Personal psychology
It is said that “what is not talked about does not exist”, but everything that is repressed returns. That is the logic that seems to predominate in the pacts of silence.
He is silent to pretend that the events never happened. And since the pretense is collective, it is easier to expel what happened from consciousness. In every family there are issues that are difficult to talk about.
A tragic death, someone’s suicide, a pregnancy out of wedlock, etc. However, it is one thing to have difficulty talking about an issue and quite another to seal pacts of silence.
This is done only when the consequences go beyond simple embarrassment or discomfort.
Silence is a way of repressing, encapsulating, forcibly containing.
Luis Aviles
However, as psychoanalysis has so emphasized, everything repressed returns. Being silent about something is never entirely successful.
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There is always a chink through which the truth escapes and comes to exert great influence. The marks of what is not said are always sealed somewhere. In a way of feeling, of acting, of thinking.
Silences become phobias or illnesses. Or deaf guilt and strange atmospheres. Silence weighs, even in those who are not part of the pacts of silence in families. Refusing to say what is decisive has unpredictable consequences. In principle, it is a confidential truth, which gives rise, most of the time, to a trauma.
And traumas inaugurate an endless cycle of repetitions. The guilt, the pain, the force of what happened is not dissipated simply by agreeing pacts of silence. Conversely. They gain vitality and become that never seen but always present ghost that accompanies many families.
Silence makes sick and words heal. The only way to exorcise the ghosts of an abominable fact is to speak of them. I share with you this excerpt from The Wonderful Mind. And in your case, are there pacts of silence in your family that drown you? In my personal experience, talking about «those issues» has been very hard for me, because it turns out to uncover things that one prefers not to remember, but I have realized that TALKING about it is the way to heal and live in peace.
Later we will talk about these issues with specialists, who I hope can help you in something as they have helped me.
Luis Aviles.
Luis Avilés 