I stumbled upon this article and was taken aback by it.

Whenever someone tells us something crazy or weird about themselves, we often think, “How can you possibly share that about yourself?”

Yes, of course there are some things that are just TMI (too much information), like the results of a burrito eating contest, but there are some things that you just need to share.

And the truth is that secrets can be life ruiners. They can turn a whole world upside down and force you into a dark place that no one should be.

So check out this article from Penelope Trunk from PenelopeTrunk.com on the importance and NEED to get things off your chest.

How to decide how much to reveal about yourself

by Penelope Trunk

People ask me all the time how I can be so honest about my life in my blog. They want to know how I can write about marriage, sex, abortions, or running out of money over and over again. It’s an endless list really, of the stuff I write about that people can’t believe I’m writing about.

But each of you has a list of things in your life similar to that, it’s just a list you don’t want to talk about. I’m not special—I don’t have more stuff that is difficult to talk about. I just have more difficulty not talking about difficult stuff.

This is why.

I’m going to start by telling you that I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. I was in a post-traumatic stress support group afterward. People were divided into groups of ten based on their experience at the site—how bad things were for you that day. I was in a group comprised mostly of people who narrowly escaped the building before it fell and, as they were running out of the building, were splattered by body parts from people who were jumping out of the building.

We had individual therapy as well. Here’s what my therapist said to me: “Your childhood was so terrible that your experience at the World Trade Center was nothing compared to what you experienced as a kid. Your post-traumatic stress therapy needs to focus on your childhood.”

That was the first time I really had a sense of how bad my childhood had been. I knew everyone in the world thought things at the World Trade Center were terrible. So this must mean that my childhood was really terrible.

I was 34.

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