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Skeletons in the closet

They're the people we're closest to, and we like to believe we know everything about them - so what happens when a deep-rooted family secret comes out?

Has anyone in your family ever revealed something about themselves that you couldn't ever have imagined to be true? If you've never had a surprise in your family, cast your mind back to the shocking secrets the Slater family in EastEnders have had to cope with recently. For those who missed it, Zoë, 17, found out that her older sister Kat, 31, is in fact her mother, who fell pregnant at 13 after being sexually abused by her uncle. The extreme emotions this discovery evoked drove Kat to attempt suicide and Zoë to run away from home.

As the secret came out, people throughout the country were glued to their sets, riveted, waiting to find out how the story developed. Would Kat and Zoë be able to overcome the fallout and build some sort of mother/daughter relationship? Or would it prove too much to cope with and destroy their friendly, sisterly bond?

EastEnders aside, there's no doubt that a revelation about a relative can, at times, be enough to tear a family apart. According to psychotherapist Carol Martin-Sperry, there are very few families that don't have secrets. However, she believes that because of the bonds involved, secrets in families are harder to deal with than secrets between friends. 'This is because people assume that they know everything about their family, or that they have a right to know everything,' she says. 'And when they find out they don't, they find it very difficult to deal with. But in fact, people have lives outside of the family. Being related to someone doesn't give you an automatic right to know everything about them.'

'All secrets lie along a scale of how big an effect they'll have, and how shocking they are,' says Martin-Sperry. 'Small secrets usually involve something an individual family member has done, such as taking drugs, being caught shoplifting or getting involved in fraud. Even though other family members can feel very let down and humiliated when they find out these secrets, they are not usually directly affected.'

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