Your only as sick as your secrets
I did not have many secrets, but I did have one that I held on to for over 35 years, it brought me a great deal of guilt and shame, I was 12 or 13 and it ate at me a lot, in my 4th step inventory I wrote it all down except that!!!! Well I sat down with my sponsor to do my 5th step, the first thing he asked me was "Martin, what is your deepest, darkest secret?" I told him, and as I told him the guilt and the shame of it all was lifted, some how by getting it out there I was able to see that what I had done was not all that bad, and considering how young I was I knew then that I was surely not the only person to have ever done that. At that point I was almost totally rid of that guilt and shame, the full freedom came in step 9 as I made amends for that, the person I thought I had so deeply wronged laughed at me and said "Man no harm was done, it never bothered me, I can not beleive you felt bad about that, especially after all these years! I was FREE!!!!!
Secrets? No thanks, not worth it, I do have plenty of things that are not for the world to know, but they are known to those who need to know, because they were part of it or affected by it.
I do not need to let you all know about me getting cookie crumbs in the bed almost every night, that is just none of your business, you all have no need to know the number of chocolate chip cookies I can eat in one sitting in bed!