The following video is of me reading the post right below it, so you can decide. Would you rather listen or read? You don’t have to do both.

When people say “the truth will set you free”, I want you to feel the weight of the reality of that statement. Please.

I know many of you (if not all of you) have been holding onto secrets so dire, so huge, so devastating that you feel like if you spoke them aloud they would kill the life of your dreams.

Here is a secret that nobody else will tell you, ESPECIALLY the people who expect you to keep those secrets until you die. “Take them to the grave with you”.

Those secrets are already crushing you. They’re already taking you to the grave. They are already killing the life of your dreams. That is why so many of you with these secrets hope you die at any time.

Telling your secrets will set you free. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not all at once. But the relief you feel is immediate. And over time, eventually, that will allow you to set yourself free from the cage you have been building around you since the first moment you decided to lie. You know the one I am talking about.

That is why 12 step programs are so effective for people who actually do the steps thoroughly. Because step 4 requires you to make an inventory of everything that is causing you to hate yourself, your life, other people. Those secrets belong in your step 4. Doing step 4 with a licensed therapist could save your sanity. Even without the steps, just telling a therapist the truth will do that job. Keep reading to understand why I specify licensed therapist, because I want you to be protected during this endeavor. Thoroughly safe. I will address that in just a moment. Keep reading.

Death is not coming to save you from the reality that you want to tell the Truth. To someone. Anyone who can help you live in alignment with that which is real again. Not those who convinced you to lie in order to protect themselves. It was never about you. No matter what they say.

That is what predators tell the children they abuse. “If you tell anyone about this, they won’t believe you.” “If anyone finds out about this, you will be (hurt, punished, outcast, shunned, etc.).” That is not about you. that is about their reputation, so they can carry on being abusive. That is why telling the truth is so amazing. It sets you free! And it empowers you to give your abusers every middle finger you can manage to give them.

Therapists are amazing people to help you with that undertaking. Why? Aside from the fact that therapists are trained to guide you out of the darkness into the Light of awareness, Therapists are also legally required to keep your secrets under all conditions except for 2:

1) Your confessions contain insight into the reality that you are actively harming yourself or another person, or that you seriously intend to.

2) Your secrets indicate that you have participated and/or are currently participating in extreme criminal activity, and that criminal activity must be reported to law enforcement officers according to the therapist’s sole discretion.

Those are some pretty hefty rules. But if you are seriously considering harming yourself or someone else, or you already are, because the weight of your reality is crushing you, wouldn’t you still rather talk to someone who can help you not do that? The only other option is that that behavior gets worse. Same with your criminal activity. If you want it to stop, how else can you turn your ship around other than talking to someone who can help you find a path out?

Here is another secret that no one will tell you: lying in order to appear to be doing right by God or by other people is not a criminal act. The Church, for example, or a congregation of people, might do everything in their power to make you believe it is.

Convincing someone to lie in order to cover up reality that someone finds unsavory might be criminal behavior though. You never know, unless you talk to a licensed, practicing therapist inside the comfort and protection of a legitimate session with one.

The thing about working with professionals: no contract, no protection. The therapist might be a good person, but he or she is not legally bound by HIPAA (my favorite acryonym other than G.O.A.T.) to keep your secrets confidential unless you are actually in a session with him or her. I don’t know if a situation where you could reasonably assume you would be protected by practitioner/patient confidentiality would still cover that. Either way, revealing your secrets over dinner and drinks definitely doesn’t fall under those categories.

Sign the contract first.

That is why I will not share my business plan with financial advisors who don’t have me sign a contract first.

You can tell your truth at any time to a licensed, trained, actively operating therapist under the shield and protective bubble of being their actual client first.

ESPECIALLY if that truth will piss off the people around you. Then you definitely should tell a therapist everything.

If you have been keeping a secret since childhood, your teenage years, or even as a young adult, and the people around you (ESPECIALLY YOUR FAMILY) have been pressuring you not to reveal it, now is the time to share that with a licensed, actively practicing therapist in the privacy and comfort of a legitimate session with him or her.

Sign the paperwork consenting to work with him/her, where he/she also agrees to work with you as a client first.

Pay whatever session fee or copay, if it is covered by insurance. That will legally protect you AND help you feel confident that you can work through any trauma you have been carrying as a result of having to keep that secret for as long as you have.

If you don’t feel confident, study up on your HIPAA laws again. I bet they will help you realize how safe it is to tell your Therapist EVERYTHING. Talk to him or her, ask how safe you are to reveal your scariest realities. He/She will tell you.

You cannot run from the secrets that you are hiding inside of you. They are hurting you.

Especially once those secrets start demanding to be acknowledged. You do not want to run from them any longer anyway. That is why this post reached you today.

A great therapist is not going to encourage nor force you to blow up your entire life by revealing your truth to anyone else UNLESS/UNTIL you decide that you are ready to make that change for you. A great therapist will help you decide where you want to go once you have unpacked the weight of the trauma you are carrying, not before that.

A great therapist will help you get whatever you need to off your chest in order to settle your spirit, your mind, your emotions, and your soul. That is the only thing talk therapy is good for. Getting things off your chest. Reorienting yourself to walking around the world as someone who sees reality for what it really is. Someone who is honest, someone who tells the Truth in its entirety. Not half truths, not false promises you hope will be true one day or do not care if they are true or not as long as they sound good. If you don’t want to be honest, then don’t go to therapy. That is as easy and simple as I can make it out to be.

I have worked with excellent therapists in NJ and MA for the past 20 years or so? In New Jersey, I have received excellent service from the providers at Oaks Integrated Care. In Massachusetts, I was fortunate enough to qualify for services at Boston Area Rape Crisis Center: BARCC and work with individual therapists throughout my time there. These were all (except for BARCC) covered by my insurance. I also recommend Christina Hudson for inner child work, if you can afford to go outside of your insurance coverage.

You might have the same opportunities, the same privileges too. I have tried a few therapy sessions through TeleHealth, and I do not recommend that in the least. I was not impressed with the quality of practitioners on TeleHealth therapy. My insurance recently ended their coverage of this service anyway. I think that was actually a good move.

Online coaching or apps that advertise therapy, I would not necessarily endorse ESPECIALLY if they are free for you at first. Go through your insurance coverage and see who you can speak to.

When looking for a therapist, I recommend developing a set of questions that you want answered during the first session to get a sense of whether or not you are a good fit. You are interviewing a professional. Treat it like you are hiring someone for a job (because you are).

If you have never had a therapist before, that is okay too. You may not know what to ask. Just go in with an open mind and heart (as best you can). Decide if you feel safe enough with the person to be honest with him or her.

My personal preference has been to work with women. I find men to be extremely capable human beings, but I do not feel safe enough to be as vulnerable with them in this situation. Especially since therapy requires a lot of talking. Maybe for men it is different, but for me I prefer to work with female therapists. Women. And not ones who enforce woke ideology right out of the gate. It’s a tricky world to navigate, but I have confidence you will find someone right for you if you are seeking that.

Therapy is uncomfortable, especially if you are not used to telling the truth to yourself or other people. Find someone you can see yourself being comfortable getting uncomfortable with after a few sessions. Give yourself time to trust them. Start slow. But don’t lie to them. That is the one thing you should hold yourself accountable not to do. You sought them out to help you. They cannot help you if you do not tell the truth, even if you admit you are having a hard time doing so.

And go slow. It is okay to do that too. It is good to take your time in therapy.

Telling someone else a secret (or secrets, depending on what you are working through) is a challenging thing to do. Even taking those first few steps of looking into therapists, contacting offices, setting appointments, screening your options, and then consistently setting and showing up for appointments with the person you choose takes a lot of commitment. I commend you for doing those things in advance.

As Lucille Ball once said, “You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” That is so true, especially when it comes to making changes like the one you are about to do if you follow through on this advice that I am giving you.

Those are all huge steps that many (if not all) of you have never taken before. Give yourself credit just for doing those things!

You got this. You have no clue how much your Higher Self will reward you for being honest with yourself, first and foremost (and forevermore). Some of you have been deceiving yourselves for so long, you do not know what honesty truly is. You conflate honesty with abuse. You think telling other people all the ways that they suck makes you an honest person.

It does not.

That makes you an a$$hole, to say the very least. You only do that because you are living so far out of alignment with the reality of who you are. Are you ready to flip that dynamic and turn the tables on those who have actually been abusing you by demanding you to lie to the world?

I would be, if I were you. I would just be done. I would be ready to reclaim authority over my life and begin to live the way I wanted, no matter how much time I thought I had already lost by running from the truth.

One last thing to keep in mind: You can never really hide the truth forever. It always finds a way out, particularly before you pass away. Would you rather this process be something you choose to participate in, or would you rather it be something that happens to you?

Again, I like to be in control But that’s just me. What you choose is entirely up to you, to a certain degree.