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As young children, many of us created a secret place.
Perhaps it was a closet, a nook or cranny in the basement or attic, a small cave, wooded glen or tree house, or some other space where one felt hidden from the rest of humanity. Once there, it was as if we possessed this private little corner of the world, and we often didn’t invite anybody to come there, except perhaps the very best of friends.
As adults, in a social milieu that constantly probes one’s psyche, in which “I think, therefore I am” has been replaced with “I share, therefore I am,” a secret place can be a sanctuary where one can be true to one’s self, even if just for a short time. Once there, the world of “shoulds” and “musts” and “don’ts” is sealed outside.
In my childhood, a cave-like hollow in a nearby woods was my hidden haven. While there, I would read, draw pictures, sing to myself, daydream or play with imaginary friends. It was in that spot that I escaped the intrusive and sometimes critical notice of parents, siblings and classmates. I didn’t fret about how I looked or sounded, what others thought of my fantasies or what judgement might be rendered about the uses I made of my time.
Many grown-ups engage in a similar process. While we may not have a secret place in the outer world (some do), many of us maintain one within the confines of inner space—a hideaway in our psyches that no one is allowed to enter. Unless pressed to do so, many of us don’t even speak of this inner refuge, fearing perhaps that if we give it away, we will attract the invasive curiosity of some psychological voyeur or moral critic.
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This “place” is where we go, mentally, to revel in our fantasies, where we dare to imagine, where we can pretend to be whomever we wish, no matter how fantastic, unattainable or even socially unacceptable. It is the realm where we dream of glory, fame, rebellion, money, erotic abandon, revenge, romance and a host of other scenarios that we suspect may never find their ways into our real lives.
A client compared going to her secret inner place as an adult to how, as a child, she would sneak into the attic of her home to retrieve a locked box full of her most private things. She took great pains to conceal this from others.
“I still go to my secret place, but now in my mind,” she told me. “I have one very close friend that gets to see some of what I keep hidden there, and then I show some of it to you, my therapist, but, otherwise, it’s off limits to all but me.”
The need to hide something of ourselves from all others can be dimly viewed as a fearful unwillingness to fully and unabashedly be one’s self. But, in many people, it reflects something more positive. The secret places of our minds afford us the freedom to be anybody, to dream anything, to explore our most outrageous fantasies without paying some social price. And, they protect us from a world that is too often short on understanding and quick to condemn.
True, keeping some things about ourselves secret isn’t good. Hiding an addiction, engaging in hurtful deception or holding back a vital truth from a loved one can be one’s undoing. But being an open book, while sounding virtuous, can deprive one of vital mental freedom, a measure of personal privacy and the capacity to indulge one’s childlike imagination.
Like a childhood haunt, one’s inner secret place affords us the freedom to be ourselves. Something the outside world often fails to encourage or affirm.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
