A short motivational monologue (YouTube/podcast) arguing that keeping significant secrets harms mental and emotional health. The speaker uses a vivid metaphor (holding a basketball underwater while keeping one’s head above water) to illustrate the exhaustion of repressing secrets, warns of acting-out behaviors, and urges confiding in trusted friends, mentors, or professional counselors.
There's that old adage that comes from AA that you. You're only as sick as your secrets. And so it's not healthy to carry, you know, to have a big chunk of your life that is known by you, that is not known by anybody else. The metaphor I often use, it's like taking a basketball and you're in a swimming pool. You're submerging that basketball as deep into the pool as you can, but you still have your head above the water, and you're acting like, yeah, I'm doing just fine here. But, man, you are exhausted from holding that basketball under the. Under the water, because all it does is want to come to the surface. And if you're using so much psychological energy, emotional energy, to repress all those secrets, it's just not healthy. You're going to act out in some weird ways. And so you need to have somebody in your life, whether it's a trusted friend or, like I said, a mentor or a counselor, a pro that you can confide in.
