The Burden of Secrets

I keep secrets so they (the audience) don't have to. I carry a burden of secrets that literally destroys my ability to see the world in a magical way....

- Derek DelGuadio, Magician

At one point in my life, I imagined wanting to become a magician.  Most young boys go through this and successfully emerge at the other end of adolescence with more realistic career goals; me, I'm still thinking some four decades later, that if I could only find enough time to practice....

Magic continues to fascinate me because of the power of its secrets.

This is more than being compelled to know how particular effects are accomplished, but why they work.  Why, for example, can Penn & Teller disclose their methods and yet continue to entertain and amaze?

Famous TV Magic pitchman Marshall Brodien would punctuate his commercials with the line "Magic is easy once you know the secret."  This was a back-handed assurance that even the least-dexterous would be able to impress with his merchandise.  What he should have added is that, in most respects, magic is stupid once you know the secret.

This is not to say that the secrets are stupid because they are not.  Often the method(s) used in a particular effect are based on quite sophisticated concepts.  Once you know the secret, magic can make you feel stupid for having been fooled by what are pretty straightforward methods.  Anyone who has ever learned the "Illusion of the Stolen Nose" or the "Mystery of the Removable Thumb" has some sense of what I mean and what Mr. DelGuadio is talking about.



Since I was not going to be a performer, I chose what I thought would be a compromise career path.  I went to work in the theatre creating illusions of time and place to help the performers tell their stories.  I was not the sorcerer, nor his apprentice, nor even the broom carrying the bucket of water; I was the guy who made the broom.

To be sure, we were not making the Statue of Liberty disappear, or anything like that, but, by the same token, it was surprising to learn what little it takes to deceive the eye so that it takes as solid something that is flimsy, or three-dimensional when it has only two.

As with magic, the early focus of this work is on technique.  What size of brush, or type of sponge, is used to create "realistic" bricks?  What is the best way to make river rocks out of joint compound?  How do you make a root beer float that won't spill during a dance routine?  Each in their own way is a kind of magic trick, a small illusion designed to transport the audience seamlessly into the world of the story.

After I left the theatre, I then spent some time working for attorneys.  As I was to find out, this was not such a radical career change as it might, at first, have appeared.  Success in this field too depends on secret knowledge and mastery of technique.  I don't want to succumb to the conventional wisdom about the legal profession, because, to that time, it was one of the best jobs I had had and it more than prepared me for my next career which was in municipal government.

Here again were the familiar components of secrets, illusion and misdirection.  And here too was a disappointing similarity to the removable thumb and stolen nose tricks.

Also common among these worlds is the concept of secrecy as power, as advantage, as leverage.  Knowing something that others do not is what makes it possible to make things possible like illusion or profit, or public policy.

As I was also to learn, secrets are never free.  There is a price to be paid in acquiring them and there is another for keeping them.  This is the side that I see far too frequently in the work I do now.

To work in mental health is to deal in secrets. 

Almost every day, people come to our offices because they have learned a secret about themselves, or a loved one and they need help figuring out what to do with their secret knowledge.  People who live with mental health conditions exist in the same world as the rest of us.  Whether they are the person who has received the diagnosis, or a family member of that person, they know precisely what society's prejudices are.  They know what you think of them and so they don't want you to know that they're sick.  They know that a diagnosis of a mental health condition is the lens through which the rest of their life will be viewed.  Their diagnosis will be the clause at the end of ever sentence, the discount for every achievement and the rationale for every setback.  "Pencils successfully sharpened by mental patient."  "Applicant with mental illness makes typos on job application."

Is it any wonder that people are reluctant to engage with treatment?  Accepting help means letting go and entrusting your secrets to others.  This can often be a challenge with low-value secrets such as a password, or a romantic crush; can you imagine the stakes where mental health is concerned?  And lingering in the background is the specter of hospitalization, involuntary confinement and forced medication.

Never mind that the standards needed for confinement and medication, not to mention the shortage of psychiatric beds, have made that an increasingly unlikely outcome, this notion is so deeply embedded in the culture that people are often surprised to learn that instead of depression leading inevitably to the straitjacket, it can be successfully treated and could be no more of an inconvenience than are seasonal allergies. 

When people disclose their mental health conditions to us, or more frequently, their personal stories that have helped to shape those conditions, they are relying upon us to keep them.  The very process of help-seeking demands that, in order to access treatment, the consumer has to surrender some, or all, of their burden of secrets.  For most, this is just as difficult as it would be for David Copperfield to disclose how he floated across the Grand Canyon, or walked through the Great Wall of China.

And disclosure is not always a guarantee of relief.  If a consumer, or prospective consumer, discloses information about their racing thoughts, or hallucinations, or plans for suicide, they reveal themselves to prejudice and bias.  Their diagnosis, or diagnoses, become part of their identities, a classification, a membership card in the Separate and No Longer Equal club.

To work in mental health is to understand that secrets are also kept because their exposure, their disclosure, would provide unwelcome advantage to another and reveal a vulnerability.  To work in mental health is to recognize that people build their sense of themselves and their place in the world on a foundation of secrets.  Disclosing these secrets is surrendering power to others.

My boss, Paddy Kutz, has been helping people who live with secrets for four decades.  People often come to her because she is a familiar face in the community and because she is not a doctor or a counselor.  When they recognize that they are up against a problem and don't know what to do, they come to our offices and go into closed-door conference with Paddy to develop a strategy of response.  Can they get the help they need without disclosing their secrets?  Can their family member be "fixed" without it having to come out that they have a "problem?"

She has had lots of these conversations with people in all walks of public and private life.  She always has the Kleenex at the ready as she patiently explains that "secrets keep us sick."  Some of her visitors remain unconvinced and leave the office with their secrets clutched ever-closer to their breast, but many, many more, leave with a brochure and some phone numbers and a strategy for moving ahead.

It is common knowledge even among those who would not be caught dead at a magic show that magicians are sworn never to reveal their secrets.  The assertion is that if the audience knows how the trick is done, their appreciation of the effect and its performer are diminished.  If the public knows what the magician knows then there is no reason to pay to see their performances.  Jobs for magicians will disappear and the art form will die.

This position insulates the role of magician as keeper of special knowledge unavailable to "civilians."  This position places an emphasis on the trick and not on the experience of magic.  With this perspective, we focus on how Copperfield might have made the Statue of Liberty disappear rather than that he did--that we could be convinced that something that monumental in scale could vanish by the wave of his hand.  This position reduces the role of the performer from that of the artist to one of mere expert technician.  This position also relieves the performer of the responsibility of innovation:  if the secrets are protected then they can be endlessly recycled.

Some years ago, there was a manufactured scandal when Fox ran a series of specials featuring the Masked Magician.  In each of these programs, the performer exposed a variety of magic tricks ranging from the close-up effects of the tabletop to mega-illusions seen only on TV.  His stated motive for "breaking the magician's code" was to promote innovation and creativity and to help move the art forward.

What's true is true.  Secrets may create the illusion of power and control, but in their hoarding comes the responsibility of protecting and defending them and this, in time, becomes its own full time job.

I became interested in magic because of the secrets--this is not surprising for someone keenly aware of how powerless they were--but four decades later I remain interested in magic because of the opportunity to tell stories and create wonder.

There is no question that secrets provide, for a time, the illusion of power, but like most things built on an illusion, there is no permanence, no security, only, as DelGuadio says, "burden."



--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

PS - I was prompted to write this because some very significant secrets were disclosed to me.  As a result, I wanted to take action, but because they were disclosed in confidence, I could do nothing that would not betray that confidence.  As a result, I was left with homilies about secrecy and an imperfect analogy to magic.  My intent in ending with Penn & Teller  was to make the point that the secrets only have the power we give to them and, in disclosure, the "magic" is not diminished.

Tool No. 10: Get Professional Help If You Need It

We have come to the end of our inventory of the 10 tools in the Live Your Life Well Toolkit and, in many respects, this is perhaps the most difficult one of all.

It's a difficult tool to use because asking for help requires a measure of self-awareness.  You have to be able to identify that you are in a hole before you can ask for a way out.  Once the situational aspect is addressed, i.e., where you are, the next question is transformational, i.e., how does one change and who can help.

There are a whole series of jokes about people in crisis asking a variety of specialists how they can resolve their circumstances.  If they ask an economist, the solution invariably involves economic theory, a surgeon advocates for an intrusive operation, a politician promotes legislation as their answer.  Everyone has a unique opinion and it is frequently a challenge to figure out how to make the best choice--kind of like picking a calling plan for your cellphone.

For some, the journey to self-awareness comes easily and they can move seamlessly into action, but these are less likely to be the people for whom help is required.  I remember watching a performance of Penn & Teller where Penn--the talking giant--was juggling broken bottles.  He says as part of the bit that he gets asked about whether he is concerned that he might catch the flying bottles by the wrong ends.  He says something like that is unlikely, but if it were to happen, if he did catch one of the bottles by the jagged end, he would almost immediately let go of it.

For the rest of us, those less like Penn and more like lobsters in a pot, the recognition that our circumstances have become a problem comes on much more gradually.  Instead of responding instinctively, we take the time to map the pot and appreciate the blending as our shells move from green to red. We don't know we need help until we catch a whiff of melted butter and by then the response options are far fewer.

I am forced to admit that much of my early thinking about mental health comes from comedy psychiatrist like Bob Newhart and, later,  Dr. Katz.  One of the earliest jokes I can remember is about a guy who rushes into a psychiatrist's office and says, "Doc, I've been having suicidal thoughts all week, can you help me?"  And the doctor says, "Sure, but from now on, you pay in advance."

The only other thing I knew about psychiatry was that they had sample packs of medications that looked like packages of Dentyne gum.  I only knew this because my father had a sock drawer full of them.  One year he took me to England and talked about how hard it was for him to drive on the "wrong side of the road".  The pills helped him with that, he said.  I don't think he ever had a professional relationship with a psychiatrist, but it seemed like he always had samples.  Later, when my mother went back to school, got degrees in applied social science and became a trained counselor, my father would dismiss her chosen field as the "helping professions."

Once you get to the point where you begin to think about professional help then there comes with that the unasked question about what it says about you if you think you need professional help.

Although I didn't fully understand it at the time, I think this was how I learned about the stigma associated with mental illness.  I learned that it was something to be made fun of, mental health was the obsession of celebrities and none of it was to be taken seriously.  I don't think anyone ever said that if I was sad I should just get over it, but I also know that when I was sad, I was most often left alone to deal with it.  (At least that's what I recall.)

Identifying the need for help and getting past whatever internalized stigmas you might carry are important steps, but they only serve to bring you to the next question and that is identifying what kind of help you need to address your situation.

There are many paths toward recovery and the "right" path is going to be different for each person. A quick trip through your local bookstore's self-help section will demonstrate that there as many therapies as there is shelf space to hold them. Recovery could also lead you to connect with a community of faith. Your path to recovery may seem, at first, more like a maze with many false starts and dead ends, but the drive to get out of the hole, or out of the pot, should sustain you through this period.

Kind of like Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz", you have the power to influence your recovery.  It's most likely going to be more complicated than clicking your heels and reciting "there's no place like home" and there is a very real chance that, at some point, you could have your own encounter with flying monkeys but the only way to get home is go through that.

Another thing that Dorothy had going for her was the support of trusted friends--see Connect with Others.  At every step of her journey they helped her to make the best possible decisions.

For some, medications can play a role in their recovery. There are many success stories about the use of neuropharmacology, but there are also questions as to the risk vs. benefit of this approach. It is a subject to discuss carefully with your psychiatrist. As with most medications there is the risk of adverse side-effects and you should learn as much about those as possible.

Whether you are dealing with a social worker, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or other mental health professional, it is important to have trust in that relationship. If you don't have confidence in the help you are getting then it is often possible to change providers.

Mental Health America of Licking County dies not provide direct treatment services, but we can make referrals to area providers.

I need to go home and walk my dog, so I am going to leave you with this short clip from "The West Wing" in which the late, great John Spencer tells a story about a man who found himself in a hole and needed help.



-- Graham Campbell
Associate Director