What is full disclosure? When, why, and how should I reveal sexual secrets to my wife? In this episode, disclosure experts Dan Drake and Janice Caudill walk us through the process of full therapeutic disclosure from beginning to end. You'll learn how to restore truth in your relationship in a way that is healing rather than harmful.
Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill co-founded Kintsugi Recovery Partners and co-authored 5 books in the Full Disclosure Series. They developed the first full disclosure training and certification course, and they provide the highest level of support for professionals using their Restoring Truth Model. Learn more at kintsugirecoverypartners.com
Dan Drake is the Founder and Clinical Director of Banyan Therapy Group in Los Angeles, California. He is a Certified Clinical Partner Specialist Supervisor and a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist Supervisor. Dan is a Christian, a husband, and a father.
Dr. Janice Caudill is an APSATS supervisor, CSAT supervisor, Certified Partner Trauma Therapist supervisor, Certified Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapist, Certified Intimacy Anorexia Therapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. She is the Founder of Intensive Recovery Healing and Intensive Recovery Coaching. Learn more at intensivehope.com
Buy Dan and Janice's books! (these are paid links)
For you (the blue books):
For your partner (the green books):
Take the Husband Material Journey...
Thanks for listening!
What is full disclosure? When, why, and how should I reveal sexual secrets to my wife? In this episode, disclosure experts Dan Drake and Janice Caudill walk us through the process of full therapeutic disclosure from beginning to end. You'll learn how to restore truth in your relationship in a way that is healing rather than harmful.
Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill co-founded Kintsugi Recovery Partners and co-authored 5 books in the Full Disclosure Series. They developed the first full disclosure training and certification course, and they provide the highest level of support for professionals using their Restoring Truth Model. Learn more at kintsugirecoverypartners.com
Dan Drake is the Founder and Clinical Director of Banyan Therapy Group in Los Angeles, California. He is a Certified Clinical Partner Specialist Supervisor and a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist Supervisor. Dan is a Christian, a husband, and a father.
Dr. Janice Caudill is an APSATS supervisor, CSAT supervisor, Certified Partner Trauma Therapist supervisor, Certified Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapist, Certified Intimacy Anorexia Therapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. She is the Founder of Intensive Recovery Healing and Intensive Recovery Coaching. Learn more at intensivehope.com
Buy Dan and Janice's books! (these are paid links)
For you (the blue books):
For your partner (the green books):
Take the Husband Material Journey...
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Hey man, thank you so much for listening to today's episode about disclosure. We have some of the top experts in the field talking about this Dan Drake and Janice Caudall.
Speaker 1:I have been waiting for years to do this episode, wanting the right people to talk about this topic, because disclosure can do a lot of harm when it's not done properly and it can be so healing and it's so important. I think we all need to become educated about this, and Dan and Janice are the ideal people to be our teachers. Dan and Janice are the founders of Kintsugi Recovery Partners. They've co-authored five books in the full disclosure series. They have developed the first full disclosure training and certification course, which you can find in the show notes, and they give so much wisdom and grace and kindness in the way that they talk about this.
Speaker 1:You are going to learn what is disclosure, what isn't disclosure, when should this process happen or where does it fit into a couple's healing process, and you'll hear just a little bit about some of the research that has been done on disclosure as well, and the alternatives of what often happens when disclosure is not chosen. Ultimately, you'll get a little picture of what God is up to in this process. It's really beautiful, it's extremely helpful and I hope you enjoy the episode. Today we get to be with Dan Drake and Janice Caudill, experts in full therapeutic disclosure. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks, drew, good to join you.
Speaker 1:It is a long time coming that we have needed to talk about this topic of disclosure. Why are you so passionate about it?
Speaker 3:The disclosure process for me sort of is a little metaphor for the entire recovery process, and in it you get to work on all the skills like it, really and truly all the skills you'll need for the long journey of life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you all have this great pyramid with truth on the bottom and what else is in there.
Speaker 3:Safety, trust, vulnerability, intimacy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't think of anything that's more important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the more that we've done this, I mean I consider disclosure as a sacred experience. I mean they're a process, that it's an unveiling of truth in a way that's contained and safe and supported. It's difficult, it's raw, it's scary, it's exposing and yet it's what heals. It's moving the things that were in darkness and in shame and secrecy into the light and restoring. It's building a new foundation of a relationship. So to me, I take these very seriously. I mean we want to be very supported. It's not something we do flippantly. We see these can go really badly If they're not done well, if they're done without proper execution or training or support, and so we really wanted to support people to do this in the safest, healthiest, most sacred possible way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hear some of the horror stories of people who have had a very negative experience or where a disclosure did more harm. So let's get the record straight what is a full disclosure and what isn't a full disclosure?
Speaker 2:A couple of things. So what isn't disclosure? So two things I'll say, and maybe, janice, you can add One disclosure is not a series of truth extractions, it's not an interrogation, it's not something that takes place and it's only dribbled out because it's forced to a certain level and then more comes out later, and more comes out later in a staggered process. That's the most. What we found in genocide is amazing. At doing research we found through the community that is, the most traumatic form of a disclosure is when it's dribbled out, staggered over time, and that's unfortunately usually the way this goes.
Speaker 3:Dan knows that I have a pet peeve with using the word disclosure for that trickle process, because it's just a bunch of confessions. It's an in the moment confession. I'll tell you what's at the top of my head. Disclosure itself has come to have some more specific meanings.
Speaker 2:So what it isn't is a staggered series of confessions, but it's also not just an unburdening of the disclosing person. So we often I'm all for accountability groups, I'm all for men being vulnerable and transparent with each other what we've seen. Sometimes the men start to realize oh, I can unburden this shame when I'm talking to other men and they say I've got this new, I see the value of it instead of holding these secrets. So they come home and share all the stuff with their wives and just sort of dump it on the wife, which to me is more of a confession. That's a oversharing. It's not supported the partner. What it does is unburden the disclosing, the person doing the disclosing, but then the partners left reeling and traumatized because they weren't prepared, they had no support. So it's also, you know, on either extreme. It's not just a complete unburdening of the person, it's done with support for both.
Speaker 1:So, to be clear, if I have a secret struggle with pornography and I share that with all the guys in my group, that's great. Yes, right, like hey, confession is important and we need to do that. And also there needs to be a professionally supported process in order to allow partners and wives to go through this process without being even further harmed. And I think that's huge because a lot of guys resist disclosure because they think, well, I don't want to hurt her more, I don't want to do more damage and, as you said, with this staggered disclosure thing, it's like, well, sharing a little bit more of the porn, or sharing a little bit more of what I'm struggling with, is like cutting off the tail of a puppy one inch at a time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the partner is in this place because usually it's quite frankly, they hear the phrase this time it's everything, you know everything, and they don't Okay.
Speaker 3:And then when the next rebel comes, it's like this like the scab that was starting to form, you just rip it right off and it gets deeper and deeper and deeper and damages trust more and more and more and the partner can't start to heal. So things do get worse with that. Things also get worse because I work with lots of, lots of, majority of disclosures I work with are men, lots of men with really good hearts for their partner, like, really I don't want to hurt my partner, and then they learn a little bit about this disclosure process or they're at a workshop and they get this sort of energy to do it and they come home and honey, you know, she's in the kitchen cooking and she's completely it's not just blindsided, it's like carpet bombed, like that, and the shock is so tremendous there are none of the supports like to even begin the healing process, and so for sometimes, for the best of a reasons, when you do it off of that energy, without guidance, the thing that was done to begin the healing process actually exponentially exacerbates it.
Speaker 2:Can I use a, if it's okay. Some metaphor I find helpful is like a medical one you use the scab. To me I think it's like, let's say, I had a cancerous tumor and to me I think this the secrets, the sexual secrets, that we can keep our tumors. You know they're malignant, they're damaging to us, they're damaging to relationships. Let's say that the doctor, we'd go through surgery. We get the tumor removed. We got it all. Well, guess what If we find out? No, later, actually there's still some more. We didn't get it all, okay, now it's. You're gonna be reeling, you're gonna be, you know, oh, wow, okay, it's not just scared, you're kind of oh, it goes back to this. Oh no, am I gonna be safe? Am I okay? And then no, we got it all. Next time, got it all. What if this is five times, 10 times, 15 times? Could you imagine if, what that does to your system, if you thought you got all the cancer but you didn't and it's just, could you imagine what that would do and how you'd feel?
Speaker 1:And you're saying that is what it feels like to receive this kind of dribbled out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's like we're talking about truth being a foundation. So the partner? Okay. Finally, instead of partners feel like they're free falling with when they don't know all the information. They don't know. What am I? What's true? What's not? Who are you? Who am I? What's the extent of this? What did you do? What didn't you do? Okay, we got a new foundation. Okay, we think we've got all the truth out there. Oh, wait, it's not the truth. Then this, the foundation we started building, crumbles and we have to rebuild that. And then it's just this the safety starts eroding All the stuff that's on the top of the pyramid safety, trust, vulnerability, if that's there. This all starts crumbling again and it gets harder and harder to rebuild each time.
Speaker 1:I feel like we have a really vivid picture of what not to do On the other side. What is a full disclosure?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is process for the disclosing party to like really carefully put together his own history of acting out. It's like the the disclosure has to come into self-truth, and so there's a lot of like work that can happen in there. There's a lot of like recovery work, and sometimes I work with people who, like I've been in recovery for a long time, I think I know it all, she knows it all, and then, with that really careful process of putting it together, I have lots of maybe a good 90% of the time oh, wait, a minute, how could I have forgotten that? But for the partner, because we have ample research now that we know that for at least the majority, there is betrayal trauma, it does kind of rise to the level of a trauma, like the discovery of what was going on and, oh my gosh, everything I thought I could believe to be true about my husband, my relationship myself. I can't trust any of it now. And so for the partner, it's really how do we blend in the elements of healing, of trauma healing? How, most importantly, how do we do this in a way that the partner has some choice and really carefully thinking what do I really need to know and what it maybe comes up sometimes impulsively when I'm triggered that really and truly that's probably not wise for me to know. So there's choice points. Most importantly, there's support, like a lot of support, not just from the person or persons guiding the disclosure, but hopefully from like a community.
Speaker 3:With that there's some opportunities for like time, like you insert time into trauma. When you're learning something in that dribble method or in the avalanche method, there's no time to pause, there's no time to breathe before the next peace come. There's no time to say, okay, drew, can you pause for just a second? I need about like 30 seconds just before you give me the next piece. There's no opportunity to say, dan, I need time out, I just need to walk around for a few minutes With that. I mean you wouldn't believe the number of women I've talked to who felt like they kind of had to go through it all when maybe what they wanted to do is go cry or scream or vomit with that. So there's the opportunity to insert time in there in a way that repairs. There's like healing as there's pain coming.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That makes so much sense to me From what I've learned about trauma. What differentiates a tragedy from a trauma is that in the trauma, you're alone and you're powerless. So it sounds like disclosure is a way of making sure that you have support, you're not alone and you're also not powerless, Like you have a voice and a choice and you get to go at your own pace rather than just being overwhelmed.
Speaker 3:But it's not a passive preparation process for the partner. Because you remember the old movie a long time ago, a Few Good Men, the sort of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson on the stand, and Jack Nile you can't handle the truth. Well, sometimes that's true If you sort of just do the on your own, doing your own surgery version or poorly led. But for partners, part of the preparation to figuring out what I really need to know is also oh, and how do I handle it? And if I don't have like a really strong, well-developed kind of coping resources, ah, okay, I should probably do that. And if I'm really preparing in a way that I'm being careful and conscientious about it, I probably should start like sometimes it's painful to look at what do you need to know? What do you think you know? What are your greatest fears?
Speaker 3:You start the coping process there Like, oh, time out, I'm overwhelmed. Or you realize, you know it's probably pretty smart to book in, like doing something that's like regulating and then dealing with a little bit of the really really hard, painful stuff and then pausing and doing something that's regulating again. And when you prepare that way it's kind of like you're building a muscle inside of you, like a coping muscle. So when you go through the disclosure, you handle it better. It may be just as painful, but you handle it better. And one of the metaphors that Dan and I use in our materials is like people who are from storm prone, hurricane prone areas, they don't wait until like five seconds before their hurricane hits before they start preparing. And you prepare because you want to come through better.
Speaker 2:And I'd say the same thing on the disclosing person's side, the husband's side is there's prep ahead of time. It's not just we advocate for a written disclosure process, but there's different ways this can go down. We don't think there is one way to do this. Actually, we know, and what you said I think was critical support is very, very critical to this for the success. But there's different ways this can go and we wrote workbooks not saying this is the way, it's, saying here's all the choice points along the way and how do we navigate those choice points in the way that makes sense for each couple. So that's how we really tried to frame it and it's being able to prepare for doing a written disclosure. Do that. But also, how do I stay present and not go into shame for the person doing the disclosing and not trading? You know mistaking shame for empathy.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I hear people saying well, you know I'm such a terrible person. You should, you should just leave me. I don't know why you're still with me and they think that's some sort of a connecting response, when really it's still about me and it's still about my shame and I'm still, you know, protecting myself. So how do I learn how to do the very thing that in active addiction. The addiction tells us keep this secret, keep this stuff. You know, don't tell anybody, because if you tell this, nobody's going to, they'll reject you, they'll abandon you. You know there's no way your wife could handle this, so I'm going to keep this all secret.
Speaker 2:Well, we're advocating for the exact opposite. To bring healing is sharing this truth is actually going to heal. Not keeping the secret. And that takes time to really settle. That, to kind of buy into. It's the sharing of truth that is going to build a new foundation. Not keeping this secret. So that, to me, is takes time, it takes a lot of courage. That's why any anyone that walks through this I love walking with men through this because it's it's a courageous act. Some people won't ever do it because they you know they'll whatever, they're too scared or that there's a lot of reasons they may not do it. But to me, this is so anyone that's committing to this is so beautiful to really support someone through it. It's really I don't know to do something that's so difficult. It's humbling. It's an honor to walk with the guys through this.
Speaker 1:I'm imagining some guys are listening to this feeling a little bit of inspiration or opening up to the idea of maybe I could do a full disclosure and have that foundation of truth in my relationship, with support for both of us and and preparing for it, not just doing it suddenly. When is the right time for couples to do a full disclosure?
Speaker 2:The hard thing is there's not, there's not usually the right time in the study that we did for betrayed partners. So, on a scale of zero to 10 of the level of impact that these things had, you know, zero being no impact, 10 being the worst possible. So discovery for partners and I don't know the numbers you maybe tell me- 9.6 on a 10 point scale.
Speaker 3:So that's huge for the full disclosure itself on average 7.7, which, to put this in earthquake terms, that's still a major earthquake. But wait time that? That time between discovery and the full disclosure for the partner 9.2. Like 9.2, even if it's a quiet thing, it's an ongoing agony. So the answer for most partners we couldn't do it soon enough. Should it like yesterday? Yesterday was the right time to do it Right, and yet that's like giving yourself five minutes to prepare for the hurricane.
Speaker 2:And the disclosing person to, because that number, that number surprised me but it doesn't surprise me now. But it's also it was really helpful to see. So it's helpful to say for partners you can't do disclosure soon enough. Yet for most men that we work with we can't wait long enough because we need there's a lot of work that we need, we need to do about self awareness, so we tend to compartmentalize truth. I don't want to see this, so I'm going to bury it and put it closet, close it behind different closet doors. That I don't want to see. So sometimes it takes time to actually start to really get some self awareness, get out of the fog of an addiction you know it takes some time and to get some emotional maturity to say and build some empathy skills and attunement and understand what my partner is going through. That takes time.
Speaker 3:But the truth of the matter is that disclosures occur on a continuum and sometimes for very good reasons. A partner feels like I need to know some basic things like what you know, dan, what you know if you're the, if you're the disclosure, I need to know what you know of you. Right now, because I've got kids, I don't know how am I supposed to like recover if I have no idea. You know what I'm recovering from. So, dan, and I don't take a stand on this is the perfect time, but you have to kind of go into it with realistic expectations. If you're doing it really early on in the recovery process, there's a certain quality that you can get and there's a certain quality that you probably won't get.
Speaker 3:And if I'm the partner, then I might have to be aware that it might be feel like doing a discovery with not just not quite enough anesthesia. The impact might be harder and the understanding might be harder and, oh yeah, we might be doing another disclosure like down the road, when he really understands more and he's unpacked more and memories have like fully come out of compartments. So for me it's about like just the self awareness of the reality, of here's what you've got If you do this right now. Is that what you really need, okay? Or the thing that we hear a lot in the communities all like, at least so. So we're at least three months, and that would be. That would be wonderful. But I've also worked with men who would get to like two days before the three month mark and suddenly they relapse. And again and again and again I've done participated in disclosures that happened without sobriety and surprisingly, most of those men became sober after the disclosure.
Speaker 1:But the partners were aware of that and they had some choice points like among it For me, it feels really important to know that the waiting is almost as bad as the initial discovery and for that to give us, as men, some perspective on what our partners go through.
Speaker 2:I do think the field has shifted where we're doing disclosures sooner than we used to, because I think in the past it was more focused on the man and saying, well, he's not ready, he's not ready, and that meant what doesn't mean he couldn't share truth. It meant he wasn't, you know either, emotionally mature enough, he didn't have empathy skills yet. And that might be true, but I advocate for them earlier, but not everybody. And I think to Janice's point, it's all about what. I see these going more successfully it's when both people have the realistic expectations of what's going to happen. We give informed choice and we let the couple I'm not going to say, you know, this is the way I'm not going to make a couple do something. I want to see what's going to be best for them and have them make the choices that make the most sense for them. Yeah, I think in some ways it depends.
Speaker 3:I'm probably going to butcher this metaphor because then you are the person who lives in the more earthquake prone part of this country. But I learned about the Mercalli scale, which is whereas the Richter scale measures the intensity of the earthquake, the Mercalli scale measures the actual impact of the earthquake. So 9.2 earthquake in, say, san Francisco, which is structure, is really prepared, will have a very, very different impact in San Francisco than in some in a village, you know, in a place that that's not prepared for it. So sometimes if you do those really early disclosures, you really need more preparation, and then by that I mean the partners and the addicts for the emotional pieces that are going to come up and grab you by the neck.
Speaker 3:And the dilemma around that sometimes is you know people, it takes a really long time to accept that this recovery takes a long time. It takes a really long time to accept that we're not going to knock this thing off in three months, okay, and if you're not in that place, we really can't accept that. Sometimes it's really hard to understand that you really do have to muscle up emotionally, like you have to do the set regulation things, you have to do the things to help yourself with that and that's. That's a little bit, I think, a dilemma sometimes with early ones, is it just there's a certain level of naivete that's still there in both parties.
Speaker 2:That brings up a really important point, I think, for the person doing the disclosing to Janice you mentioned. You know some men I work with. They're like okay, I finally I bought into disclosure, I think I can, I can do this. They think disclosure is the finish line. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong, it's a huge. So again, I said before I'm so honored to walk with anybody that it's a courageous step, it's huge, but it's the foundation. We're building a new foundation. The house is not rebuilt.
Speaker 2:So I think we have to be aware because I've had some men that they win and just like, let's say, a major surgery. I go through a major surgery. There's going to be a post-op period where I might actually be feeling worse, my body may be more, you know, tender and open and exposed and things may actually get worse before they get better. So I think to have the realistic expectation you don't cross the finish line, then we're all good, we go back to you know things the way they were. We built a new foundation. It's delicate, but it's a new foundation and it's an important foundation that we can build from.
Speaker 2:And I just have to say that to build realistic expectations that you know some men I've found, if I in the past I hadn't prepared as well as I could have of what happens after, and they get really discouraged and they think, oh, it was all you know, it's worse now. This is a failure. That's not the case. We expect that. But you built a new foundation and that you can't ever take that away. That's that you can build from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, kind of using that surgery metaphor again, very few people jump up and start working out like five minutes after major surgery. There's a time when maybe even ICU and then the recovery room and then rehab. There's a long stretch. Healing involves pain and somehow I think we accept that a little easier when it's like medical, physical, than we do with the enormity of, like the emotional impact.
Speaker 3:I also think for a thing that's a little harder for partners early on is to accept that there's two truths and any disclosure.
Speaker 3:There's the facts Did he accurately, did he lie, did he fully kind of share over the history of acting out, and that's what people get really, really focused on particularly early on. But there's also the truth of behavior and so if somebody's doing disclosure really early on, like it's probably you're probably going to see more shame or defensiveness or tap dancing, so to speak, or checking out. And that doesn't mean a bad disclosure. It means your look for the partner is watching to see the impact of the addiction or the history of addiction, but also getting the opportunity to see how he handles it Like does he catch that he's in shame and then do his own, whatever, his own coping, whether it's breathing or praying to like come back into himself. If he can't and Dan leans in to help him, does he fight Dan or they actually let Dan help him? But the partner gets also prepares to like watch and you get to see recovery in motion and that's really powerful and sometimes it's the behavioral truth that's actually the most powerful and important for the partners.
Speaker 1:We talked about setting expectations. Some guys really want to know what Research is out there about disclosure. What are the stats?
Speaker 3:I love research, so especially when it validates what my beliefs are so Like. To my knowledge, there are three and collectively of those three studies, over 93% of the partners in addicts said that was the right thing to do. Even though it was really really painful, that was the right thing to do. And again, the fact that there's so much consistency in research piece, that's a pretty Pretty strong stat in terms of, like our research because we hold partners and the disclosures what were the factors that when they didn't hit the 93% mark for them, or when the pain was well, more than 7.7? Like what were the factors that that contributed to that? And and often the factors from, say, the addicts were that they like Okay, that tends not.
Speaker 3:You can't restore truth with lies and it made things worse for the partners. For the partners it's that they weren't prepared, although in that really looked like the data that this was your interpretation, dan is that they were working with somebody who Guided them, who didn't help them prepare, and by that it means that they were under prepared. So this principle really sucks for partners that you actually have to over prepare for things that maybe might not be true, that you might never hear them in the disclosure. But over prepared is better than under prepared. Well, I had a lot of stories from partners where the the addicts guide, or the guide for both of them, wasn't partner sensitive, wasn't trauma sensitive? Right that really controlled the process or no? We only have two hours and that's it, so we better get it done or a 50 minute therapy session or something like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or you can't ask that or so and we even heard from disclosers who felt like this that the guide untrained, unprepared or an insensitive guy Actually created damage to his spouse, you know, and he's sitting there watching it with good faith, like listening to a guide, and that's kind of this is my prep, to say all of research said that your guides carefully.
Speaker 2:Usually that question comes from men, not from partners. Partners generally don't ask the question about stats and effectiveness, at least for me. I don't know for you, janice, but what I, what I would ask then is Is kind of flip the question. So let's say we don't do disclosure, that's an option. That's an option, we're not going to force anyone to do it. What is that person's plan for helping heal and restore the relationship If we don't do disclosure and the partner wants it? So if the partner doesn't want disclosure, we don't do disclosure, I'm not doing disclosure, I'm not forcing someone to know information. If the partner saying I do want a disclosure and then the person you know who's done the behaviors is refusing, it's gonna be really hard to heal and repair.
Speaker 2:And usually what happens in those cases is either the relationship starts to disintegrate because there's no foundation to build from, or the partner has to accept Non-reality and what that usually does. If they sort of Kind of accept or resign that I wouldn't say accept, kind of resign themselves to this, usually it takes a toll on the, their bodies, on that. They start getting sick. They have to, they have to move forward with no security, no safety, no, no, and just sort of trust, the safety Trust blindly, and that doesn't usually go well for the partner and for the relationship.
Speaker 2:So I've had people that try to do that and in the relationship the intimacy they think they're going to build or they think they're going to go back to, never goes. They never actually get there because because what are we building? How are we building? It's? It's again building on sand and there's no security. So that would be my thing and I'm not going to force anyone to do it. But usually that question comes from an understandable Need for some reassurance that this is the right way, because your whole system said lie, keep the secret, don't share this stuff, that's how you survive. So I get, I get that you'd have that question and usually that's a self-protective question as opposed to you know, I'm trying to, you know, get reassurance, of course, but who am I protecting? Is it me or is it my relationship? And I want to fight for relationships.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and in my experience with the partners is that that need doesn't go away, even those who, because of maybe, faith, beliefs or or children, or, like I'm, in this relationship, but the ache and the need for to know what's real don't go away. And the irony is, is that our research also, um, how they guess who actually gets more gain out of the full disclosure process? It's the addict, and I think sometimes it feels like that the full disclosure is supposed to be something just for her and it really isn't, because truth is healing. It's healing in relationships, but you can't heal yourself without your own willingness to step into it.
Speaker 1:And looking at some of the documents and exercises you all have put together, they are incredibly empowering, soul searching, equipping and, for the disclosers, like. Going back through your story is very revealing and I can see how this is recovery for both people. For those who are interested in learning more about this, what resources should they begin exploring?
Speaker 2:A labor of love. For years we put together some disclosure workbooks. So, just as a way to understand, there's a blue one and three green ones. Okay, the blue, there's a big blue one and a small blue one. I'm just going to say this the blue one is for the person doing the disclosing. That's that one in there in the full disclosure series.
Speaker 2:The big one has the whole process from you know what is disclosure, kind of things we talked about today to the preparation process, to a little bit of the post disclosure healing. There's a skinny one, that's if you're just wanting to write your disclosure and eating support there. There's a 10 step guide that we created to do that, so that one kind of takes a portion of the big blue one and kind of takes that out for the green one and then we call them volumes one through three. Volume one and is for the green ones, for the partner. Volume one is what is disclosure, you know, is it right for me, those kinds of things? Volume two is the prep. It's the meat of it. It's a really beautiful, you know work. I think it's a huge contribution, janice, that you know, she spearheaded with this for helping partners.
Speaker 2:There's so much trauma support with it as well as you know how to prepare for the disclosure for the partner. Three is the post disclosure healing for the partner.
Speaker 3:So if I can clear up what maybe the audience might know why you're doing green book, blue book and why the big blue book is a big blue book, one big blue book and the partner suffers in three volumes. Quite frankly, we just didn't think we could get men to buy three books if we split it up. And for partners who are so overwhelmed to begin with they needed it chunked. Okay, so that's where the awkwardness in talking about blue and green it gets confusing.
Speaker 2:So that's why I was trying to break it down. So that's something Our website, consigui Recovery Partners, has some more resources. Janice mentioned you know how important it is to vet your disclosure guide. We created a disclosure, the first disclosure guide. Training for professionals.
Speaker 2:That's not just for therapists. We have we have coaches, we have, you know, clergy that are doing this as well. So you know we believe in this process, but we know people are doing them out there and some, some are going really poorly. So we want to educate and train professionals so that we can, you know, do this in the most effective way possible so we can help other, you know people heal and restore their relationships. So that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:One thing we're really excited about doing, which we haven't we're working on, is we also understand, you know, not everybody can afford an expensive therapy program or having two therapists facilitate this, which is, you know, what we often do. So we're trying to put together, we're working on which we will do in it's. It's a workshop, essentially like a group workshop for folks that will, you know, will lower the costs and then they can do this, the prep process for disclosure, which is usually what gets the most time labor. You know labor intensive and costly to do this kind of together as a cohort and work through disclosure prep together. So we're working on on doing that directly, for for those that are wanting to do this, and then I'll maybe just add in terms of like the training for professionals, paraprofessionals.
Speaker 3:It's not just like going through here are the exercises, because you can get that in the workbook. There's actually we wrote the workbooks for those who are going to be using them, but there's actually a model like a trauma and form model about why we created the exercises we did and the order that it goes in, so like really understanding the heart. We call it the restoring truth model. It was important for us to make sure that other professionals know. We also wanted to create a process where those who need a guide can have some idea of what their training is or if they're trained kind of in use. This is a very it's a partner sensitive trauma and form process. It's a relationship nurturing process for that and that's a way to find somebody who has that type of training. So we have those who are certified and even those in training are like on on our website, consicrecoverypartnerscom. So we're hoping that we become also sort of like mediums e-harmony for those needing a disclosure to find somebody who has the same sort of heart and training to help them restore truth.
Speaker 1:There is an abundance of resources that Dan and Janice have created and are creating, which is so needed, so exciting, and I love the name Kintsugi. If you've ever seen that Japanese art form where pottery is broken and then put back together with gold and it's even more beautiful than before as we say goodbye, can you tell everyone what Kintsugi means?
Speaker 3:Well, essentially, at court, it's the art of transforming brokenness into beauty, without like restoring something that's broken to its original form. It's reconnecting the broken parts with melted gold, and we felt like that metaphor was so important for the work that people are doing in recovery and in the disclosure process. The gold might be as different for different people, but it's blood, sweat, tears, pain, shame. You know triggers, trigger busting a million times. But it's this thing that we've bought so hard to restore truth that when you do it it becomes so precious to you. Then the inspiration when things go poorly or triggers come up that we work too hard for this. It's too precious, we can't walk away from this.
Speaker 1:That is so redemptive, as you help couples restore truth safety, create space for healing. What is your favorite thing about this process?
Speaker 3:It's same people transform. There's something so powerful. There's a lot of pain in it, but it's pain for a purpose and watching lives transform. That is so rewarding For me. It connects me to the belief that there are things more powerful than ourselves, and it's so inspiring.
Speaker 2:Even if it's a difficult experience, there's so many beautiful things that can come out of it.
Speaker 2:I mean, people do the most surprising amazing things.
Speaker 2:Sometimes partners are fine, they are thank you for sharing finally Like finally I got it and they're actually grateful.
Speaker 2:Sometimes Not always, you know, can be very angry too, of course, but for me, I think that the thing that I love the most is to walk through this process with a man and help them understand, you know, move from darkness and secrecy and shame into the light and really really take huge, courageous steps to do something that they haven't done before and that they, their whole systems that don't do this because you'll die or it'll kill your relationship, and to actually challenge themselves and to show up and be a better human being, to be a better man. After through this that they can walk away. I have nothing to hide, nothing to fear anymore and I can actually be that authentic man of God that I wanted to be from the beginning, that I just I knew I wanted to be this person and he was so out of reach. They actually can become that, and that's so transformative and beautiful to see someone actually take that and become kind of who they were supposed to be from the beginning. Like that's incredible.
Speaker 3:The part of this process I love the most for partners is actually the back end. I love this, seeing them doing the work and muscle up and now I actually am a better coper with all kinds of things. But the impact statement process for the partner after that's where. That's where the Kanzugi process happens for them, like if it's taken seriously and like a sacred link. It's the pathway to post-traumatic growth, my favorite part.
Speaker 1:That's so beautiful. As you're talking about this, I have the sense that, even as people are doing this, god is also doing something.
Speaker 2:It's bigger than us and it's not two litigators on two different sides. It's to create this experience where it's safe and secure, and this we were there to support a couple, and there's something greater than us in that room. It's just, it's true.
Speaker 3:He's in every layer of the pyramid.
Speaker 1:Dan and Janice, thank you so much, and if you want to get some of these resources, find some professional help, go to kanzugirecoverypartnerscom. I'm going to put all of these links and all this information in the show notes. Gentlemen, always remember you are God's beloved Son and you, he is well-pleased.