I may be a bit presumptuous posting this as I'm still relatively new here but I thought I'd do so. They're also mostly traumatic secrets from my past and I apologise if I may be taking the thread a bit off topic, making it heavy or writing too much.

1. A secret I keep from friends and colleagues - it's not just me but my whole immediate family is on one or another medication and been either diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression or one or other BP disorder, while there was also tremendous abuse within it too. I just can't bring myself to share this with even good friends as the whole family would then be labelled as loony.

I can't bring myself to explain either that I was so withdrawn and sad when younger because of the abuse at home and how I felt I was often having to act as 'the parent to the parents'. Even when it included my father, who is physically quite strong, cornering me and threatening to kill me there and then.

2. Three other secrets I keep from friends and colleagues - I walked in unexpectedly on my mother trying to kill herself. My one older sibling admitted to me that my walking in on him in his room several years ago unwittingly stopped him from killing himself as well. I also once stopped my other older sibling from running away from home when she would never have survived by herself.

3. A secret I keep from family and friends - I had flings with women they'd never have approved of at all and would not have gone for if I hadn't had manic episodes.

4. I'm afraid deep down everything I've achieved is worthless as I am myself, it will all fall apart and I'll destroy my relationships with family and friends from within because I'll unleash my latent anger I feel for so many of them for what they either did or how they let me down in my greatest hours of need.

5. An unwitting secret I keep from friends for no good reason really - When I required surgery from an accident the operation was almost botched. I lost a lot of blood causing my blood pressure to collapse, had some sort of reaction to the anesthetic as best I can gather, and then almost had to be placed into a coma. I'm just supposed to 'deal with it' as far as family is concerned but I have a deep fear of death and the incident somehow still haunts me despite no having no actual memory of it.

It's unfortunately ... just not as simple to 'get over' all the above completely like some people seem to think.