and make them misbehave, become sick, or violate others. Often hard-working professionals or family men and women, they are high-functioning on one level but in bondage to deeply held secrets on another. We read about these folks who steal hours away from their productive lives in the daily news:
A university professor of religious studies is found with more than 4,200 Internet photos of child porn on his work computer
A hard-working mother with three children hides bottles of vodka in the laundry room, then binges when the kids are at school.
An elected legislator files for bankruptcy from gambling debts and the public learns of his taking off hours from work weekly to visit casinos, wearing clever disguises.
A PTA chairperson arrives late to important meetings because she can't leave the house until checking to make sure her stove is turned off dozens of times and the water taps are turned extra tightly.
Each of these troubled people lives a double life because of their unhealthy secrets. Now think of the 80 million similar Secret Keepers worldwide who steal hours away from their public lives to act out their secret behaviors or passions, sometimes for decades, but who never get found out.
You will meet:
A bulimic
A pathological gambler
A cross-dresser
A shoplifter
An incest perpetrator
An executive in credit card debt
A captive to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
The wife of an exhibitionist
A secret heavy drinker
Sex always feels like abuse
My best friend is always high
My friend died and I feel like I killed him/her
My parents hate me
I'm scared of who I will be if I become successful, so I keep sabotaging everything good
I date-raped someone when I was drunk, but I'm not a rapist.
I hate myself.
I do really beautiful things and I want credit and praise so itís ruined anyway.
I saw ìsomeoneî with so and so...
I lost control of my bladder so I won't go out anymore
I cut myself...
I won't tell the truth about my career
I'm a waitress or work a 9-5 job, and act like I'm powerful or famous person
I hit my kids and lock them in their rooms, but out in the world I speak lovingly of them
I have cosmetic surgeries compulsively
I'm not religious anymore and my family is
Why do people have secrets?
How does it affect your life?
What is the difference between secrets and privacy?
Secrets carry shame, Privacy does not.
Write this out...
You cannot be empowered with secrets because...A secret makes you feel...How does this secret make me feel about me? This secret makes me act like...
Definition of Privacy:
The state of being private; retiring a thought, feeling or behavior sometimes creating a seclusive feeling.
The state of being free from intrusion is to have no disturbance inside and hopefully outside one's private life and affairs. You need rights to have privacy.
If privacy becomes secrecy, that's another story.
Definition of Secrecy:
The condition of being hidden or concealed.
A secret is kept hidden from knowledge or view and concealed. It is dependably discreet. This can make my life operate from a hidden or confidential manner and become or attract a secret energy. If a trauma exists this can become paranoia, phobic, and projections. If the secret is not expressed and lives inward, the secret thoughts will live on.
I will then live secluded and wandering about the secret. Life is lived beyond ordinary understanding and is lived mysteriously.
The See-Saw Game!! Chapter 2 in Monaís book ìInvisible Warfareî .
I gossip about otherís insecurities, fears, issues and I donít own, they are really my issues.
Everyone who survived Junior High / High School has experienced secret/privacy/gossip problems.
When is it inappropriate to keep a secret?
Understanding when it is inappropriate (or ill advised) to keep a secret is perhaps the most important things to learn.
Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast answers for this.
Generally speaking there are several general circumstances where keeping a secret may be inappropriate:
When keeping the secret will harm someone else...someone innocent.
When keeping the secret does more harm than telling the secret would.
When the secret itself is illegal, covers up illegal activity, or relates to illegal activity.
When the secret is about something grossly inappropriate or dangerous matters.
When the secret is something that cannot be kept and will eventually come out anyway.
Keeping secrets breedsí shame; but having self-boundaries is being private.
Secrecy is full of guilt and shame.
Privacy is full of understanding self-awareness and boundaries with no ìcareî or ìworryî!
How Sneaky is Shame?
Reference: Chapter 9 of Monaís Book ìInvisible Warfareî.
..........................
Recommended Books:
"Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie," Gail Saltz, M.D
"Family Secrets" John Bradshaw
"Invisible Warfare" Mona Miller
..........................
Mona Miller, author of Invisible Warfare book and workbook takes you step by step on a journey of self discovery through all of the realms: spiritual, financial, emotional, etc. She uses her life experience, her humor, her dynamic personality, and her brilliant, beautiful words t...
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