Carrying Secrets

So, Andy is settling into his job at Rivian, and comes home frequently buzzing with excitement.  We'll catch up at the end of the day and he lights up starting to talk about something, and then stops himself.  There are a number of things, he explains, that he's not supposed to tell anyone.  And he does stop.  But I can see that he definitely still wants to talk about it, a quiet buzzing under the skin.  

This hadn't really been a problem before.  When we were both working at Skyward, we knew upcoming developments and changes together or we could otherwise update the other with a mutual understanding--not being public with sensitive information, knowing roughly where that line was, and able to at least talk about any and all scuttlebutt between the two of us.  

However, he's not the only one:  I have secrets, too.  Or rather, I've had them since I've been in clinicals.  I can't go into certain specifics about my day.  I can't share information about my patients that could link back to them.  I can talk about fascinating symptoms in the vaguest sense only.  I cannot geek out about some things until I have enough patient experiences to make up a aggregate "I had a patient once that..."  I am legally bound to keep the information of the patients on my floor.  

(Quick, relevant reminder to today's world:  HIPAA means that as a provider I cannot share your information, not that no one can ask me about mine.)

I hold secrets.  It is a privilege, and it is heavy.  And Andy and I have to adjust to our own mutual circumstances in this.  We both hold different secrets.  We are bound to that secrecy for our respective company's benefit and in my case for the privacy of the patients I serve.  While we recognize that necessity, there's still pressure, the wanting to talk about it.  That means that there is a bit of a disconnect, then, between us.  A minor wall.  It will take some time to sort out how we balance in those places.  

And the goal will not be to eliminate the secrecy but instead to rebalance how we carry those emotional loads and rebalance what it means to our connection.  We can distill out the core of the important pieces that we do need to talk about and can share, yet that will require some additional emotional work to get it to that point, which also needs to fit into that recalibration.  And in time we'll find a pattern in how best to carry pieces forward.