Bonus: In Conversation with Galit Atlas

with esteemed psychoanalyst Dr Galit Atlas. Galt's latest book is the brilliant Emotional Inheritance A Therapist, Her Patience and the Legacy of Trauma. How did you come to become a psychoanalyst? I think I was born a psychronost, but I think it starts for many people. We we are first patients and we get from that chair into the world of therapy or psychoanalysis, and then slowly, you know, we moved

to the other chair of the therapist. And I think for me, I became a patient when I was twenty years old, and I still remember the first time when I came to psychoanalysis and my therapist asks, so why are you here? As we all ask, and I looked at her and I said, I don't know. I really had no idea, And so as you can imagine, years later, I understand in retrospect why I was there, and I help other people also why they're there. Yeah, gosh, that

makes so much sense. And I would imagine it's just as you were speaking, I was almost picturing like a lock and a key, that feeling, that feeling of something being unlocked, or like a light getting switched on, and something that was sort of unknown to you becomes a little bit more knowable. Yeah, this this thing that you you feel but you don't know, and you don't even know if it's real. It's a feeling that you have, and I think that's how I entered in my therapy.

But it's true for for any anything, right, and especially for secrets, right, and something we feel but but we don't really understand what that feeling is. Well, and what you just said of like we don't even know if

it's real. I think that that is so universal. Um, you know that that that feeling, And you know, one of the things about family secrets is that, UM, so often with my guests there was a period of time where they were haunted by something myself included without even knowing what it was that was haunting them, which of course makes the haunting that much more haunting. You write in your book at one point, you know, demons tend to vanish when we turn on the lights, and you know,

if we're if we're stumbling around in the darkness. Um, we just don't know what it is that is forming our behavior, in our in our inner lives, right right. And I think that I really call it ghosts, the ghosts of the unsaid and the unspeakable. It's those things that actually haunt us. So the tagline for for family Secrets is, and I thought about it often when I first read your book, the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we

keep from ourselves. Um, so let's let's start with the secrets that are kept from us. What is you know? This is such a I mean, that's a question you could probably spend two hours answering, But like, what what is a legacy emotionally of the secrets that are kept from us? Do you know the secrets that are kept

from us? Are are could be very very different, right, I really focus on secrets that are purposely kept from us and secrets that we are you know, we're kept from us, but it's there there, but we just never

are not allowed to talk about them. And and of course those are things that happened sometimes before we were even born or very early in our lives, and times when we cannot even remember and know anything about, and that there is a decision that made that this is, this might hurt us, this might hurt the children, or

this might this is something too shameful to share. And I think when we talk about legacy is how those secrets are actually alive inside our minds and how we hold them as our own material, as if there were they belong to us. Yeah, you you write in your book, um you quote the psychoanalysts Maria Torrek and Nicholas Abraham saying what haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others. I think this is the second kind of secrets, that are six

things that we consciously are aware of. Right you know where you where your family came from, or in the book, I talk about my my own family trauma that I know that my mother lost her brother and he drowned when she was a child, and he was fourteen years old. And this information is known to me. It's not a secret, and yet it is kept as a secret, which change

that I'm not allowed to talk about it. This is an emotional material or you know that is not almost there's no permission to discuss and therefore you have to keep it in an isolated place in your own mind and kind of dissociated, right it didn't forget about it and and not not remember and keep it almost as a secret from yourself. I imagine that must come up

for you a lot in your practice. You know, that feeling of people coming to therapy not quite knowing why something just doesn't add up, or something doesn't make sense, or there's a kind of pervasive or general feeling of unhappiness or or anxiety or whatever it might be. How do people get at that? What is that kind of untangling process? Like, I'm sure it's different in every in every instance, but what, um, how do we explore that

which we don't even know we're trying to explore. It's a good question because, as you said, people come to therapy with what we call the presented problem, and that is the problem that anyone who comes to therapist as I come to therapy because I suffered from or because like when when my therapist asked me, why are you here right? What is the presented problem? And and I actually think in retrospect that for me, the presented problem was that I didn't know right. That was the problem

that I presented right away in the first session. I think that that is that is true for most people. We come with some something that we want to explore, and the secrets are actually and they find their own way into this room and the secret keep themselves, but they also explore themselves at some point and things come up, you know. And I think that's part of it, is that in the process of therapy, part of what I

listened to is the gaps. The gap, Those gaps the things that somebody tells you something and you follow them and you listen to what they say, but she also listen to what they don't say, where some some moment there is something that goes somewhere else and you feel it's almost in your body, do you know what I mean? That something is missing there, and that listening to the gaps is where we look for the secrets. We look for the secrets where where there are gaps. M hmm.

I love that. Um. That makes so much sense. So what about you? You're you're talking about the kind of secret that maybe is within a family UM that is known, known but not known, there's no permission to talk about it, what not? The kind of secret that really is um buried, like, is not not visible, really unknown? What does that do to people? Mm? Hm? You know those secrets and are the secrets that are on purposely are kept us right with with the fantasy, I would say that people can

actually keep secrets from each other. And we know that we communicate with each other in so many ways detachment and unconscious communication and the way that we live inside each other and and really feel each other. And so if I go back to the gaps, that is something that we we feel and we don't always know where it comes from. We have that feeling that you describe and we don't know what it is. And I think that that is something that you see even in therapy.

It's something that we talk about. But but those secrets are are not visible even even to the therapists and the patients until they appear on their own, until something happens. And and you know, in the book, I talk a lot about about our own investigation. People go and ask family members, for example, and they have a theory about what happened, and they go to their mother or their

father and discibling, and suddenly new information appears. But in order to be ready to know, for us to know, to go ask and actually be ready to hear the answer, and very often there should be some process that leads us there two to the right question and to the capacity to know the answer. I think many times we don't. Even One very common example that I can give you is that people tell me that very quickly they have

what we call a her moment. And I think that that is actually about those family experiences that they knew about but never put them together, never actually made the link between two things. And so I think that's another way of secrets to come up, because some of the work on secrets is about making connections. It's about about listening to something and saying, oh, actually I know something from my history, and now I can link it to something that is happening in my life now. And that

requires a couple of things, right. The idea of distrusting one's own stealings like distrusting one's own reality and and thinking, well, maybe that's not real, you know, the denying that feeling. So there's there's that, and then there's also readiness. I've now had these deep conversations I think seventy of them at this point for for this podcast with people who have you know, contended with really intense secrets in in

all different kinds of ways. And one of the things that I've seen because I'm always looking for in a way, what what the threat is between you know, all of the stories, because all the stories are so different. But one of them is that when we find out feels at least as critical as what we find exactly exactly, and I think we need to be ready for that because sometimes this is it is it is too traumatic to find out a secret. So I think when we

find out is very crucial. And of course in the process of therapy, a lot of what we do is preparing ourselves to finding out the the unknown and being ready to make to make those links that that into some degree open our eyes. Elly. Do you think that every family has secrets? Yeah, I do think that secrets, the siccrets could be very different from each other. Right, It could be because you anything we can't face becomes the secret, and from others an altar from ourselves, but

anything that is shameful. And therefore many secrets are about sex and sexuality, affairs and sexual identity, and of course trauma often becomes a secret. And so many families actually have secrets that are related to a history of trauma. You know that the parents do not want to talk

about it. I mean, we have a lot of material that we cannot face and don't feel comfortable with, and that material, emotional material, is pushed, you know, to to some secretive parts of our mind and and become the secret. And I think, I think we're hardwired not to want to hurt our children, have our children know things that

might be painful. We're hardwired to protect our children. And I think so often parents when they when they keep a secret, are keeping that secret because they think that they're doing their children, they're doing the right thing for their for their children, you know, in the name of love, when in fact there's really secret seep. There's there's no such thing as a kept secret. Ultimately, they they have an impact act even when we don't, even if even if we can't kind of see them or name them

or apprehend them. Yeah. Absolutely, I think that that is really the main thing that I hear from patients, those who find out about the secrets and those who keep secrets, is that they frame it around protection. I think. I think people usually don't tell themselves that they try to protect themselves actually, And you know, I think remembering, for example, a trauma is very painful, so you don't only want to protect your children from your trauma, you also want

to protect yourself from remembering. And you prefer to forget and even shameful things, right, There are things from people's history that that they prefer to forget and they prefer to not tell anybody, and that becomes a secret, which means also not to themselves. But I totally agree with you that one of the main reasons, at least the rationalization around it, secrets between parents and children is meant originally to protect the child from a knowledge that the

parent thinks might be too complicated. And think about it, I mean, there's a lot of efferent when we think about reproduction, right and these days, how children are born. There are a lot of things that people don't know and we'll never know, you know, about ideas idea for example, for many many people, that's the secret. Many many children do not know that they were born through ideas, and

the parents prefer to keep it as a secret. And I think there are many other ways that you know, even you know what things that happened early in life when when we were babies, we will we might never know, right, but those times really impact our lives. They shape our lives. We'll be right back. What do you see as the cost of secret keeping? You know? One of one of the things that um, it's heartbreaking that I hear often

it's sort of a two fer. It's a double whammy. Um. Someone makes a discovery that a secret has been kept from them, and then perhaps they they explore that or they go to someone in their family and say I found this out. And then they're asked then to keep the secret from others. They're they're asked to hold it. So they have a combination of of having it been kept from them and um, the conundrum or the dilemma

of whether they can speak it. Yeah, and the burden right of keeping it's keeping a secret and asking right, but they're having that responsibility. Something really interesting that you said is that sometimes people tell themselves what I'm doing. I'm doing this, I'm keeping the secret to protect you know, X person or why person, when in fact that's very noble and you know, kind and loving and of course the way that we all want to think about ourselves.

But um, often it's really that they're keeping it because they're protecting themselves because they don't want to They don't want to think about they don't they don't want to feel it again, they don't want to re traumatize themselves. Yeah, and they don't want to define themselves around that, right, if you think about right, many many secrets are about

infidelity and affairs and and things that happening marriages. If you don't define yourself as a cheater, you would and if you and if you cheat it you want to forget it. She don't want to remember that you have done that. So I think that that is one reason that we want to forget. We want to keep secrets because it's kind of attacks are identity and the way

we think of ourselves. If something terrible happened to you on the street, right and you were you know, you were attacked, you know, many people keep those things as a secret. And I think some of it is the shame and the embarrassment of being a victim, especially in the past. And if you think about Holocaust survivors, there

was many years where people didn't talk about it. It was it was it was shameful to be a victim, because being a victim is being so helpless, and and there is something deeply shameful about feeling helpless and to be defined that way, or to be afraid of being defined that way. Yeah, even by yourself. It's about identity. It's about who who I am. And I think often those things that happened to us are those that are so to speak, and not me experience. Right, they're outside

of the way I define myself. And then and then I have to struggle with that. The best emotional way for me to do that is to erase it from the right, from my memory, I would say, to dissociated, to deny it, to use to use defense mechanisms to really push it away and not even remember it, right, and definitely keep it as a secret to nobody else will ever see me that way and know that I

am back because it's it's and not me experience. What is the mechanism um with which someone can really tuck a piece of knowledge, a secret away, to the extent that they really don't consciously hold it anymore. They could pass so lie detector test. Where does it go and how does it act in that kind of situation. That's a good question. You know. We have we have a line of defense mechanisms, right of defenses that service in

that way from dissociation. Really, and I think the dissociation is a big one when it comes to trauma, for example, to repression and denial, and those are really you know, those are very effective mechanisms that allows us to forget

anything that feels threatening to our psyche anything. And you know, it's very interesting because our mind will basically attack any information that makes us anxious or or too afraid or two or too threatened if especially if it threatens the the you know, if if if it could cause us some kind of fragmentation or breakdown, our mind will really help us in that way. I think the problem with that is that many of those secret go go into

our body and are expressed through our body. Right, So I like to think about it or describe it as like a secret contract that our unconscious has with our body, to say, you know what, let's make sure that she doesn't know that. So let's let's keep it, you know, let's keep it away from her consciousness, and then some of the material is expressed through the body. That's fascinating.

How does that manifest itself when our minds remembers our bodies are we have to forget because otherwise our bodies have to remember what our minds cannot remember. And in what and what kind of ways does that express itself in the body of the mind has shut it down. I think that what it's what we call symptoms, right, headaches and all all those somatic symptoms that are real.

We don't make them up. That really our body will express for our back pain, headaches, is even obsessions and all of those things that we know that are the symptoms that are either held through the body or we don't understand in other ways emotional symptoms and the understanding it really when that is when that when the mind remembers,

the body is allowed to forget. But as long as the mind cannot remember, and that's what you were talking about, the defense mechanism, right, as long as the mind is not allowed to remember this because it's too threatening, then the body has to do some of that work right of remembering. It plays itself in the body. And I didn't know that the body keeps the score right. The body is there is a system there, and the body

is there to help the system survive. So I would imagine that's where symptoms of anxiety or panic attacks come from, like a big red flashing light warning warning. Yeah, panic attacks, anxiety. And I think I'm talking even about things that are even less less obvious than like wright and back pain, eggs Ama. You know all of these things that have that are connected to our right, that express our mind, on our skin, on our in our bones, in our

many many kind of illness and physical illness. That is the burden of the the unknown and the unspeakable on our body. I'm going to quote you back to yourself. There's um from the from the introduction of your book. These are your words. The secrets we keep from ourselves are meant to protect us by distorting reality and to help us hold unpleasant information far from our consciousness. In order to do that, we use our defense mechanisms. We

idealize those we don't want to feel ambivalent about. Identify with the parent who abused us split the world into good and bad. In order to organize the world as safe and predictable. We project into the other what we don't want to feel or what makes us too anxious to know about ourselves. Yeah, so could you talk a little bit about this idea of projection which I think people so often you know here and don't really understand. And you know, this way we have of organizing the

world so that, you know, so that we can tolerate it. Yeah, you know, the secrets well keep from our selves and our defense mechanism that is so effectively helps us with that is based on the really the the idea that of surviving, right, we need to feel safe, We need to survive. We need to think that the world is not so scary, that our impulses are not so overwhelming, that people are not so dangerous, and that we could

differentiate between good and bad that we will. And I think these days when the world, you know, after this really intends a few years, the world became even to some degree or even more chaotic, and aggression is everywhere, and you know, and I think we use even more of our defenses because we want to make sure that we're safe that and that we could differentiate. For example, splitting is one defense mechanism, right between good and bad. I want to know, like in the fairy tale, who's

the good mother, who's the bad mother? Where is it safe and where where the danger is? And if it's too mixed then you know, like Children's fairy tale for children's right, they are they help the children organize the world, organize it and divide it into good and bad so the child can really feel safe. And that's where it comes from, right there, This is what the goal of that making sure that we feel safe in the world.

And so when we talk about projection, projection also supposed to help us feel safe in the world and and supposed to help us deal with our own unpleasant feelings about and things that we don't want to know about ourselves. So I don't want to know that I am a very jealous person, let's say. And so I look at you and I say, oh, Jenny is so jealous. She's always jealous. She's jealous of me, right, and and that's how I get rid of that feeling, and I basically

put it on another person. The beauty of that mechanism is that it is sometimes so effective that I will choose somebody who actually can take it on and will start behaving the way I would like them to behave those those emotional mechanisms are are really profound, you know.

And it is based on the understanding that people actually know each other more than we think they do and communicate with each other unconsciously, you know, communicate with each other unconsciously, and that communication she can go from one person to another without passing through consciousness and without awareness or or even intention, and so I could communicate with

you something. And with couples, you see, that's the most how couples are actually giving each other where you see these couples that one person is so gentle and sweet and the other person is the aggressive one. And you see how the person that is afraid of aggression, well activate the person that is less afraid of aggression to express aggression for them. You know, these couples that one is the good and one is the bad, right, and it is based on how much each of people feel comfortable.

For example, if you're talking about aggression, if I'm really really afraid of aggression, I can and I cannot be I can't have confrontations. I know how to how to recruit my partner and and you know, and do something that they will unconsciously take that aggression for me, express it for both of us. Is that what happens in an unhealthy relationship or do you think that to some

degree that happens in all relationships. I think it happens in all relationships, and to some degree it happens in healthy relationships, right, because I think about how how productive that is in a good, good couple will allow each other to to use each other in productive ways. Right, And I think good or a bad couple if we're splitting here, right, if there is a good or a bad right, part of it is really about how productive things are or how destructive they are. It's all on

the spectrum of of productive or destructive. And and I think that that is one way to evaluate if something works or not, or how much there is And you see that there are couples where there is a lot of power struggle and a lot of a lot of them, you know, negotiation about no, you're bad, No you're bad, No you did this? Then you right? Then they throw it back on each other because imagine what happens when both people cannot do something, cannot they cannot afford feeling something,

and nobody wants to hold it. So I think, to your question, sometimes it is actually productive that we hold things for each other. It's almost inevitable. I have twins, you know, my twins are. It's amazing to see it, how they hold things for each other. One of them is always this, and the other is that, and then they split. And when they used to be baby, is only one of them used to cry when they're hungry.

They always they always shared the responsibility and so, and what you're describing is also this kind of um switching, like switching of roles, right, like sometimes it's you, sometimes it's me. Right, then that is more healthy, usually right when there is more when there is more flexibility when

we could switch. But you know, in some cases, when, for example, when somebody is really afraid that that will they become overwhelmed when they feel angry, sometimes they choose unconsciously somebody who knows how to do it for them and represent them in the world, and they kind of the kind of and that is not necessarily unhealthy. You know. It really depends, it really depends how productive it isn't how much it works for both people, and that they

don't write that it just works for them. We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets. There's this passage in your book, Um, an important question comes to the surface. Is it better for the next generation of trauma survivors, the inheritors, to know or not know? Does it even matter assuming our ancestors trauma finds its way into our minds anyway? And you know I found that a really Trenchian, you know, kind of provocative question. UM. There's a phrase a little bit later in your book,

the phrases raw wordless form. Um. You know, when it comes to talking about trauma, we always walk the delicate line between too much and not enough, between what is too explicit and what is secretive, what is traumatizing, and what is repressed, and thus remains in its raw wordless form. And you know, I think that that is like such a powerful idea for for people. The whole question of um, you know, is it like I remember when my book Inheritance was out and I was UM speaking to audiences

a lot. At one point during the question and answer period, UM, people put questions, they wrote them down, and they were all handed to me on index cards, and there was this one question that was written down in this sort of shaky hand, and the question was what good is knowing? I kept that. I kept that index card. I still have it um like somewhere on my desk because it was such a powerful question and if I felt like such a plaintive question, almost an angry question, like what

good is knowing? So I would pose I would pose that to you as as my final question for you, what good is knowing? It is a fantastic question, you know, you know in emotional inhert sence, I present the conclusion that we inherit even family traumas that we were not told about. And I think that the question what's good in knowing is a complicated one because it brings us back to the issue of regulation. How do we regulate? How do we regulate in general, and how do we

regulate trauma and traumatic experience and emotions? And I think that knowing and what is too much and what is not enough? Right? And I think that on one hand, the fact that we know anyway so many things, and we often think that something is wrong with us when it is not confirmed in reality. And there's a lot

of gas lighting around it. I mean in one of the stories in the book, I really talked about Nowell for example, that he feels like he headed brother and his mother always stop with this, you know, with these crazy fantasies. You have enough. And so these kids, these sensitive kids that actually sense things are often called crazy and irrational. And you know, so there is something about that when things are very close to consciousness, it is

such a relief. People that are they are so relieved by awful information that they learned, right, and you're thinking like, oh my god, this is like I'm so happy to know that actually my father committed as died by suicide, right, And it is like this is such a relief for me. And I think about that piece too, and of course the other it's very it's a very very relevant idea of the issue and about you know it, can it be too much to know for us even or why knowing?

If it could really overwhelm us? And and is there is there too muchness in knowing? And I think the answer is yes, because anything, any secrets, any secret that is we knew as a way that is thrown on us right in a way that the other person we talked before about getting rid of something information as a way it is not fully processed, that is not fully thought through, and it's just alrone on the other person.

It could be pretty devastating. And so I think when we talk our regulation, and maybe that's the conclusion of this answer, we have to go back to processing. Processing. Processing. You know, when you get a processed secrets, it's usually a gift. You know, it is packed, it is you know what I mean. Yeah, that's so interesting. I mean it goes both ways, doesn't it Like a processed secret and the capacity to process a secret, Yes, it's yes, exactly.

A processed secret is packed and wrapped and delivered in a way that is very different than if somebody gets you something and just say and just throws it on you, even if it's the most precious thing thing, it is too much. It's like throwing up on you. And I think the processing and our own and our own processing. I always ask my guests if they're coming on the show, they're coming on the show because they have processed something. Um, they've already I'm not here to process it with them.

They've processed it and we're here to unpack it. And and I always ask my guests, and it doesn't always end up on the show. Most of the time it doesn't, but I always at the end ask are you do you wish? Do you wish you didn't know? And in seventy people, not one person has said, yes, I wish I didn't know? Um And I think that that in large parts that that doesn't mean that no one would

ever feel that way. I think it has to do with exactly what you're talking about, that that sense of something having been worked through on on on both sides, so that what it ends up feeling is illuminating and liberating. Yeah, you know, I think those people who feel that they wish they didn't know, which I believe some people feel that the majority of people don't, but some people feel that way, and I think that is because they have no way to process that thing that they knew that

they know. Again, it's about process, and they cannot process it, and they're then they're stuck with it, you know what I mean? Like processing is digesting, it's suggesting, it comes one way and and goes another way, and there is a movement in it. When you're stuck with something, it's like swallowing something that you cannot digest. And I guess I mean, is that available to all of us, that

capacity to process over time? You know, I think that it is part of our capacity, is humans to process, but we we I think that it is very difficult to process things on our own, and so I think the it is much much easier to do it with another mind. I would say that that that is a witness to our process, and that helps us digest it and and sits with us. It's very it's very difficult to do it alone, you know. Yeah, that's sometimes right. That's part of why secrets are not processed, because the

secret they've kept along in the dark. As you said before, quoting that, you know, turning on the lights. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.