Videos and podcasts on betrayal trauma and therapeutic disclosure
Interviews and talks with Dr. Janice Caudill on therapeutic disclosure, betrayal trauma, and recovery after sexual betrayal.
Why you will hear from Dr. Caudill
Dr. Janice Caudill was one of the founding members of the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS) (opens in a new tab). She helped create its Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model, one of the first models to treat partner betrayal as what it is: trauma.
She co-wrote the Full Disclosure workbooks, written for both partners going through a therapeutic disclosure. She speaks and writes on recovery from sex addiction and intimacy anorexia, and on what an intimacy-deprived relationship does to a partner. You'll hear that in the interviews and podcasts below.
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Walking Through Truth, Honesty, and Disclosure In Your Marriage w/ Dr. Janice Caudill | Ep. 461
Dr. Janice Caudill joins Pure Desire Ministries to discuss what it means to walk through truth, honesty, and disclosure in marriage. This episode explores how couples can navigate difficult conversations around transparency and openness as part of healing and building a trustworthy relationship.
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Transcript: Walking Through Truth, Honesty, and Disclosure In Your Marriage w/ Dr. Janice Caudill | Ep. 461
Nick Stumbo: Hello there, good listener. I am your host, Nick Stumbo, and you are listening to the Pure Desire Podcast, your biblically based and clinically informed approach to healing from betrayal and breaking free from all forms of compulsive sexual behavior. Whether this is your first day in recovery or your 10,000th, we hope these are conversations that will encourage, bless and guide you in your recovery. Today is episode 461, and joining me as my co-host for this series is Rebecca Vander Meer. Welcome back.
Rebecca Vander Meer: Hey, thank you. It's good to be back. It's been fun so far, and I'm looking forward to more.
Nick Stumbo: I didn't mention it in the first intro, but you're kind of our Latina sensation, because you did Pure Desire, and even taught Pure Desire around Latin America, before coming on to our clinical team.
Rebecca Vander Meer: I did. It was probably one of the best parts of my life. I got to translate for Dr. Ted in Latin America and begin translating the resources as well. So it's fun to now be here representing my people.
Nick Stumbo: And you and your husband, Bob, are a part of working with couples here. A big part of that process is moving towards and implementing a full disclosure, which can be a very challenging part of anyone's recovery. So today we got to interview an expert on the topic, one of the authors of some of the biggest workbooks out there on full disclosure: Dr. Janice Caudill. What are our listeners going to get when they hear this conversation?
Rebecca Vander Meer: She's definitely the queen of disclosure. If you haven't heard of her or read any of her material, please do. This podcast is going to give you a lot of great information. It's going to answer a lot of questions that even our couples have when we begin counseling with them: the hesitancy, or the curiosity, about what this disclosure is. How long? Why can't we do it sooner? I need it right now. When we start the process, it's "I need to know everything now." So this will give you a lot of answers and a better understanding, so that you can ease into taking your time and use that time very mindfully.
Nick Stumbo: If you are preparing for a full disclosure, you're going to get a ton out of this. If you've done a disclosure and it went poorly, you're going to learn a ton. If you're walking in some health after full disclosure, there are great pointers. And even if you're single and thinking about how to be truthful and honest in future relationships, there's great material here. I think everyone's going to get something out of it.
A little bit more about Dr. Janice Caudill. She is a Texas psychologist, though we found out she's from Kentucky, who is also licensed through PSYPACT for teletherapy in most states. She is the founder of Intensive Recovery Healing and Intensive Recovery Coaching, programs that specialize in customized intensives for individuals and couples recovering from sex addiction, betrayal trauma, intimacy anorexia or other life traumas. Janice is a certified sex addiction therapist and supervisor, a certified clinical partner specialist and supervisor, a certified partner trauma therapist and supervisor, and finally a certified intimacy anorexia therapist and Somatic Experiencing practitioner. All that to say, she knows what she's talking about. And for those who know IITAP, she is one of the primary voices within IITAP developing their full disclosure material. So here now is part two of five in our couples recovery series on truth, honesty and disclosure, with Dr. Janice Caudill.
Dr. Janice Caudill, welcome to the Pure Desire podcast.
Janice Caudill: Thank you so much for having me.
Nick Stumbo: It is great to have you on today. I was mentioning in our pre-conversation that I'm honestly surprised it's taken us 400-some episodes to have you on, because you are highly regarded around Pure Desire as an expert on the disclosure process. I'm really excited for our audience to hear from you.
Rebecca Vander Meer: Such an honor to have you here, so thank you for taking the time.
Janice Caudill: Well, it's an honor for me to be here, because of the work that Pure Desire does with the focus of the topic today.
Nick Stumbo: Thank you. For many of our listeners who may not know a lot about you, since this is your first time on the podcast, would you tell us a little about who you are and what you do, in your own words?
Janice Caudill: Well, I am Dr. Janice Caudill. I'm a psychologist, licensed in Texas, and through PSYPACT I'm also licensed for telehealth in most states. My identity professionally is as a trauma therapist. I think everything I do is in one way or another related to healing from trauma. I've done a lot of different things in my career, but where my passion landed is working with people who are struggling to recover from problematic sexual behavior, often an addiction, sex addiction or porn, and helping their betrayed partners. In doing that, my hope is that it also helps the relationship heal. And because I know there's a trickle effect from this, I also know that it extends out to helping their families heal, helping their communities heal. A particular passion of mine in that trauma work is professionally guided therapeutic disclosure.
Rebecca Vander Meer: That's just so incredibly beautiful, that you get to walk into people's less-than-ideal circumstances and be such a light in their lives. Thank you for what you do. As we know, one of the most challenging aspects of recovery is the disclosure process. Would you give us a brief overview of what a disclosure would look like in an ideal recovery setting?
Janice Caudill: OK. I'm going to own these as my belief system, but as a trauma therapist, it's got to be dealing with trauma and healing in one way or another. The very first thing I would say is that it needs to be guided, by someone who has specific training in helping couples navigate this process.
Just in case you have some folks out there who are really early in this, what I've learned is that I've got to be more precise with the word "disclosure". Sometimes I'm working with somebody brand new: maybe they discovered a bunch of secrets, a bunch of betrayals, two weeks ago. Or the betrayer comes into my office because the secrets have been blown. If I use just the word "disclosure", I might hear, "Well, that's happened 20 times." And my guess is it was usually at 3:00 a.m., usually after a lot of questioning. So I actually just call that confession.
The first piece is that a professionally guided disclosure means you're not alone. It's not the two of you in your living room, thinking you know what you need and thinking you know what will help with healing. Those usually don't go well. There are many, many people who are specifically trained to guide this process. So the first rule is: not alone, and guided by someone who knows what they're doing.
The second piece is being realistic. I call it the disclosure continuum: where are you at? If you're two weeks in and you're wanting to do a professionally guided disclosure, that's probably going to be a partial one. If you're three months in, the person holding the secrets is probably not even aware of his own history at this point. There are so many things that have been shoved into that compartment in the back of his brain. It's so stuffed that he doesn't know, and you'll probably get a partial disclosure. If it's super important that some information comes out now, I totally understand that. But to be realistic, if I'm the partner…
And I do want to say that I work mostly with traditional couples. In my office, the person doing the disclosing is mostly men, and the person hearing the disclosure is mostly women. I want to acknowledge that's not always the case, but that's the way I'm going to speak about this.
If you really want to do it really early, part of what the partner might have to accept is that you can get the truth of what he can get to now. But memory's a factor. So we're going to have to prepare a process for maybe a long time afterwards: how are you going to transfer information as it unearths itself into his memory?
If somebody's a little further down the line, let's say there's been some solid recovery work and adequate time for a thorough history, now we're in a different category. That's a process where the partner has probably had a lot of time to prepare. Partners sometimes think there's nothing for them to prepare, that they just wait passively for the addict to give the truth. But no, this is going to be dramatic. We know that from research. If we know that, on average, the professionally guided full disclosure is going to be like a 7.7 on the Richter scale, it's a major earthquake.
Nick Stumbo: Wow.
Janice Caudill: Then the partner probably needs to do some preparation, so that 7.7 doesn't devastate her. Places that have a lot of earthquakes prepare their buildings, so a 7.7 doesn't topple them all. The reality is, if I want to come through this in a way that the pain I go through becomes pain that moves me toward healing, then I actually have to do some work to prepare myself.
On the other side of the spectrum, if we're a little further down the continuum, there's some basic understanding. There's probably still some denial, but not nearly like it would be at three months in. Now the discloser is going to work with a guide who helps him pull those bits of fact out and get them into a timeline, and then cut away at rationalization, justification, excuses, distortions, blame shifting: all the things that can happen without the person writing it even recognizing them. So there's preparing for the content truth: what are the raw facts? Because once you cut away all that stuff, the facts themselves tell the story.
It also gives both sides the opportunity to prepare for what Dan Drake and I call behavioral truth. If I'm the person writing the disclosure, I can be completely thorough and accurate in putting my facts on that page, but I can also show through my behavior that I've not done much recovery growth whatsoever. I can be irritable and grumpy. I can go off the script on my page and stick in blame shifting. Or I can be really mean, right up until the disclosure, maybe the night before, maybe the morning of. I can say or do the little things that I know none of the guides will understand, but my wife will get that I'm sticking it to her even right now. The truth of my behavior says I've not grown, I've not matured yet. So preparing both parties for both content and behavioral truth is a really important element.
Another important element in an ideal disclosure is attunement. Just as in coupleship recovery we want to help our couples move into attunement with each other, there's the possibility of attunement in the disclosure itself. When I'm preparing the discloser, I don't want to guess at what things are really vital for his spouse, the questions that are really vital for her to have answered. Quite frankly, I probably don't trust his perspective on what he thinks his wife needs. I'm going to want to get that from her, and I'm hoping she's working with someone who is helping her figure all of that out.
One of the tools that Dan and I created is a disclosure needs assessment. It helps her relay the information to her husband and to his guide: here's what my needs are, here's the type of information I need, here's where my intuition and my suspicions have been driving me. "Here are 10 questions I really need to erase from my head, because they've been haunting me. And here's what I want or don't want." That may be as simple as, "You know what? I don't want an apology during the disclosure. I've probably had a hundred apologies, and they mean nothing to me anymore. If the disclosure goes well, and I feel like I get the factual truth and see the behavior that says he's changing, I don't want to contaminate that by hearing the words 'I'm sorry', because those words are painful to me now."
So there are a lot of little pieces, because this is an important ritual. That's the attunement of it. Dan Drake and I wrote workbooks for this. We thought the books were going to take maybe four months to write. They took two years. Some of that's work, and some of that's being in different time zones, but a lot of it is learning from each other. Dan reads something I've written for the partners' book and says, "Oh, I've got to prepare the guys for that." I read the way Dan is preparing the recovering addicts and I think, "Partners are not going to understand that. I've got to prepare them for it." So we literally had to go back and forth in creating a process where there can be attunement in the disclosure, where everybody's using the same language.
Nick Stumbo: I love what you're describing, Dr. Janice: a very thorough, very thoughtful process with many pieces of preparation. I think it does change our paradigm, because I was very much where you started. For 10 years of my marriage I was stuck in my addiction, offering half-hearted confessions that were as truthful as I knew how to be. I was in the mindset that what's needed is truth. The Bible says you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free, so if I confess, I'll be healed. There was this emotional, what I call emotional vomiting: here it is. And the expectation that now it's going to get better. But we didn't have the tools, the resources or the support for anything to go differently, so it just kept happening. I felt like I was telling her everything, and yet we were stuck. It wasn't until we got into counseling that I saw there's a lot more to this than the truth of whether I went and viewed pornography or not. Then there's what you said: the truth is part of it, but another part is the attitude and the emotion in which it's communicated. If there's not real attunement, the truth itself does not help the couple heal. It's the truth, the attitude, the attunement and the emotional awareness of the struggler to take ownership and truly integrate change. We missed that for years, with me thinking I had done "disclosure" when really, like you said, it was just emotional confessions.
Rebecca Vander Meer: I can totally relate to a little of your story. When Robert and I started our process, especially in Latin America, there were no resources. We were completely on our own, trying to figure out what this monster of a thing was that we were dealing with. I didn't have an actual full disclosure until probably 10 years into our healing process, even after counseling. For us it worked. But I can see that if we'd had the help and the tools to do it earlier than 10 years, we would have gotten a lot more support, especially for me personally: better understanding and preparation, and that attunement would have been so beneficial. I can also see the importance of what you were mentioning, Janice: making sure the addict is in a good place to be present, to remember, to unpack his actual sexual history so it can be disclosed.
Janice Caudill: Well, even if he's in a really good place and has done really good work… And I should say that I have some biases, because probably 50% of my work is with women and 50% is with men.
Rebecca Vander Meer: Oh, wow.
Janice Caudill: I tend to work with two types of recovering men, in general. One is somebody who knows he's got some trauma stuff. He really knows it, he knows he's going to have to unpack it, and he wants to do this process with somebody who's got some pretty good training. The second type, that I think I would specialize in working with, are men who really do want to love their wives and do want to help them, but just don't have the skills or the know-how. Or maybe there's still some cloudiness that gets in the way. In order for me to really grow and move toward healing, which does help my wife, I've got to know my own truth. If I haven't stripped the varnish off to see what's underneath… You don't know how to work with a piece of furniture unless you know what type of wood it is. If I haven't completely seen and owned my own truth, then I may not realize the level of dishonesty: not just with my spouse, not just with me, but even with my Lord. It's a barrier to deep intimacy, and I think it hits people in lots of different ways that they don't realize.
Nick Stumbo: That's really good. What you've described, Dr. Janice, is in some ways the ideal situation, how disclosure should work. But we know that most couples won't experience the ideal. A staggered or forced disclosure is already happening, or there's been ongoing deception and cover-up even after a kind of confession, or you've got a spouse diving deep into details that are not helping anyone. What can a couple do when some form of partial disclosure has gone very poorly and now they're fearful of trying again? They're like, "We tried that. It's too much pain." How do you encourage them to see there's more here, and that it could still be helpful?
Janice Caudill: I liken a lot of the process to the medical world, because I dabbled in the medical world at one point, and the medical world also deals with the words "trauma" and "healing".
Nick Stumbo: I like that.
Janice Caudill: If I've had a botched surgery, maybe I'm going to find a different doctor. Maybe this time I'm going to listen to things. But I'm probably going to ask: is there a way to do a redo? Is there a way to clean this up? Maybe I was one of those who did it three months in, and even though my guide tried to tell me, "Here's what you can get and here's what you probably can't," my mind was still in a swirl. It was in shock and such chaos. I felt a sense of urgency. And now: oh, now I know myself better, and that approach didn't work. Notice that's always about looking at yourself, and self-honesty. Now we take the knowledge we have of who we are and really look at where we're at now. What are the needs now?
I do a lot of do-overs. In addition to outpatient counseling, I also do a lot of multi-day intensives, so I do a lot of do-overs. And again I'm biased, because Dan and I created workbooks to help prepare people. What I usually see is that most couples don't need to do the entire thing again. It's a cleanup of what got missed. The spouse might say, "I don't really need to know the whole history prior to our relationship. What I need now is to drill down on the history of betrayals since our relationship began." Or it might be, "Everything was OK; I got the basics up until the time we did the original disclosure. But there were secrets that happened since, relapses that weren't discovered for a year or two." So it gets notched down to what the need is. For most people it doesn't feel like the same horrific intensity. Probably avoiding going through it holds more intensity and distress than actually doing it.
Nick Stumbo: That's good.
Rebecca Vander Meer: I'm just thinking how beautiful it is that even when there's a less-than-ideal process, just like you were saying about the medical field, there are options. There's the opportunity to get to what you deserve and need in your process. It also makes me think of these couples, whether they have to do a redo or it's their first try: there's a time gap between the moment of discovery, or awareness of the addiction, and the full disclosure. Nick, I think you like to call it the messy middle, where you know what you're dealing with and you know you're both working towards the full disclosure. In those cases, how can the addict or struggler move towards transparency and honesty without adding more pain or trauma to their partner?
Janice Caudill: Remember that a big word in the partner recovery world is "boundaries". So, a really important one: you put a boundary around that time. It doesn't mean it can't fall through, but Dan Drake and I call those wait time boundaries, and in that exercise they're initiated by the partner. In the wait time, if I'm really triggered, I might take a stand that I would prefer not to have the trickle, dribble kind of discoveries. "What I'd prefer is that you put that into the disclosure document. Maybe I'm going to ask that if it's a relapse, you let me know within 24 hours. But if there's a lot of information you're picking up while you prepare that you realize you haven't told me, I think I want to wait until the disclosure and learn it all at once." And then: "Here's the thing. I know I get really triggered sometimes. There are times I just feel like I've got to have that information now or I'm going to die. It feels so desperate and so visceral." The wait time boundaries are made when I'm calm, cool and collected, thinking about how, after I come off the trigger, I will probably regret it if you answer those questions. "So here is what I want you to say," and she puts it in quotes, "the exact words I want you to say to remind me of my boundary."
Then we generally tell the recovering addict: if she really keeps pushing, there's no choice. I think you have to actually tell her, after you have honored the way she asked you to remind her of her boundaries. We all know that can happen sometimes. It's so desperate that the partner can't hold it in, because it really does feel quite visceral, life and death. It's a safety thing. So if you're really pushed, you always lead with her words, and she's probably going to regret it afterwards. But you honored boundaries that she clearly thought out. That's not something you're doing to hurt her.
What's really important for the partner… because I filled out that exercise myself. I wrote it out and put quotes around it. He literally reminded me of that thing 16 times. "Oh, you know what? I'm the one that created the trickle. I'm the one that created the stagger." So I'm not going to shame myself or blame myself, but I'm also not going to blame him.
Rebecca Vander Meer: Right.
Janice Caudill: And that's accepting reality; it often happens. I think it helps recovering men know what to say to try to honor their wives without making the choice for her. But in the end, if you have to go with truth, you have to go with truth.
Nick Stumbo: I really appreciate your thoughts around this, Dr. Janice. I think it helps someone recognize that this is something we can begin to work on immediately. The betrayed spouse can have boundaries about what they want to know and need to know. "If you have a relapse, do I want to know? Do I want to know if you're viewing pornography, or not?" They have the power and agency to decide what they need to know in that wait time.
Unfortunately, and we haven't addressed this much on the podcast, there's a belief out there, even some thinking that Pure Desire advocates for it, that the addict or struggler needs six months of sobriety before they share anything with the betrayed spouse. That's actually a misquote of something Dr. Ted Roberts says in the Conquer Series. He does bring up the idea that the ideal full disclosure would happen six months into recovery. But we've found guys saying, "Well, I'm not six months clean, so I can't tell you anything." There's total avoidance, and they're even using it as an excuse. Then if they relapse, they start the six-month clock over: "Well, I still can't tell you anything." And I'm like, that's crazy. That's not what we mean, and that's not healthy. We do need boundaries, and I think both of them need to be clear: "If I relapse, I need to tell you, and there may be consequences. There may be things I need to do, like physically removing myself from the bedroom or the home, because it creates further distrust."
And it helps for the addict or struggler to know that anything he engages in will be included. This is what was helpful to me in my first year. I knew that both a lie detector test and a full disclosure were coming. So I was aware that anything I did between now and then would be included, and it was only going to add to my pain. That was actually very helpful: "I may not be telling her everything right now, the way I used to in an unhealthy way, but we're moving towards complete transparency, and anything happening now will become one more thing I have to share." It became a great motive. "I'm going to do group. I'm going to do my homework. I'm going to stay in recovery. I'm going to make my phone calls. I'm going to track my FASTER Scale, because I've already got enough that we have to dig through. I don't want to add to it." But in that time we also knew the boundaries: if I crossed certain lines, I would have to take steps, and that would make it that much harder. So I think you've helped us with some tremendous clarity around that wait time.
Janice Caudill: Maybe just a couple of other quick points. That wait time can become really extended, and it will always feel that way to partners: it can't come soon enough. Sometimes people ask me why the workbook for helping the recovering person write the disclosure is actually smaller than the workbook for the partner who's going to receive it. It's because of this little word we call trauma. If I'm working with somebody who's done a lot of good work and we're preparing for the disclosure, I'm not necessarily going to have them do everything in that workbook. But I discovered a long time ago that partners who really, really want to know what's real and what's not are actually willing to finally sit down and do some trauma recovery work that I may have wanted them to do for a long time.
So part of the reason the preparation book for the partners is so much bigger is that we're working through trauma, and we don't know the timing. If I'm preparing the partner, I don't know whether the disclosure will be written in six weeks, six months or a year. And that continued wait time is really painful. That's part of the research we know about disclosures: the guided disclosure itself is a 7.7 on the Richter scale, the initial discovery is higher, and that prolonged wait time is 9.2, which is much higher than the actual pain of the disclosure. So if we get a really extended wait time, then we also get extended prep time. And guess what? All of the prep work is actually trauma healing work. There's nothing you prepare for in a disclosure that isn't also a tool you get to use for your healing. That's a really important piece.
Part of that prep is helping partners discern the difference between "What do I want to know?" and "What do I really need to know?" If I'm the partner preparing for a disclosure, and I do a really good job and let my guide help me, I guarantee you the questions I think I want answered at the very start of this process are going to become much more narrowed and precise. And I'm going to know the purpose of each one. "This one is about checking on my intuition," which is a very different reason for asking a question than "I think he's lied to me during the recovery process." If I know the purpose of my need-to-know questions, I can put the puzzle together, all the facts and information I get in the disclosure, so much faster. And once I can put together the reality of what he's been doing, I get to toggle that: "Oh, and what was going on with me?" I start to create my own timeline of how I came to be who I am in this moment, after a disclosure. So now I'm working on my own self-truth.
Rebecca Vander Meer: So empowering. I'm just imagining that process as you share it: how empowering, and also how educated and competent within your own self-healing you as a betrayed spouse can be once the actual disclosure happens. All that prep work, whether the wait is short or long. I kind of like the long one, just because of how much work the betrayed spouse gets to do on their own. They're going to be so much more well-equipped by the time the disclosure comes, with the tools, the healing and the self-awareness to navigate that disclosure in a healthy way.
Nick Stumbo: And I think it answers one of the pushbacks we get from betrayed spouses who feel like, "This isn't my problem. Why do I have to deal with it? I don't want to do this work." The reality is you have your own story, and whether you wanted their addiction issues to impact your story or not, the truth is they did. You're really well served to ask how their issues, and the truths I'm learning, impacted me and fed into things I've believed about myself, or traumas I've walked through, or life experience. It all gets mixed together. We can act like it's just their problem and they should go fix it. Or we can use the illustration we've used a lot: I may be the passenger in a car accident. I didn't make the driving decision and I didn't want it, but as a passenger, I got hurt too. I can act like I'm fine and walk away with a broken leg. Or I can say, "I got hurt by someone else's behaviors, and I need to do some work now to recover, which might include looking at my own story." When we do that, it is so empowering, and it can create the new foundation for a healthy marriage or a healthy life.
Janice, one of the dynamics we've touched on a little, and we get this question a lot at Pure Desire, so I'm really excited to get your take: we can see two ends of the spectrum with the betrayed spouse, and I think both are a trauma response. One is the spouse who is now hypervigilant: "I need to know absolutely everything. If you have even a lustful thought come into your brain, you will tell me about it." Then there's the spouse who goes to "I don't want to hear about it. I don't want to know." So it's either pain shopping or pain avoidance, and we know neither extreme is going to be helpful or healthy long term. What does it look like to come to a healthy middle, where truth and honesty are part of our relationship without veering to either extreme?
Janice Caudill: For one end of the spectrum, here's the metaphor I use with partners who say, "It's his responsibility to do everything. What do you mean there's work for me?" What if, when I drive home tonight, I'm hit by somebody who runs a red light, and my legs are mangled? And let's say it turns out the person in the car that hit me is my husband, and he is genuinely broken and sorrowful and willing to do anything on earth to help. Even if he's the one who goes to physical therapy three times a week for the next six months and does all that hard work, that's not going to help me walk again. I have to do that work. Can I live with that?
With the avoidance extreme, I think it's more important that you're working with someone who gets and understands the concept of trauma.
Nick Stumbo: Got it.
Janice Caudill: With an avoidance response, there are some things happening in the nervous system. I'll spare you the nitty-gritty, but there are ways to work with that response, to help the person come alive. And there are ways to honor the hypervigilant response temporarily, which I tend to see more of at the beginning. We are mammals, and in the mammal world there's a threat response cycle that we all go through. So I help that person work to get their nervous system back into a range of resiliency.
Nick Stumbo: OK.
Janice Caudill: For the hypervigilance… My team really got their little tushes kicked last week, so it's not the best time to do this, but let's imagine this mug is my coping cup. If I try to pour more coffee into it than it can contain, it's going to spill out. If my nervous system takes in more than I can contain, more than I can cope with, I'm going to spill out one way or another. But if I work in a way that helps me build a bigger cup, my hypervigilance is going to go down, because the same amount of coffee won't flood over the sides.
Nick Stumbo: For those who are only listening to the podcast, you should know that Dr. Janice just held up a University of Kentucky mug, and their basketball team, at the time of this recording, is facing some challenges. So we feel for you. But that is such a great illustration of how much your cup can hold. Sometimes we go after details that, if we had the chance to come down a little, take a deep breath and talk to people who could give wise advice, they'd tell us would be too much. You think it will help, but it will actually make things worse. That's a hard thing to hear in the middle of discovery, when you're finding out things and wondering what else you don't know. We get driven by the belief that if I just knew absolutely everything, I could heal. And it's like: you can't contain it all right now. We're not saying you should be content with deception, or with them hiding things. But there's a timing here, a process, a learning of what will help us rebuild, versus "This random thought popped into my head, so now I've got to tell my wife, and now we're dealing with that," which isn't even the core of the recovery.
Janice Caudill: And too many details become a distraction. Instead of focusing on the core information that actually helps me begin to understand what's going on with me, it's like somebody with a very ADD brain who's overstimulated and can't focus on what they need to focus on. Really figuring out what I need is a core aspect of all trauma work. Most people who really work through that, which means taking some time to do the work and showing up at physical therapy, come to recognize, "No, that's just a distractor," and it would distract me from taking in what matters.
And it's not just knowing. Part of knowing the truth is accepting the truth I have. I sometimes say, thank God I went through my process way back in the dark ages, when there weren't that many books. Now there are so many, and I see people binging on information about betrayal, and nobody's stopping to actually do the suggestions or the exercises in the books. "I've got to read it all, and then I'll do it." No. If you get it from the gut, you don't have to read a ton of stuff. You have to start working to accept the truth that you have. In this age there's so much out there, and thank God there is. I'm really glad for podcasts. But you could make a full-time job of taking it all in, feeling like if you just find that magic piece, that'll help. Usually there's a point where it's about what you have. You already know. It's just really hard to do on your own.
So I think what I would have added to that first question, about the ideal disclosure, is a village. A village for each person, and maybe even a village for the couple.
Rebecca Vander Meer: Yes, beautiful. Which is why, when you talk about all the podcasts and resources, which are great, it can lead us to forget the important piece: the experiential side of the process. There's the theory, and you can read all you're able to, and that's great; that's knowledge. But unless you go through it, really figuring out what your window of tolerance is, gaining new tools and putting them into practice so your cup can get bigger and you're better prepared for what's coming, we can miss that. And that can only happen in experience, in relationship, as you were just sharing, with community.
Nick Stumbo: So good. One of the things I try to remind couples in this place is that it's appropriate to know depth, not always details. You need to know the depth of how far this goes, and a lot of what the full disclosure can bring is: how far did this go? What did it lead them to? What else don't I know? That's appropriate. But details like what hair color, or the name of the website… there are some details that can be a necessary part, and that's where working with professionals on the full disclosure helps you discern what is meaningful detail, because it helps you understand the depth, versus, as you brought up, Dr. Janice, just a distraction. The details become a distraction, when we're trying to get to the depth so we know where ground zero is and can rebuild.
Janice Caudill: And with respect to that, it's why it's really important for partners to understand where a question is coming from. What is it really about? Sometimes when they really figure it out, it's not about what her hair color was. It's about all the times "I remember you trying to convince me to color my hair." When you realize that's what it's about, if I'm working with that partner, I might say, "Now that you know what it's about, you could just ask him about the times he did that. Was he trying to turn you into someone else?" You don't have to ask about the hair color of every person he's been with or thought about being with. Now you can ask the direct question and get those answers without needing the other details. That's really important, because sometimes those details are important, and sometimes partners can't figure out why one is so important. But if you do the work…
Nick Stumbo: That's huge.
Janice Caudill: That's where someone can help you. If you do the work to learn what it is, then you can tell your guides why that question's important. In my experience, the people who do this work guiding disclosures also have passion. There's a reason we want to do this work. It's really meaningful to us to be a part of somebody's story, as it evolves towards the authenticity that God meant for us. So if you're willing to do that work, you can communicate why "Did you ever take somebody else to our favorite restaurant?" is important to you. If I'm preparing the disclosing party, that might feel to him like an unnecessary detail: "I don't understand that." But if I get the information and realize that for the last three years, every time they've been to that restaurant, she has felt like she's going a little bit crazy, then it's about erasing something, not adding an unnecessary detail. Now it's, "Oh, I get it. Now I get why your wife needs that piece of information."
Rebecca Vander Meer (?): Absolutely. Thank you. This makes a lot of sense, how it plays out practically, and that's the beauty for those couples who are able to go through the disclosure process. In some cases, though, disclosure is not possible, whether the addict or struggler leaves the relationship or passes away. In those cases, how do you think the betrayed spouse can continue to move towards healing without having the full truth?
Janice Caudill: Sometimes we have to put the cart before the horse. You and I know that, eventually, getting that information becomes less important than her story: her relationship with herself, with her intuition, her ability to be in future relationships, and her relationship with her Creator. So what I might do is say, "I want you to sit down and create a timeline. Now that we've done the work, and you're more connected with your own intuition, I want you to do an intuition timeline." It may not be the full truth, but let's do the work to construct what we can, and we'll put in the pieces of content we know that validate it. If you and I know that eventually it's going to move from his story to "What's my story?", then we just go to "What's your story?", without getting the exact content from him. You still do the work, because we all know there's an arc to this that you don't figure out until you get close to the very deep end: "Oh, this healing is bigger than I thought it was going to be." So I don't think you stop the process. The reality is you have to modify it and continue the arc.
I also think it's important, let's say he leaves, that if I'm his therapist, I'm going to say, "No, we're going to write it. We're going to do it. And let's put a polygraph afterwards," even though your soon-to-be ex-wife is not going to see the results of that polygraph. It's probably a bad thing to admit, but I know that if my next set of taxes was going to be audited, I'd be a lot more careful. And if there's somebody really important to him, I might say, "Bring your brother in. Bring your sponsor in. Bring your minister in." Or I might say, "Here's an empty chair. Let's imagine that Jesus is sitting there. We're going to tell the truth, share it, and put it down at the foot of the cross." I'm still going to do something experiential. I think it's important for both of them.
Nick Stumbo: It's so good. I think of it a little like advice we often give people about the Bible, when they complain that they don't understand this or that part. There's enough work to be done just applying the parts of the Bible I do understand, without getting too worried about the parts I don't. That's a life's work. If your spouse has left or has passed away and you have a lot of unresolved questions, take what you do know, the parts you did find out that are causing the pain, and work through those. That's going to take you into a lot of the same trauma work, without the full disclosure that could happen in an ideal situation.
At the same time, I say to the struggling partner, if their discovery led to "She took off" or "We're divorcing", because they can have a similar response: "What's the point now?" I remind them that the point is that you get healthy. It wasn't just to make the marriage work or to make them happy. Some of us start there, and whatever motivates you to start working towards your health is OK, even if it was for them. But sooner or later we all realize, "Oh, this is really for me." My health is what I'm going to bring to the marriage. Even if I'm not married anymore, statistically I'll probably get married again. Or even if I'm not married, I'm going to have relationships and friendships, and I'm going to be in a family. It's about my health. Just because the other person isn't there, it might change the process, but it doesn't mean it isn't valuable for you to do your work, because your work will benefit you. In the long run, that's what we're after.
Janice Caudill: Even men who've been in recovery for a really good long time before they do the disclosure process, those who do it with integrity: I've never seen somebody not come to some new awareness, some new memory. It's not a useless process. As I say, it's reconnecting with my true self. If I'm trying to put together the puzzle of me and I'm missing pieces, it's going to be a distorted puzzle.
Rebecca Vander Meer: That's beautiful. And to your point, you mentioned modifying what needs to be modified, pivoting. If you need to change your recovery and its focus, do that, because ultimately it's about your healing, your tools and your future moving forward.
Nick Stumbo: Dr. Janice, this has been a really fantastic conversation, giving people tons to think about when it comes to full disclosure. As we wrap up, I wanted you to think a little about post-disclosure. For a couple walking together now in this new normal, what advice or encouragement would you give them about making truth and honesty a regular part of their relationship, and not slipping back into unhealthy patterns of avoidance?
Janice Caudill: I want to do this in two parts. First, to continue the medical metaphor: I might have the surgery to repair my legs, and long-term it might be incredibly successful, but it's going to be painful for a while. They're going to roll me out of surgery into the recovery room, and when I finally make it out of the recovery room, I might have a lot of restrictions. I might really feel it. So I just want to say it's normal to feel like a 7.7 afterwards. And if you don't do the work, you can easily stay there.
In terms of work, the partner impact statement is something I'm very passionate about. That's not just where I tell my husband what a jerk he is. It's a much more involved process, because it's about digesting my pain, about putting it together into what my truth is in this. It's a bigger deal than people think. Sometimes it's, "I don't want to do it," and if you're in a place where you can't do it for a while, that's totally understandable. But I do think that if you don't do it, it's very easy to get stuck, and you don't get to that better place. Once you do the impact statement, I think it's helpful even if you never share it with your husband. But if you're willing to share it, and he's willing to do some really good quality work to find a way to really let it in and take in "This is the way it's hurt her, and these are the limitations even today"… he usually has to do a lot of work there. Sometimes it's the concept of empathy towards my spouse, the person I hurt. Maybe I'm really empathetic with everybody else, but it's so painful for me to see the way I've hurt my spouse that I can only feel her pain for a nanosecond. It's important to do the work so you can respond to that.
And then for couples who are further out, who've gotten through that recovery, I'll say what I think a lot of people listening won't believe: you can actually feel much closer.
Nick Stumbo: So true.
Janice Caudill: Both people are going to do some deep healing and know themselves in a way they never did before. You can actually feel much closer. And you can feel like, "OK, we are healed. There is nothing more to do." All these check-ins and all this other stuff are boring, and I'd rather do other stuff. But it's like standing on a beach: I'm in one place and I'm not going to move, and as the tide goes back out, the sand is literally pulled out from under me. In physical therapy they call that a plateau, where you feel like either "I've done it all and I'm good," or "I'm still putting in this work and it doesn't feel like it's gaining me anything; I don't feel a growth spurt." When you stop and rest on that, it will begin to slip away from you. So it's about doing those rituals so much that they become habit, so we're doing them anyway, and about being awake and aware in your own life. It's easy to go through phases where "I don't have as much time for this now, and that'll change later," and then later becomes years. You wake up one day and realize, "Oh my God, how did I go to sleep again?" It's about holding awareness of what's going on in my life, in our lives, and creating those rituals that become part of your foundation.
And then doing the back end of disclosure: repair. A lot of it is going to be boring. There's a lot of it you don't see the use for. A lot of it is hard skills to build. "I don't want to listen to him. I used to listen to him all the time, and what did that get me?" But if I want the relationship that I really do want, if I want to honor all the hard work we did so that we actually have a good relationship, I've got to develop the skills. And maybe 10 years later I realize, "Oh, this is different 10 years later. Crap, there are new skills I've got to learn."
Rebecca Vander Meer: Yeah, exactly. It's remembering not to get comfortable when you get to that plateau. It's remembering that it's a never-ending process, the process of sanctification. You've got to be very mindful and intentional about how you move forward, even when you've turned a corner in that process. And for a lot of people, disclosure is that turning of the corner.
Nick Stumbo: I love your illustrations and metaphors, Dr. Janice. In many ways a full disclosure is like a pretty intense surgery, and the coupleship growth afterwards is like physical therapy. As we all know, physical therapy lasts a lot longer than the surgery. It's ongoing, but there does come a point where physical therapy might end, and then, in that illustration, it's about maintaining health by going to the gym and going for regular walks. What does that look like in your relationship? Maybe you're past the surgery, and maybe even past physical therapy, with its intensity. But there's the question of what our new healthy rhythm is that will sustain the kind of life, marriage and relationship we want to have. People really can get there, and it is better. We get to hear that all the time.
Janice Caudill: Absolutely.
Nick Stumbo: Well, this has been awesome, Dr. Janice. How can our listeners track with you and find out what you're doing? Where could they go to hear more about your work?
Janice Caudill: There are probably two sources that would be the easiest. One is that everything's on our website, which is [website].
Nick Stumbo: We'll put that in the show notes. And where else?
Janice Caudill: This one is if you're looking for someone who is trained in the process that Dan Drake and I created, because we also train professionals to do the disclosure process. You can go to [website]. If you're a professional, you can find out when we do trainings. And if you're looking for a professional, there's a list of people who've done our type of training and use our process in the disclosure. Just go there to find a disclosure guide.
Nick Stumbo: That's awesome. As we wrap up, Dr. Janice has reminded us that truth and honesty are foundational to lasting recovery, even when disclosure may be difficult, incomplete or delayed. Healing requires patience, courage and a commitment to transparency without retraumatizing loved ones. There is a pathway that works. Dr. Janice, you've done a lot today to share that with us, and it's our hope and prayer that every couple out there can move towards deeper intimacy by doing some of this hard work together. Thank you so much for being part of the Pure Desire podcast.
Rebecca Vander Meer: Thank you so much for being here.
Janice Caudill: Thank you for the opportunity to share my passion.
Nick Stumbo: Amen. If you're a fan of this show and this content, please subscribe, write us a review and share it with somebody. Honestly, these are ways that other people, in some of their darkest moments, might find the light of this life-giving content and move towards their healing. And if you want more information on Pure Desire's groups, resources or counseling, you can visit us at puredesire.org. Journey on, my friends. You are not alone.
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The Trap of Injustice After Betrayal with Janice Caudill and Dorit Reichental
What happens when betrayal is no longer just about safety, but about justice? In this episode, Dr. Jake Porter sits down with Janice Caudill and Dorit Reichental to explore post-traumatic embitterment and why some betrayed partners feel stuck long after the initial trauma. They unpack the difference between fear-based trauma and injustice-based suffering, and why traditional healing approaches sometimes fall short.
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Transcript: The Trap of Injustice After Betrayal with Janice Caudill and Dorit Reichental
Jake Porter: If betrayal trauma has touched your life, you're not alone, and healing is possible. This is Betrayal Recovery Radio, the official podcast of the Association of Partners of Sex Addict Trauma Specialists. I'm Dr. Jake Porter, and each week we explore the science, soul, and stories of transformation after betrayal. This podcast is for betrayed partners, for those who caused harm, and for the professionals walking with them through the healing. Because even in the ashes of betrayal, something beautiful, something strong, something triumphant can rise.
Well, hello there, Janice and Dorit. Welcome to Betrayal Recovery Radio, or welcome back, I should say. Really good to see both of you, and I am really excited about this conversation. Before I hit record, I was telling y'all I feel like you have lit a part of my brain on fire. You both just recently spoke at the APSATS conference in Dallas about the topic we're going to talk about today: embitterment, and post-traumatic embitterment disorder. So let's just rip the Band-Aid off. What is embitterment? Because the sound of the word actually sounds kind of awful.
Janice Caudill: You want to take that one, Dorit?
Dorit Reichental: Sure. Let's talk about post-traumatic embitterment disorder. It's a negative reaction to a life event, and it's a signal that something morally unacceptable has happened. Embitterment is anger without discharge. It feels morally unjust, and it feels right to hold on to. It's usually associated with experiences of profound humiliation and a huge breach of trust: betrayal.
Jake Porter: Yeah. I want to unpack that a little, because I'm thinking about clients who definitely fit the bill the way y'all described it. Y'all sent me down a rabbit hole, and it definitely fits. But you say anger without discharge. I want to define that, because with some of these clients I hear their anger coming out. So what do you mean by anger that's not discharged?
Dorit Reichental: Basically, they can appear very normal when distracted, but there's this intense anger when they feel triggered. That's where the intense anger gets solidified. It feels like ongoing little-t traumas that turn into one big-T embitterment trauma.
Janice Caudill: Can I add a sort of Pia Mellody–inspired, somatic experiencing piece?
Jake Porter: Pia is always welcome in this space.
Janice Caudill: Pia talks about rage being dissociated anger: if you're in a rage, you're not connected to yourself. So whatever comes out of you isn't actual psychological work. It's not the real processing. From a Somatic Experiencing practice, my training has always been that if I'm not connected to myself while I'm doing that psychological work, I get nothing from it. I might as well take my anger and dump it in the trash, because I'm not going to digest it. I'm probably going to breathe it back in and recycle it.
Dorit Reichental: That's such a great way of putting it, because if you think about our clients, it's as if whatever trauma work we've done with them hasn't been effective.
Jake Porter: Right. And that's what really hooked me when I first heard y'all talking about this. When I heard you describe it, and started reading about the symptoms and presentation of embitterment and PTED, I realized it's something different from PTSD, and I'd been trying to treat it the same way. No wonder it hasn't been working. So many people understand trauma through the lens of hypervigilance and anxiety, the more common PTSD symptoms. But with post-traumatic embitterment disorder there's a very different emotional center, the embitterment you described. So maybe — oh, go ahead.
Janice Caudill: They're held hostage. Think about that: "I don't know how to get free. I need somebody to help me with this." And you and I talked about this before we started: we don't have a whole lot of training in it. It's like, oh, this is a different deal than typical betrayal work.
Jake Porter: It really — oh, go ahead, Dorit.
Dorit Reichental: I was going to say it's like a trap, right, Janice? Embitterment is like a trap. And there's an intersectionality between post-traumatic embitterment disorder, moral injury, and betrayal. That's a huge chemical cocktail, and it's not fear-based. Janice, maybe you could talk a little more about moral injury.
Janice Caudill: Well, I have to give some passing credit there, because my interest in it was handed to me by Laurie Hall, also in our community. It's going to be the topic of her dissertation. Moral injury is a much higher-level kind of wound. It involves deep psychological, and even spiritual, pain associated with my value system. My moral system, my value system, has been damaged. That can be part of a betrayal trauma, but the work of it is actually different from the safety work. This is about safety in my personal being: how do I survive when my moral system has been damaged?
Think about it: we have this beautiful net that surrounds us and helps guide us, based on what our values are, and it even connects to our beliefs about the world, how people should be. Maybe there are outliers here and there, but basically this is a just world. And then that gets shattered, and I have to figure out how to re-convene it. I don't have my system. It's a double whammy, because it's a deep attachment bond.
Let's say my husband is Trevor. Trevor has handed me not only betrayal trauma; everything I believed to be true about him and his value system, I learn I was wrong about. And my own value system was in fact used against me. If I'm a compassionate person and I figure out that Trevor played the compassion card many times, there's a wound in that. But it also puts me in a real dilemma. Because I'm a compassionate person, if I lead with compassion I set myself up for Trevor to play that card again and again and again. So it's, "No, I can't do that. I cannot go there." But wait a second: then I also can't be me. So there's this alienation from the self, from my own values, because my own values don't feel safe anymore. And I'm mad as hell about it.
Dorit Reichental: Yeah, and the double bind is feeling like I can't do anything.
Janice Caudill: Right. Sorry, Dorit.
Dorit Reichental: No, no. I was just going to say that, even worse, part of PTED is retaliation and revenge fantasy. Retaliation and revenge typically step on a person's moral values. Before the betrayal, that was not part of my value system. As part of the moral injury and the embitterment that gets solidified, I now have retaliation and revenge fantasies. Sometimes that turns into a whole other slew of symptoms, including suicidality and homicidality, but they never act on it. It's part of the fantasy. And there's confusion. Were you going to say something?
Janice Caudill: No, I'm actually just listening to you.
Dorit Reichental: And so you've got this existential crisis happening for the person.
Janice Caudill: Well, and now I'm focused on justice. Or I think I'm focused on justice, but what I'm really focused on is injustice, and there's a button there now. All the things I'm going through, all the memories of things I've been through, the memories of things I now realize were going on: obviously those are going to trigger me. But you only have to turn on the news to find injustice. Now injustice is my button. What Dorit goes through with her version of Trevor is a trigger for me. Hearing about leaders who have fallen is a trigger for me. Going to a movie where the bad guy doesn't get what's coming to him can take me over the top. Because it's so huge, and all I have is those fantasies.
Jake Porter: Something I've seen, and maybe this is zooming in on the exact dynamic you're both talking about, is with a lot of betrayed partners. I make up that this was at least part of what was going on for them. There's this exquisite tenderness to anything that brushes up against that injustice button. I'll make an example up: Trevor has told me he will initiate check-ins with me, and he's been home for ten minutes and hasn't done it yet. There we go.
Dorit Reichental: Very sensitive to fulfilling commitments, doing what you say, that kind of thing.
Janice Caudill: Or he doesn't do it tonight, but he does it tomorrow night because some man in his group, whose last name he doesn't even know, said, "You know, you shouldn't be doing that." So he shows up tomorrow, but not because of me. Because of some man whose last name he doesn't know, who's done God-forbid things to his own wife. There's an injustice. You're right. It's like the teenager with tactile defensiveness: you just walk by them, and the air touching their skin sets off a volcano of a response.
Jake Porter: That's almost the exact image I've thought of. My dad was in an accident several years ago and had very severe nerve damage in his foot. We had to build a little sheet teepee over his foot so the air wouldn't blow against it. That kind of tenderness.
Janice Caudill: Well, to invoke our Texas goddess, Brené Brown: she calls this chandelier pain.
Jake Porter: All right.
Janice Caudill: Pulling from the medical analogy: you barely touch it, and you jump to the chandelier.
Jake Porter: Chandelier pain. Yeah.
Dorit Reichental: That's right. And I feel like the genie's out of the bottle, because I've been talking a lot about PTED, and partners are getting it. Now they're naming that injustice, even though they've felt it viscerally all along. And the knowledge of, "Oh my goodness, this is one more thing I have to heal from, one more injustice," is causing enormous pain, stress, and suffering. There's now a hypersensitivity where the slightest deviation, like you were saying, one less meeting, becomes a sign. They may not get triggered initially, but they start seeing what we're calling stacked injustices: evidence of one, two, three things that don't feel right. The reaction is acute hyperarousal. Fight, flight: "I'm out of here. I'm done putting up with this. I'm over it."
Janice Caudill: I want to flip back to the difference between betrayal trauma and this additional heaviness of PTED. In the acute phase of betrayal, the word is safety. That's the quest, the holy grail: a sense of safety inside of me, and there's a whole science of safety. PTED is not a safety issue. I can be in a place where I'm no longer feeling unsafe, where my nervous system is no longer ablaze. But with PTED, as Dorit has said many times, the focus is justice and injustice.
Jake Porter: Right. And I'm wondering, as you talk with betrayed partners about this, whether it's helping them. You were saying the cat's out of the bag, Dorit. Are they receiving it in a way where they're responding, "Thank you"? I've done it one time since y'all introduced me to it. With one client, I recently said, "Hey, I think this is what's going on," and gave her a little summary info sheet I wrote up. I was anxious: "Oh my gosh, is she going to think I'm calling her bitter?" That was the fear I was making up in my head. And what she said was, "I'm so glad to know this has a name."
Janice Caudill: Yeah. I think sometimes there's a concern about the word "embitterment", but it actually describes the experience. It's like, inside of me, I've gone sour, and I don't want that. I actually find the word pretty apt.
Dorit Reichental: Maybe we could go through the frame. What happens is this really does step on most people's values, to feel this way, and there's a paradox. The core frame is that embitterment has them feeling trapped. There's a thirst for justice, and the thirst for justice is the lure. Rumination keeps the trap closed. So they truly feel trapped, and they stay in what feels loyal to them, and part of it feels good. Part of them feels like this is self-respect. It feels like moral clarity, and it feels like justice. But at the same time, embitterment also feels poisonous. My clients hear me talk about this all the time: the poison is like cortisol surges. It is going to make you sick, and eventually it will kill you. All those cortisol surges, whether it's autoimmune disorders or cancer; we know what cortisol does to the body.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, and it's a false sense of justice. Well, Dorit, I know more about this than you do: I like a little vengeance now and then. But typically it's a false sense, because if you actually follow through, you get one moment of victory, and then there are consequences, and I'm back to feeling like there's no justice for me. So really and truly, the more powerful tool is the fantasies, the anticipation of being able not only to ensure some justice, but to taste it. The problem is it's not real. I get to enjoy the dopamine that's released, the reward from the fantasy, only during the fantasy. Then I'm right back where I was before, and there's no way to get it again except to go back into those thoughts.
[Sponsor message: CSBD Hope for Healing Conference.]
Jake Porter: I might be putting something together here in real time. I'm going to give it a shot articulating it, and y'all tell me if you think it's wrong; I really want to know. I'm thinking about this fantasy piece. I haven't often heard a betrayed partner actually say to me, "Yeah, I'm envisioning revenge." Well, I take it back: I've heard it some, but not a lot. What I do often hear is disappointment. They express disappointment that our pastor or our rabbi didn't really come down on him, or his individual therapist didn't bring the hammer down, and there's no accountability. I'm wondering if that fantasy is sometimes, "Oh, they're going to set him straight, and he's really going to get it." And then when it's not fire raining down on him, they're let down.
Janice Caudill: Yeah. But you know, Jake, it only takes one partner in a group to make that very vulnerable admission of thoughts about him getting what he deserves, and almost every woman in the room will start saying, "Me too."
Jake Porter: Oh, wow.
Janice Caudill: It's almost like a secret I need to say. Because remember, I used to have a value system, and it's still my value system, except it's not. I'm in a deep state of confusion around it. I don't know what your thoughts are, Dorit, but I think if you bring this up as a topic in a group, and it's a safe enough group, you'll have a lot of partners saying, "Yeah, I've had moments of it."
Dorit Reichental: Oh, I can tell you that in one of my groups, this is where the genie came out of the bottle. One partner talked about revenge, and then everybody else chimed in. It's a safe place to talk about the profound injustice they're experiencing.
But Jake, as you know, I'm doing a lot of work with women who are getting divorced, and with the anguish and struggles they go through in the family court system. I realized that the courts expect women to take the low road. They expect women to have revenge fantasies. That's how this whole "parental alienation syndrome" (it's not a real thing) got rooted: the idea that women are vengeful, they retaliate, and women can't be believed. I see this over and over again with partners going through the divorce process: how they're being viewed. So they have to take the high road, and if they're seeing a divorce coach, they're taught that at all times you have to take the high road. That means you cannot show any kind of emotion. You have to be absolutely factual, a tabula rasa, neutral-positive. You can't even engage in gray rock communication, neutral communication; we had to develop yellow rock communication, because you have to be perceived as neutral-positive in all of your interactions. And still you are not believed. So over and over again, she has to prove she's a walking-on-water human being in order to receive a modicum of justice in a very unjust system.
Jake Porter: Which is just another layer of injustice.
Janice Caudill: Yes, exactly. It's the double bind: I can't be me. I think in the divorcing population we probably have people encountering different systems that lead to those stacked injustices. But you can have this in a couple where there's actually some good recovery happening, too. And I don't want to sound as if I'm perpetuating the myth that all women are one way. I'm just acknowledging that I have some familiarity with the low road. Not that I've done things, but I probably would have done things had I not had the fantasies. I don't think I got stuck there, so I can't speak to that piece, but I can speak to the power.
It's not just dopamine. If it were just dopamine, you'd have to do something to get the release, to feel the reward. I did a little more research as well, Jake, and the really fascinating piece to me is oxytocin.
Jake Porter: The one we tend to think of as the cuddle hormone.
Janice Caudill: It's a bonding hormone. But it's also, Jake, if you hurt my kid, the thing that will have me rip you to shreds. There's aggression in protection. It's also the hormone related to in-group and out-group. Trevor used to be my in-group, but now he's my out-group. It's him and me; it's them and us. So it's an interesting hormonal bonding agent in this. We've got the reward center, and then, because this is so charged and intense, we've got stress hormones: cortisol, adrenaline. That's a pretty powerful cocktail, and I'm going to guess that, running chronically, it ages people fast.
Dorit Reichental: Oh, yeah. I'd like to bring up another group of betrayed partners. Janice, when you and I first started talking about this, remember me saying to you multiple times, "What's wrong with me? I don't have the revenge fantasy"? I really thought, "Wait a second, is something missing? I see all these partners who have revenge fantasies, and I've been through some pretty incredible things, but I don't go to that place of revenge and retaliation." So I started doing some research on that. There's a group of partners, and think about the partners we've all worked with, who have this desire to be overly fair to their partner. There's this feeling of, "Is it fair for me to tell my best friend or my sister? This is going to embarrass him; it's going to cause him so much pain."
There's a group of betrayed partners who don't go there, and I think that's the group that tends to take the high road. We have to work with that group of women to say, "Now wait a second. You too have rights. You have the right to share your information. You have the right to expect atonement, justice, and amends." Because when they come to the table, they come from a different place. So we're trying to help the people who take the low road to down-regulate, and those who take the high road to [find their voice].
Jake Porter: Right. Find that middle space. The both-and, not the all-or-nothing.
Janice Caudill: What Dorit is referring to is that there are essentially two roads people take. I usually present on the low road; I'm the low road. That's essentially vigilante justice. It's called visceral justice, because it's incredibly visceral, and I think that's where its power is. It's a thirst for justice, and a feeling that there's no way to get it, except getting stuck in my head. And I have to keep going, because it doesn't really get me anything. Many people get stuck in rumination.
Jake Porter: Like a loop in their head.
Janice Caudill: Around the thirst for justice. Dorit is talking about integrative justice, which, by the way, is the path you want people to take. But you have to do it with balance. As therapists and coaches, we have to help them break free of rumination first, and I don't think that's routinely talked about in a lot of trauma trainings.
Jake Porter: I'll even admit that as I was reading up on this, I read a lot about rumination as a symptom, something that has to be treated, and I had a visceral response. When it comes to betrayal trauma, I'm always saying, "Don't call it rumination. It's safety seeking." But we're talking about two different things here. We're not talking about that initial after-discovery replaying, trying to put the pieces together. Not that.
Janice Caudill: That's trauma work; that's people stuck in trauma. There's a threat response cycle that all mammals go through, and you can get stuck at any of its levels. That's looping in the trauma, which is very different from, "I'm already solid, at least in terms of safety." Imagine that above us is our meaning system, and there's a hole in the ozone. A big, gaping hole in the ozone. I can't use that meaning system anymore. I need it restored, and I can't get it restored because of this thirst for justice. And there are certain words, and maybe culturally there are some things in my culture, where I've had some experience with revenge. I'm a history fan; there are really great stories about vendettas in history. I like neighborly war. I even like words like "vengeance". That's just a juicy word.
Jake Porter: It is.
Janice Caudill: Plotting revenge: even those words conjure up sensations that feel visceral. So now I'm struggling with this, Jake, and I've got to break through. I have this visceral feeling, combined with the rumination, the thoughts I can't let go of, and I've got to deal with this too. If you're not trained to help me deal with the rumination piece, I'm stuck with it. I can't choose to take the high road. I can't restore the ozone. I can't learn from my experiences. I can't come to a re-visioning of what my life could be.
Jake Porter: Right.
Janice Caudill: That's like purgatory.
Jake Porter: I want to pause on something you said, because I think this is important. We talked about the APSATS model, the Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model, and there are three phases, based on the work of Judith Herman. Safety and stabilization first. Then the middle phase, mourning and remembrance, which is really the grief work: my assumptive world has been wrecked, so what's my new world going to be? And then re-visioning as I come out of that. Here's what I've seen, and I want y'all's take on this: I've seen embitterment keep the client from being able to really engage the grief process.
Janice Caudill: Yes. It's stuck grief.
Dorit Reichental: Complicated bereavement.
Janice Caudill: To put it in other terms: I'm looping in it, and I can't get out. So I don't have the capacity to re-vision something better. I don't have the capacity to restore a sense of meaning. I don't have the capacity for post-traumatic growth. I just keep coming back to the injustice, the moral injury.
Dorit Reichental: I just wanted to go back for a second to the high road, because the high-road people do ruminate. They have rumination; it just looks different from the low-road betrayed partners'. High-road rumination looks like, "How do I make lemonade out of these lemons?" Because going to the low road feels [dangerous] to the high-road folks: "I can't go low road. If I go low road, something really awful will happen to me." I believe the high road is a safety-seeking way of processing PTED. But they still have rumination. They still have all those feelings of injustice. Their orientation is just to make lemonade out of lemons.
Janice Caudill: So they're not really traveling on the high road. They're stuck on the […], or maybe spiritualizing.
Dorit Reichental: Yeah. But it's because they can't go to that place; it feels too scary, too terrifying.
Jake Porter: Okay. So imagine people are listening to this and thinking, "Okay, I think this might be me." What's something you can offer these folks, other than calling and booking appointments with you, which they're welcome to do? All the contact information will be in the show notes. What would you say to folks? How do you help with rumination, for example?
Janice Caudill: Well, like you, Jake, I too went searching. And what's sitting on my just-paid card is rumination-focused CBT. I usually call myself a recovering CBT therapist, but for rumination I'm going to step back and use some of those tools, because you can't go on and start creating that new sense of meaning while you're still ruminating. So we have to help them with the rumination. I would say: talk to your therapist or your coach about what tools to use for rumination. If they don't have them, ask, "Can you temporarily refer me to somebody who can do some work with me on that?" After that, there are a lot of trauma tools that are really great for the re-visioning, but you've got to unclog things before they can move along.
Dorit Reichental: One of the things in the literature is wisdom therapy. You've got to stop the rumination first; then you start the piece with wisdom therapy. One of the things that had me thinking, and as you know I'm very connected to Israel, is the October 7th war and the hostages. How did those hostages survive some of the most horrific conditions? We learned that one of the hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, would tell all of his fellow hostages, "Know your why." That comes from the work of Viktor Frankl; he was familiar with Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, and Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor.
When I think about wisdom therapy and I think about partners, we can begin with, "What's your why? Why are you in this relationship? First of all, what brought you to this relationship? What's keeping you here? And why do you want to continue?" Because these are partners who are still in the relationship, and every day is Groundhog Day for them. We want to help the couple get past Groundhog Day and these ongoing, awful PTED triggers, and have some healing for themselves, their coupleship, and their family.
Janice Caudill: I will add, too, that the reason Dorit and I are partners in crime so often is that our creativity is stoked when we're together. I'm sure you found out the same thing I did, Jake: when you go to the psychological literature on wisdom therapy, you get stuck in tons and tons of work just trying to agree on what the term means.
Jake Porter: Yeah, I'm still confused.
Janice Caudill: But we're not limited to psychological research or psychological tools. We find wisdom in stories. We find wisdom in rituals. It's a much more creative force than that. Someday you and I will have a talk, once we've both perused all the research and gleaned some things, because I think what we're coming back to is the research-based element of post-traumatic growth. You have to take your experience and crystallize it: what did I learn from that, and what do I want to be different going forward as a result?
Jake Porter: Yeah, it's still a process of reclaiming. Y'all talked about the trap: I've got to bust out of this trap to be free, to be me again. Wow. So much good stuff here. I want to give y'all a minute to talk about how people can reach you, what you're up to, and how they can work with you. Janice, do you want to go first?
Janice Caudill: You can reach me at intensivehope.com or drjanicecaudill.com. We're up to a lot of things. Every year I pick something I'm really going to drill down on and try to develop for clients, and this year it's emotional intelligence, in lots of different ways, specifically for men. Inner child healing workshops for men. And Dorit and I have a free Q&A on PTED and moral injury, if anybody's interested.
Jake Porter: Oh, okay.
Janice Caudill: Saturday, May 2nd, at 6:00 Eastern. And we're putting together a workshop for those who feel like they're caught in the trap; that one is tentatively set for September 9th.
Jake Porter: Awesome. We'll make sure to get all the links and put them in the show notes. And how about you, Dorit? How can people get hold of you, and what are you up to?
Dorit Reichental: They can get hold of me at […], and my cell number, [phone number given on air]. I'm really focused on PTED, and on working with betrayed partners who are going through the divorce process: divorce coaching. The big, lofty goal I'm working on is training family court judges, helping them gain clarity around this nonsense of parental alienation, where they see protective mothers as abusive and dangerous and the abuser as safe. It's kind of mind-boggling. That's really where I'm at today: ongoing work with betrayed partners, and now being more supportive of those going through the divorce process.
Jake Porter: Wow. I know there's a huge need for that, so I hope you get some folks taking you up on those services. Well, ladies, I love talking with both of you individually. Doing it together is almost more than I can handle; it's overwhelming. I really do admire you both. Thank you for the work you're doing, and thank you for coming on today.
Janice Caudill: Thanks, Jake.
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Is there Cross-Over of Porn Use/Sex Addiction in Autistic Men with Dr. Janice Caudill Pt. 1 of 2
This month, the focus of the podcast involves the co-occurring issues of porn use or sexual addiction commonality in the autism community. We begin today with porn use and addiction 101, to include: Why are autistic people vulnerable? When does the behavior cross into addiction? We will end with building a healthy and intimate neurodiverse Christian marriage.
Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Transcript: Is there Cross-Over of Porn Use/Sex Addiction in Autistic Men with Dr. Janice Caudill Pt. 1 of 2
Stephanie Holmes: Welcome back to Neurodiverse Christian Couples. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Stephanie Holmes. My sidekick, Dan, is not with me today; sometimes work schedules just don't work out. But I'm so excited to have as my guest Dr. Janice Caudill from Texas. Welcome to the show, Dr. Janice.
Janice Caudill: Good morning.
Stephanie Holmes: Before we go into the bio, I want to set the stage for you as podcast listeners, because this podcast works a little differently from some others. Other podcasts have seasons, and usually there's a theme for eight, ten, or twelve episodes. This podcast is new every Monday: 52 weeks a year, you're going to get something new. But every once in a while I do a season, or put some episodes together, because I really feel you need more than one hour of content to understand a topic. So I want to let you know why Dr. Janice is here and what you can expect after her.
Today we're going to talk about sex addiction and autism, porn, and problematic sexual behaviors, and how we get there. We'll do the 101 today with Dr. Janice. Next week we have Candace Christensen, who identifies as neurodivergent. She is not a Christian, but she is an expert in autism and neurodiverse sexuality, so I think it's really important to hear what her research shows, whether or not you agree with all of her opinions. Then, just for the guys, Dan is going to have an in-depth conversation with Michael John Cusick, who wrote Surfing for God, about how one of the keys is getting out of shame and into attachment to God and to others as you work through addiction or problematic behaviors. Following that will be Dr. Andrew Bauman, who'll talk about how the church and some unhealthy teaching have been complicit in some of these behaviors, and how duty sex and the bad messages that came from purity culture affect both men and women and getting out of addiction cycles. And we'll end with intimacy and sexuality: how do we get to healthy, whole intimacy and sexuality in neurodiverse Christian couples? We'll give you some resources we believe are helpful, and not those old Christian messages of "try harder, pray harder, and just have more sex." That is not going to be helpful in this situation.
So let me tell you about Dr. Janice. She's a Texas psychologist, also licensed through PSYPACT for teletherapy in most states, and we have shared clients in multiple states. That's been super helpful, and it's how I got to know her. She is the founder of the Intensive Recovery Healing and Intensive Recovery Coaching programs, which specialize in customized intensives, therapy, and workshops for individuals and couples recovering from sex or pornography addiction, betrayal trauma, and other life traumas. She's one of the founding members of the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists, and she participated in creating the Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model. So she is well qualified to be here today, and as we talk, we'll discuss how her time in the field and learning more about neurodivergence has changed things.
Before I start our discussion: I get a lot of pushback when I do anything about sexuality or sex addiction, so I want to start with research. I looked up some articles about factors that contribute to problematic porn use, sexual addiction, or acting out for people who are neurodivergent. First, one of the DSM criteria for autism is that it's difficult for those on the spectrum to start and maintain close, intimate relationships. Porn and other sexual behaviors can be self-satisfying and non-relational. Other factors the research articles named: social isolation; lack of social skills; lack of understanding of intimacy and connection; frequent screen time; routine gratification, because it's less effort to satisfy oneself than to connect with a partner; and using it to self-soothe anxiety. Also, if a person has OCD, perseveration, or rumination, that could make them more vulnerable to this type of addiction. And people on the spectrum can be vulnerable to exploitation: encountering pornography in early childhood, before age 12, or being the victim of molestation, abuse, or difficult sexual situations through naivety. So that's setting the stage. I'm certainly not saying every person on the spectrum has this issue, but you and I are seeing it in our clients. And the research does seem to say there is a high crossover between porn use, sexual addiction, or other problematic behaviors. We want to be respectful of that, and we also want to talk about how this happens. Let's demystify it.
When I met you, Dr. Janice, you shared a handout with me that was so amazing and so well done. I'd love to start there. What other things might set someone up for porn, sex, or problematic behaviors?
Janice Caudill: Well, in today's age, it starts with the easy availability of internet access and pornography. When I work with people who are struggling, who are caught in the porn trap, it's very common to hear that viewing started at 9, 10, or 11, and very quickly became a daily, or close to daily, thing. The brain isn't fully developed at 9, 10, or 11. So now we've got something highly attractive, where you get really glued to what's happening on the screen, and that's happening while the brain is in development. It's very easy for it to take the brain hostage.
And then, if I have some stress in my life, if things are going on in my family, if I'm being bullied at school, just the normal everyday stressors most of us face growing up, there's a really easy escape. While I'm there, my attention is so fixated that the rest of the world and all its problems don't exist. That really reinforces whatever I'm doing. So now I'm not just using something for enjoyment; I'm using it to escape. And if I'm doing that at 8, 9, 10, or 11, normal development probably isn't happening for me.
So I sometimes work with people who are, say, 40. Something's happened in their life so they can't ignore that this is a problem. And this isn't necessarily someone on the spectrum. They didn't develop many social skills, relational skills, or coping skills. Because the thing about online activities like pornography is that it asks nothing of you. There's no way to do it wrong. You're in your head; you're in control of the script. It feels like it's giving you something, maybe relief, without asking anything of you. You don't have to worry about doing it right. So it can feel very powerful. And then it becomes my stress relief, and now I'm caught.
Stephanie Holmes: Right. So it might not even start with any kind of deviance, because sometimes people are reluctant to even talk about it: "Oh, this is such a deviant behavior." But in many cases, not all, it comes from something that happened in development. For people who've had any kind of trauma in childhood or the teen years, we call that arrested development, emotionally and relationally anyway. And for our discussion today, if autism or ADHD is included, which are neurodevelopmental differences, that's a double whammy. Now add in that this has become a special interest. I think that's a triple whammy: this might be my go-to escape. I'm anxious, I'm avoiding something, and I find this takes away my anxiety, or whatever feeling I'm feeling, and then I feel better. But it also becomes my special interest as an autistic person. It's a double whammy trying to get someone to stop their special interest. And if the special interest is a problematic behavior, like pornography or alcohol or cigarettes or drugs, whatever it is, if a special interest has an addictive quality, it makes it even more difficult to treat and help the individual.
So thank you for bringing out the developmental piece. Gen Xers had magazines, and at least there was a little bit of a barrier. I remember at 7-Elevens they'd have the black cover over it: you'd see the name Playboy or Hustler, then the black cover, and it'd be under cellophane. But kids could still get them. They might be lying around the house, or a relative might show someone. And now there's technology on top of it, with children literally carrying miniature computers in their pockets that they can stream anything on.
I remember once I came across it accidentally. This is going to sound funny and terrible, but we were doing a PowerPoint project with one of my girls. The story was about a young Asian woman coming to America, her immigration story. I searched "young Asian girl." All I wanted was a picture of a young girl from Asia, and I got things I did not want to see. I was not searching for it, I was not looking. All I wanted was a picture for a PowerPoint. So there's some innocence there, and there's some looking on purpose.
Janice Caudill: Well, I'd say with children there's a lot of innocence. Sometimes it's at a friend's house. Sometimes "I was working on a project and I put in a particular search term, and oh my gosh, that's where I ended up. It was so shocking, I couldn't pull my eyes away." That's the hook.
I also want to clarify one piece about pornography addiction. Certainly there are some out-there kinds of things people become hooked on, but lots of times it isn't bizarre material at all. Sometimes it's very vanilla comparatively, but you're hooked nonetheless. I think there are stereotypes that anybody who's into pornography is going to be into really bizarre stuff. And that's all there on the internet; it's a smorgasbord, and everything is one click away. But a lot of people aren't into what others would call an out-there genre. You can be hooked on something relatively vanilla and be caught, with the same life consequences. I say that because a feature of the addictive cycle is what I call the lies I tell myself, the justifications. For some, it's "it's just this." Therefore it doesn't matter that I'm exhausted and fatigued at work on a regular basis, because the thing I thought would take 15 minutes, when I look at the clock, has swallowed up three hours. Consequences are consequences.
Stephanie Holmes: And I think sex and porn addiction can work just like other addictions. Maybe it started with someone saying, "I just wanted a glass of bourbon at night to calm my nerves." Then that didn't work, and now I need something stronger. The same thing can happen here. It can start vanilla, maybe even a Victoria's Secret catalog or a bra-and-panty catalog that came in the mail. It can be something that innocent for children too: they open it and, ooh, there are women in bras and panties. Then it can move up to, like you're saying, more deviant behavior, more hardcore material, BDSM, violence, because the same hit didn't do it for me anymore. So it can start vanilla and escalate, or some people stay in the vanilla realm. I guess we're just trying really hard not to say "this is bad, or this is worse," although there are certainly some behaviors that are more deviant.
Janice Caudill: Well, I say that because, as you know, the majority of the people I work with are faith-based, and there's a tremendous amount of shame involved. It takes courage to reach out for help. Before COVID, I used to ask people whether walking in for that first session was one of the hardest things they'd done. What they would usually say is, "Actually, no, it was the call." Just calling and talking to me for about 20 minutes was so incredibly shameful for them. I really want to be sensitive to that, because it's a huge issue in the Christian world. I sometimes call pornography the Christian man's mistress.
Stephanie Holmes: Yeah. First of all, I want to validate that it's extremely vulnerable, brave, and courageous to come forward and say, "I have a problem and I need help." I think one thing some Christian books tried to do over the past 20 years, in an effort to reduce shame, also made it kind of cool, like everyone's doing it. And I think that message isn't okay either: that every man has this problem, so hey, you're not alone, everyone's doing it, the cool kids are doing it, even pastors are doing it. That's too far in one direction. But then there's the shaming: you're going to go to hell, you're a terrible person, you're deviant. We've got to not have those two extremes.
Janice Caudill: And while I want to validate the shame, remember that over time most of the people I work with have created a secret life. It's not something you do out in the open. You don't say to your wife, "Excuse me for the next three hours, I'm going to go look at porn" [unclear]. And while I know the tremendous shame people walk in with, I also know that maybe 99% of the people I work with actually walk in the door because their secret life has been busted.
Stephanie Holmes: Yes.
Janice Caudill: The wife discovered it, or they'd evolved to viewing pornography on their work phones and they got caught. So something happened that blew up that secret life, and they don't have a whole lot of choice if they don't want to lose their wives. That's another piece: we're talking about the pornography user, and I mentioned consequences. Well, shame is a consequence. But the spouse is paying tremendous consequences as well.
Stephanie Holmes: Yes, absolutely. Listeners, I'll remind you that we did a show with Shawna Meek on betrayal trauma, and Shawna and Kevin also shared their story. And Dr. Mary and Dr. Jeff came on to share their story of betrayal trauma and their journey back to sexual health and to their relationship.
I think that's another thing, Dr. Janice, especially with autistic men. They'll say, "I feel resentful, or offended, that you'd say pornography could be the same as adultery. It's not penetrative sex. And my wife's reaction was terrible. She should have comforted me; she should have been there for me. This was not betrayal, and I'm offended that the word betrayal is being used." Could you talk briefly about the wife's experience, especially if there's been deception, a hidden life, and possibly consequences from the porn use?
Janice Caudill: Well, I'm going to be a little biased, because I work with people because there was deception. I work predominantly with males who are struggling with pornography or sex addiction. But imagine that you took vows, before God, to honor each other, and there are lies happening. Lies aren't honoring. Lies create confusion. When, as a wife, you've sensed something is going on and you ask about it, and it's denied, or maybe flipped back on you, it starts to mess with your mind. Or when you actually see the evidence and it's vigorously denied, it's confusing: how could somebody deny something that's sitting right here? And yet that happens.
When more and more time is given to pornography than to the relationship, when, whether through neurodivergence or through addictive behaviors, particularly pornography, his eyes aren't on his spouse at all, yet "I caught you, and your eyes are really on that screen," that brings up feelings of being undesired, unwanted, unseen. And if pornography actually becomes preferred to being sexual with the wife, now she's being [unclear: starved?] in service of some unknown person on a screen.
Stephanie Holmes (?): A mistress.
Janice Caudill: Yes. And one of the potential consequences of long-term or very heavy use is porn-induced erectile dysfunction: "Now he can't perform with me, yet he can do hours of pornography." That gets into a woman's psyche, feeling unwanted, undesired, unchosen. And if you've sensed it for a really long time but didn't know, and then you make an absolute discovery and realize, "Maybe I lost 20 years to lies and deception, and over time I've lost my connection with trust in what's real and not real; the history I thought I had with this person isn't what I thought it was," it's life-disturbing. It blows up everything.
And one element that may be a little different if you're a wife betrayed by pornography: you can't compete with pornography. It's not another woman to try to compete with. You can't compete with airbrushed fantasy scenarios that ask nothing and require nothing of the porn user. It's incredibly hard to figure out how to compete with that. So I see the same effect in women who've discovered a pornography addiction as in women who've discovered serial affairs or strip clubs.
Stephanie Holmes: The impact is about the same. Is that what you're saying?
Janice Caudill: Yes. There are some nuances that differ, just as there are nuances between someone who's into pornography and someone into other kinds of sexual behavior, but the emotional experience is the same. I don't have separate groups for women who feel they've been betrayed by pornography. I have groups for women who have been betrayed, and women betrayed by pornography sit side by side with women betrayed by other kinds of in-person ("3D") acting out. There's no difference in their bonding, no difference in their understanding. The only difference I see is that sometimes, early on, women betrayed by pornography feel they don't have as much right to say how much pain they're in, because "it's just porn." We get beyond that pretty quickly, because the feelings are the same.
Stephanie Holmes: I want to make a comparison. I hear the same thing from women who've been through emotional or psychological abuse versus women who've been through domestic violence or physical abuse. They'll say, "It was just emotional, spiritual, or psychological." Yet brain scans and research show that emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse is equally damaging to a person, with or without domestic violence. So it's kind of the same thing. The parallels you're describing between porn and sexual acting out like an affair are the betrayal, the deception, the impact on the relationship, and the impact on the sexual relationship.
And I think in church culture, one added shameful thing is that many of the earlier books, written in the 1990s and early 2000s, said the wife is the reason the man has the porn or sexual problem: "You weren't enough. You didn't stay fit. You can't compete with the images, so get your body in shape. You're not offering yourself enough; be available 24/7." So that next piece, which I'm going to call spiritual and religious abuse, takes this terrible thing that's happened to me, and now I think I'm responsible for it as well, and I'm the antidote, the answer. I don't know if you see that in your work, but I certainly hear a lot of it from the women I work with.
Janice Caudill: Well, absolutely. And APSATS, the organization in the bio, rose up to combat that very victim-blaming stance. And I want to put this in context: I think lots of faith communities have finally risen up to recognize there is a problem, that it also affects the spouse, and that we need to be there to help. But I also participated in some research on help-seeking in faith-based communities by betrayed women, and when I tell you the results were atrocious: the results were sad, the results were scary. So there's a lot of room for growth. I hope those who are the leaders in really creating help have other communities willing to follow in that line. But it's like a one-two punch: as a woman of faith, you seek help in your faith community, and it feels like you take on more of the consequences and repercussions.
Stephanie Holmes: Another betrayal.
Janice Caudill: It is another betrayal.
Stephanie Holmes: So listeners, please make sure you listen to my podcast with Dr. Andrew, because we talk about purity culture and how it influenced some of this. There's a difference between abstinence before marriage and purity culture. That's where a lot of this came in: maybe positive intentions, but a lot of negative impact. So thank you for sharing all of that, because I think it sets up some of the questions the wives have asked me.
In the "recipe for sex addiction" handout you gave me a while back, I want to talk about when it becomes an addiction. First of all, whether it's an addiction or not, it's going to hurt the relationship; let me say that. But when does it go from a problematic behavior to an addiction, and what are some of the subtypes? What are some other problematic or, as Dr. Andrew calls them, deceptive sexual behaviors we might be missing? So, when does it cross over into addiction? And then I want to talk about the subtypes, because when I read that list I was like, "Oh my goodness, there's far more of this going on than we realized."
Janice Caudill: Yeah. And I'll say the subtypes list that was scary is even scarier than you think. I did my training to become a certified sex addiction therapist, and I think I was certified in 2009. When I was certified there were 10 subtypes, and for maybe 20 years the research had said 10 subtypes, 10 subtypes, 10 subtypes. I think we're up to 19 subtypes now. And I have an opinion on why. One is that, despite all the problems with the internet, it's also allowed us to get better data and capture things. But I was also certified as a sex addiction therapist right about the time smartphones hit. When I take the history of somebody who's been addicted for a really long time, there are two phases. I already know I'm going to see a really big uptick around the late '90s, when the internet and home computers really came into vogue. The next huge uptick is going to be 2009, 2010, when smartphones hit. As technology has evolved, I think addiction has evolved right along with it. So I wouldn't be surprised if five years from now we have an even longer list.
Stephanie Holmes: Yeah. And I think another way the internet increases the issue: with magazines, you still had to go to the store and buy one, or you found them. Now, with the dark web, in the secrecy of your home, you can ask questions, or ask AI, "How do I do this? What do I need for this?" and maybe discover some things darker than you were looking for. Now there's not only a way to access things but a way to ask questions that protects me from the shame of it, and to get ideas. And there are groups out there on the dark web that share some of this information. I'd imagine that's where some of the different subtypes have come from as well.
Janice Caudill: Oh, absolutely. But also think about this: in the old, old days we were looking at still photos. Pornography today is not still photos. Some of what's out there now involves everything that could capture an underdeveloped brain. Imagine somebody who plays poker in their kitchen every week for ten years and isn't addicted. They go to Vegas once, and the sounds, the bells, the whistles, all that goes with that package, are overwhelming, and now we have an addiction to gambling. So there are things that can overwhelm the brain, and the type of pornography out there now is extremely different. It's all very fast.
Stephanie Holmes: I forgot about that, because you can personalize it. I forgot the name of the channel, but you can personalize what you want: whatever I want to see, this person is going to do exactly what I want, tailored to me. That's a whole other level of this behavior.
Janice Caudill: And with the internet, it's anonymous. Because it's anonymous, I can assume a sort of alter identity; I can be somebody I'm not in normal life. That's attractive. It's affordable: I don't have to pay a lot of money anymore to find easily accessible pornography. And it's available: I carry the device in my pocket every day. That's my access to an addictive world, which makes it very easy to access. And it's also an obstacle to becoming free, because I carry the object that's my gateway to that world in my pocket every day.
[Part 1 ends here.]
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Full Disclosure: What's the Truth After Betrayal? | Part 1
Can knowing the full truth about betrayal foster healing, or does it add more pain? Join host Monifa Ellis-Addie alongside experts Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill as they unpack the risks and rewards of full disclosure in relationships.
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Transcript: Full Disclosure: What's the Truth After Betrayal? | Part 1
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Have you ever wondered if knowing the full details of a sexual betrayal could help or hinder your healing? Many partners wrestle with this question, and that's why today we're talking about full disclosures. A full disclosure is a process of uncovering the truth behind the betrayal you've experienced. But what does a full disclosure really entail? Who should consider it? And how can understanding these details guide your path to healing? In this two-part series, I'm going to bravely ask the questions you need answered to realize if a full disclosure is right for you. I'm your host, Monifa Ellis-Addie, and on this episode of Hope and Healing Chats, Dan Drake and Janice Caudill, authors of the Full Disclosure series and founders of Kintsugi Recovery Partners, join me as we weigh the risks and rewards to help you decide if full disclosure is right for you. Before we get started, don't forget to like, subscribe, and ring that notification bell.
Thank you for being here today. Your guide has become the guide that everyone is using for how to do a full disclosure. Most of our listeners know what a full therapeutic disclosure is, but for those who don't, can you briefly describe it in a couple of sentences?
Janice Caudill: In one word: truth. If I'm the partner, it's the things I didn't know about that have affected me. It's the pathway to figuring out what's happened, what the betrayals were. Now I can make decisions based on informed knowledge.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Now, if I'm the sex addict and I hear that, I'm thinking, "Why do I need to tell them all of that? It's just going to make things worse. Besides, they know everything already." What would you say to them?
Dan Drake: That's a good one; we hear that a lot. There are two parts to it that I think are really important. First, I hear some version, sometimes with 12-step language thrown in, of: "If I share this, it's going to harm my partner. Why would I do something that would intentionally hurt my partner?" To speak to that: we don't want to harm anybody, and we know disclosures are difficult. They're painful; they can be traumatic. We also know the partner needs information. The partner is often free-falling. They don't know what they don't know, so how do they move forward? It's like knowing there's a problem but not having a clear diagnosis or knowing how to treat it. Disclosure gets to the bottom of it all. It brings the partner clarity and helps build a new foundation where they can heal and restore, and hopefully rebuild the relationship.
So when we hear the addict say that, and I don't know what you'd say, Janice and Monifa, usually it's, "Oh, I don't want to harm my partner," but usually it's more about themselves. It's too scary. It's too overwhelming. They're more self-protective than partner-protective. That's what I've usually found.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, I would agree with that, exactly. And I also think some people genuinely believe they're doing the right thing. What they don't take into account is that they're controlling the flow of information. They're taking my choice away, which is, at a higher level, what's happened in the addiction. Most partners would not respond to an ad that says, "Hey, I'm going to lie to you for years about big things and little things. I'm going to betray you. I'm going to leave you confused and gaslit and brain-fogged."
But there's another piece that I'm going to guess you also say, Dan. I say it to recovering addicts, and they don't believe me until maybe afterward: truth is not just healing for the partner and the relationship. The addict can't be in real recovery if they haven't been willing to look at their own truth.
Dan Drake: Absolutely.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Now, on the subject of truth: with truth come details. If I'm a betrayed partner, I may say, "I want all the details. I went through everything, and I find comfort in the details." Or is there a version of the truth you put out that doesn't go into details that could be damaging? Are the details empowering? Are there things that are off limits? What does this look like?
Janice Caudill: That's a really big part of partner recovery and healing. I know couples come into this process wanting to get to the truth rapidly, but you can have a rapid surgery with no anesthesia and no sterilized instruments, too. You want to get the truth, and you want not to be destroyed by it. You want to be prepared for it. So a lot of time and attention goes into the partner's work, helping her discern what level of truth she needs. Where's the line between what I really need to know and what I maybe want to know? And making really conscious choices about that, because detail is in the eye of the beholder. If Dan and I are working on a disclosure, I don't want to just tell Dan, "She wants a lot of detail," because I may have one idea of what that means and he may have a totally different one.
So there's a lot of work with her to discern that. If you want absolutely everything, where's that need coming from? What's it really about? If it's "I'm comparing myself; I want all the details about everything," that may be a different issue to look at. Or it may be, "My intuition has been going off right and left, and I don't even know if it's intuition. So I need to ask about some really small things." His therapist, his guide, may not get it, but for me it's my way of beginning to track, seek, and restore my own intuition.
Dan Drake: Just to add to that, if that's okay, Janice: I completely agree. That's one reason these workbooks got as big as they did; we never intended them to. Part of the process is, "Okay, I want all the detail. Well, what does that mean?" Janice is saying to slow it down. I have colleagues who have hard-and-fast rules: we don't share this level of detail, or we don't say this or that. For example, if the person was acting out in a hotel, we don't name the specific hotel, or the brand or the chain, because is that level of detail important?
But here's where it gets complicated. I think of someone who went through a disclosure and was told there would be no specific details like that, so that was withheld. Then she came to me and said, "I want to know this level of detail, because there's a special hotel, and I want to know: is this a place where you acted out? Is this a safe place I can reclaim for myself, knowing it didn't happen here?" I think this partner also suspected that a concierge, or someone there, was involved in procuring prostitutes. When she said that, I thought, that makes a lot of sense. You want to know whether this place was tainted or whether you can keep it as special. That level of detail made sense to me. She wanted to know something very specific.
So that's different from a hard-and-fast rule about level of detail, because sometimes partners have a really good reason for wanting to know certain things. Part of the vetting, with their guide, is understanding what they want. And as Janice said, sometimes I want to know specific things, but there's a question underneath the question. It might be a heart-based question. It might not be facts I'm trying to get to at all; it might be grief, or something else entirely, that will take more time.
Janice Caudill: Using your example, Dan: one of the things we created was a needs assessment, with very specific, detailed checklists and questions to distill what it's about, for partners to use, so whoever is guiding the recovering addict through the disclosure isn't taking a guess. The blueprints come from the partner. Literally, one of the questions about detail is: would you want to know that he acted out in Chicago, versus on a business trip in Chicago, versus in a hotel on a business trip in Chicago, versus at the Hotel Chicago on a business trip to Chicago? We give partners things that really help them discern what their needs are.
Dan Drake: Which is great on the guide side, too, because when we look at the needs assessment, we can ask, "Is this a want-to-know or a need-to-know?" Sometimes something is on the needs assessment but it's still a want-to-know, not actually connected to a need. Or, the more we have the conversation, as in my example, there actually is a need connected to it. So I love, love, love the needs assessment, because it gives us one universal language when we're working with another guide, and when we're communicating with the partner and the addict about exactly how we're structuring this document.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: But are there any areas you would advise against, or that are off limits, or tricky?
Janice Caudill: I generally advise against anything at the level where it gives a script, and now there's an image going off in my head. That image is quite likely to replay over and over. So whatever I'm asking, what is the real need? One of the things you added to the needs assessment, Dan, was the phrase "there's no bleach for the brain." Can you live with that? What's the impact going to be? Sometimes, as Dan said, they're heart-based questions; that's really what it's about. I like that we distill the questions, because if it's really about a love issue, then once we have the facts, that's not necessarily where we stop. There can be an additional process where we begin to add the context. But it's really difficult for a brain to absorb a lot of context before it even knows the basic fact.
Dan Drake: By the way, I think "no bleach for the brain" was Dorit Reichental's phrase. I've definitely adopted it, not as my own; I just want to give her credit.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: It sounds like Dorit.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, it does sound like Dorit.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: So what if the sex addict is still saying, "I'm not doing it"? They keep refusing to do the disclosure: "You're saying all these great things, but I don't believe you, so I'm not doing it." Where does that leave the partner?
Dan Drake: Can I speak to the addict side first, and then you, Janice? First, I want to answer what you said before, because we do hear it: "She already knows everything, so why go through all this?" I want to be clear. Of all the disclosures I've ever done, fewer than a handful, I can think of one, had no new information, and that couple had been waiting years and years to get to disclosure. In every other situation I can think of, even if there aren't huge brand-new pieces of information, there are always nuances. Also, we're advocating for a written document. The addict writes a whole document and shares it with the partner all at once. That's usually not what they did before. Usually they shared pieces of information: staggered disclosures, dragged out over days, weeks, sometimes months or years. This is the addict taking full accountability, all at once. So it's a lot, and there is always going to be new information.
On the addict side, I always say: I get that it's scary. I get that this goes against almost everything the addict learned about how to cope with life. Usually they have negative core beliefs on some level: I'm bad, I'm defective, I'm unlovable, I'm unworthy. Those core beliefs say, "I want to keep everything hidden, because if people really knew all of me, including the dark stuff, there's no way anyone would stay, especially my partner, whom I've betrayed and hurt the most." So I recognize that saying, "No, if you share this, it's actually going to heal and restore your relationship and help her heal," wouldn't make sense to most addicts. But that's what we see happening, and it's what the partner needs. Otherwise we're trying to stitch up an infected wound that's never going to heal on its own. Disclosure is how we clean out that wound so it can actually heal.
If they're refusing, though, that's not a good sign. It really doesn't go well for a relationship. For anyone listening who is an addict: if you refuse when your partner says, "This is what I need to heal," it effectively tells your partner, "I'm more concerned with my own safety and my own walls of protection than with our relationship and what you need." That doesn't bode well long term, because the partner won't really build safety. No real trust or honesty gets rebuilt. Those relationships end up floundering. They don't go so well.
Janice Caudill: It's like telling a partner who feels like she's bleeding, when truth is what will stop the bleeding, "I'm just going to watch you bleed out," maybe while saying, "I'm doing it for you." On the partner side, probably nine times out of ten in this situation, the partner and her disclosure guide intuit that it's going to be dicey whether he follows through. So that gets built into the preparation. Right from the get-go, we distinguish content truth from behavioral truth. Content truth is: can he actually share the real facts, fully and completely, in the disclosure? That's what everybody is really focused on. But behavioral truth can be quite different, and it's usually more important.
I've seen a lot of partners who get the truth in the disclosure, for the most part. But if, in the days and weeks leading up to it, he's sending veiled abandonment threats, or being defensive, passive-aggressive, or just really mean, the behavioral truth says he may be in recovery, maybe, but he's not really growing. He's not really maturing. And this is information: this is who you're married to as of right now. This is who you're in a relationship with. That's a super-important truth for partners to take in, because you can get distracted, like trying to find which shell has the ball under it, if you focus only on content truth. Sometimes when you look at the behavior, it's: is this wise for me? Does this feel like love? It's the truth of where he, or she, is right now.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Which I see all the time, because content is checking off the boxes. It's tangible; they can see it right in front of their face. Process and behavior are more the heart stuff: what's really affecting me? And it can feel safer for the nervous system to look only at content: "Well, at least he's checking off all the boxes, so he's in recovery." Whereas if I look at the process and behavioral stuff, I might have to deal with truths I'm not ready to deal with.
Janice Caudill: Yeah.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: I was wondering if you two could speak to the research in the book on the emotional impact of discovery versus disclosure, and the benefits, to make this a little more tangible. Why do a full therapeutic disclosure?
Janice Caudill: The research on discovery is actually the original APSATS community research. I haven't looked at the numbers recently, so I'm pulling them out of the air, but they'll probably be pretty good. Surprisingly, that survey has been up for a really long time, and I would have thought the results would start to change over the years as our knowledge, our community, and awareness changed. It hasn't changed much. On a 10-point scale, the subjective emotional pain of discovery is about 9.6. That's an extremely high score. I always like to point out that if that were an earthquake, it would be the highest recorded earthquake we have. The pain of a disclosure, again rated by partners, is 7.7. A 7.7 on the Richter scale is a pretty large earthquake, and if you're not prepared for it, things are going to crumble.
But what I do like about that APSATS survey is that it asked about the wait time, the prolonged wait between discovery and disclosure. What's the pain of that wait? It was 9.2, much higher than the disclosure itself. And when people aren't barking, pain doesn't always get noticed. Sometimes there's quiet pain: resignation, despair, the constant fear of uncertainty. It doesn't always roar, but it's there nonetheless. Dan, do you want to talk about the survey on the disclosure itself, the ratings on that?
Dan Drake: I don't remember the exact numbers, but in terms of benefits and risks, what surprised me was the disclosing person's side versus the partner's side. We asked about the disclosure: did it help me, did it benefit me? Did it harm me? And, the big one that was left off some of the APSATS surveys and that I thought was warranted: did the benefits outweigh the harms? If I remember right, the disclosing people, the addicts, reported even more than the partners that the benefits outweighed the harms. That surprised me; I would have expected it from the partners. But it makes sense. On some level, sharing all this stuff felt like an existential threat, so scary and overwhelming. Then they actually did it, went through the whole process trying to give their partner exactly what the partner needed and deserved. And there's the phrase, "I'm only as sick as my secrets." They realize, "Wow, I don't have any secrets from the person I love most in my life, whom I've harmed the most." So there's a lot of benefit to doing it.
Obviously, there's a lot more work after disclosure. We always say disclosure is an incredible starting point. We build a new foundation, but the building isn't built yet. We have to do a lot of healing and repair after disclosure. It's so critical to build a solid foundation in a relationship again.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: You just mentioned, Dan, that the benefits are great on the sex addict side. Not so much on the partner side?
Dan Drake: No, not that there's no benefit for partners. Both of them said the benefits outweighed the harms; it was slightly higher on the disclosing side, but that doesn't mean the partners' wasn't high. At the time we did the book, there were only three studies we could find, including our survey, and collectively all three said that over 90% of all participants said it helped and was the right thing to do.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Thank you. That's good to clarify. We don't want anyone to think it's helpful for the addicts and not for the partners.
Janice Caudill: Of course. Exactly. I really like the way we did that question, Dan, making sure to ask it, because the partners talked about a lot of pain. A 7.7 earthquake, particularly if you're not prepared, is a lot of pain. But when asked whether the benefits outweighed the harms, for the most part they said yes, which says a lot. We didn't have a lot of research to look at when we put the books out. Dan, we both know that some people in the disclosure-guide community are now in graduate school doing research on disclosure, so more and more is going to come out about the process.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: You mentioned earlier, Janice, the effects of the wait period. How long is the wait period? What has changed? I know different clinicians do it different ways.
Janice Caudill: It's a big, controversial one, actually. I've said this before, but it's a phrase that still haunts me. I was the person monitoring the original APSATS survey, which I think went out around 2014, and I remember one person's write-in answer: "40 years and still waiting." We had a lot of that: people waiting a lifetime. One thing I've seen really change in the last few years is that things are speeding up. Sometimes, in my mind, maybe too rapidly, without enough preparation. But I would say we're still talking months to years. It's interesting, because I'm in an area with a lot of CSATs and a lot of APSATS partner specialists. There are a lot of people doing disclosures now; there weren't when I started in this field. But going back to our surveys, Dan, the percentage is still a minority. Even though it feels like so many more people, it's still a minority of people getting a disclosure.
Dan Drake: I was going to say, Monifa, that's a really good question, and it's tough, because there's a range. Every couple is going to be different. I don't know what you've both found, but generally we can't do disclosure soon enough for the betrayed partner, and we can't wait long enough for the betrayer. The more time I have on the addict side, the more I can help them gain insight into their own behaviors. I can help them understand the full impact of what they've done and the harms they've caused, understand betrayal trauma, work through shame resolution, all those kinds of things, and produce a clear document, out of the fog of the addiction and in recovery. So there are a lot of benefits to waiting. And I think the traditional approach had been waiting, what, a year maybe? I'm not sure how long people had to wait initially, but it was a while.
Janice Caudill: Much longer than that.
Dan Drake: Longer than that. So you can imagine: if we know the distressing wait time is a 9.2 for the partner, waiting a year or more feels excruciating. Like Janice said, I think we've shifted to doing them more quickly. But it's a range. Unfortunately, for anyone trying to navigate this, it's really worth figuring out with your disclosure guide or guides what their process is, because not everybody is on the same page. Sometimes you're working with someone you're on the same page with, but your significant other is working with someone with a completely different approach, and that's where things get really messy and jumbled.
Janice Caudill: And that's why I said sometimes it's a little too soon, in my opinion. If I had a really serious cancer, I would do some research to find the best oncologist. I want to act fast, but I want sure footing. There are a lot of people doing disclosures who have very little training, and there are people with training who have very little experience. If you're really early in recovery, you don't know how to vet this. You don't know enough to ask the discerning questions. And once you're invested, if you figure out along the way, "This isn't the person I should have chosen to guide me," most people feel stuck: "I've put money and time into this, we've got a date set, and I don't want to do anything to mess that up." I think the community could use some really good consumer information about how to choose whom you work with. And there's nothing wrong with switching if you want the surgery done properly.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Dan, you just gave kind of a tall order: if you have more time, there's betrayal trauma, building their knowledge of that, getting to a place where they can be honest. Are all those things necessary? Does the partner have to wait for all of them to be in place before we can do a disclosure? Because I'm at 9.2 over here, and it might take him a long time, depending on his own cognitive distortions and such, to get there.
Dan Drake: I think the short answer is no, they don't. But that's informed consent. In our process we really try to give as much choice back to the partner as we can. Say I'm working with the addict, and the partner says, "I need this yesterday. I need clarity on what I'm dealing with so I can heal and start to move forward." And I realize he doesn't have much insight. He may have some narcissistic tendencies, or he may really not understand betrayal trauma; he's pretty early on. That's behavioral truth, and it's what I'd want to share with the partner's guide, if the partner has a disclosure guide. I want to make clear to them, with full informed consent, where he's at. Are you willing to move forward? What's more important: having an insightful, connected, empathetic partner? Obviously anyone would want that. Of course; let's just own that. But what's most significant right now? Is it having the facts and information so you can make an informed choice about your next steps, or is it having that person have those pieces in place right now? I don't think there's a right answer.
You'll often hear, especially on the partner side, the disclosing person's guide saying, "Oh, he's not ready. He's not ready." Sometimes you'll even hear, "She's not ready." I don't know why that happens. A lot of times the person preparing the addict, the disclosing person, will say, "Oh, your partner's not ready. She's volatile, she's intense." That's a whole other thing we could talk about: why is that happening on the disclosing person's side? But that's why the workbooks we created weren't meant to say, "This is the one template, the one thing you have to do." They're literally all the choice points along the way: how do we want to navigate these as a couple, so you get the best experience, the one you want and need from this?
Janice Caudill: Speed it up, yes, but based on more information and more discernment, not less.
Dan Drake: Yeah.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: Now, if I'm a partner and I'm waiting, at 9.2 too, and I feel like the addict is learning more things and more memories are coming up, I want to hear things as soon as they remember them. I don't want to get surprised when I walk into the disclosure room, which does come up often. What do you say to them? How do they manage this waiting period?
Janice Caudill: You manage the waiting period the same way you would if a storm were coming: you start preparing. Part of the reason I really like disclosures is that, earlier in my career especially, the prep for the disclosure became the care for partners to do the very things I'd been wanting them to do for themselves: stabilize themselves, do that kind of self-care, strengthen themselves. As for the questioning, there are exercises in the workbooks about how to manage the wait time. Most of the partners I work with, when they really think about it, prefer to get it all at once, in a formal ceremony, an exchange of truth. Getting it at midnight when they're triggered about something, coming out of the tail end of an argument, means you get the information, but you also get all the damage of getting it the same way you always did. So most of them, when they think about it carefully, choose that. And we give very specific cues, which the partner has chosen, for how the disclosing person should handle it.
On occasion, not frequently, I've had people say, "No, I want to know it." When that's the case, we vet it, and then that's okay. You realize you're the one choosing the drip-feed, and that may create more scar tissue. How are we going to handle that? Let's start preparing for it. Choices have consequences, so let's prepare. If that's what you choose, then you have to repair really well, because you have to be a ninja at trauma self-care.
Dan Drake: I like that process we have, Janice. There's an exercise in both workbooks, "Staying Sane During the Wait Time," and it's choreographed by the partner. The partner says, as Janice described, "Here's my protocol. Here's how I want these situations to go." I like that better. Early on, when I first started doing disclosures, I would have the disclosing person hold a boundary: "I'm not going to share this until disclosure." That's one option, and people do it. What I found happened is that the betrayed partner says, "Well, you're married to me, not Dan, so I need to know this information." And we didn't have a backup plan. Then they'd freeze. Either they'd double down on the boundary and the partner would get really upset and distressed, or they'd just share, and it wasn't careful. So this way, we understand these situations come up. We understand the wait time is incredibly upsetting and distressing, and we want a plan in place as much as possible, so we can build some containment.
Monifa Ellis-Addie: That wraps up episode one of our Full Disclosure series on Hope and Healing Chats. A big thanks to Dan and Janice for their insights. Join us for episode two, where we'll tackle the fears both partners and addicts face as they consider this transformative step. Be sure to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell to stay in the loop for upcoming episodes. Thank you for joining us, and remember to embrace your healing journey. Every step forward brings new hope for tomorrow. See you next time.
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How much information does a betrayed spouse require to heal and rebuild their relationship?
In this podcast interview, CSATS and Partner Betrayal Specialists Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill discuss common reasons for engaging in or avoiding a full disclosure process after betrayal trauma.
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Transcript: How much information does a betrayed spouse require to heal and rebuild their relationship?
Host: What are the most common objections to doing a therapeutic disclosure?
Janice Caudill: Dan, do you want me to take the partner side, and you take the other?
Dan Drake: Sure.
Janice Caudill: Not much, honestly. "I need truth. When's the disclosure?" But it might be "I'm really afraid." In Dan's and my research, some of it is "I'm afraid of what's unknown, that it might be more than I can handle." In our research the partners are almost exclusively women, and for some of them it's "I'm afraid of actually having to hear all the things I've already heard, and it's just going to be too much if I hear it all together." But the biggest one is "I'm afraid he'll still lie."
Host: Okay. I do want to hear Dan's objections too, but how do we handle the whole "can't he just lie again" in a therapeutic disclosure? Do you include a polygraph as part of your encouragement of the process?
Janice Caudill: I don't require it, but yes, I encourage it. I'm openly a polygraph girl, for lots of reasons.
Host: How about you, Dan? Are you a polygraph guy?
Dan Drake: I will say I'm a polygraph guy. I leave the choice up to every couple that goes through this; it's not really my place. People do a lot of reading online about polygraphs, and I understand it's a controversial topic in our field. Over the years, though, I've seen them be very valuable for both parties, not just for the partner. When the person who's doing the disclosing knows the polygraph is there, they really do a deep dive into the preparation. They want to make sure they turn over every stone and give their full effort, where otherwise they might do a "good enough" job that isn't as detailed or specific. They get real motivation when they know there's a polygraph.
We could talk for hours about polygraphs, by the way; it always comes up. But there's also a situation that happens sometimes with someone who's earlier on in their recovery or healing process. They may still be in a fog as they're coming out of their behaviors. They may not remember everything perfectly (not that anyone remembers perfectly), but they may have memory gaps, compartmentalized information. So if we're doing a disclosure early on, which is a whole other question, when to do these things, there's a chance that after the disclosure he realizes, "Man, I forgot this thing." As he's further into recovery and his memory and integrity are more fully online, he remembers more. What happens then? Does he keep that secret from his partner, thinking, "Oh shoot, there was this thing I forgot to say, and if I share it, what happens?" I've found that if the person does the polygraph, it's more likely the partner believes, after the fact, that this was recovered truth rather than withheld truth. That's a big benefit I've seen.
Plus, just the willingness to do it says, "Your safety is so important to me that whatever you need to heal, I'm going to do. I might feel unstable, scared, but I've got nothing to hide and nothing to fear." Or the thing may be scary in and of itself, and that's okay. It's normal to be afraid of the polygraph; I get it. But we're doing fidelity polygraphs, not forensic polygraphs, everybody. Big, big difference. It gives the person an opportunity to tell the full, honest truth, not to try to catch them in a lie. Everyone wants this to succeed. So that's the short of it: I'm a polygraph guy.
Host: I've seen addicts who say, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I have this." It's like a backup for if they ever hear that little voice in their head that says, "Just this once, what's the big deal, she'll never know." No, she will, because a lot of couples do a maintenance annual follow-up polygraph. Not a full disclosure, just a follow-up. So for some guys it's the most legit form of accountability, and I think that's a good way of looking at it. Sorry, go ahead, Janice.
Janice Caudill: I was going to say, I don't think it's just some guys. In the research Dan and I did, when we asked who gets the biggest gains from a polygraph, it's not the partner, it's the addict, which is so interesting. And I know that when partners find out a polygraph is a legit option, at first they're like, "Wait, what? This is a thing?" Because it's not widely known that you can have this as part of your therapeutic process. It is so relieving: "I can finally take off my detective hat and leave it in the hands of the professionals."
Dan Drake: Can I say one thing on that? Janice, I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but I love the way you talk about the burden. There's a burden of truth here, polygraph or not, and I think Janice explains it really well. Would you mind sharing that?
Janice Caudill: I assume you're talking about who's going to carry the greater consequences. Everybody's worried about a false positive. I think the stats are about 87% accuracy, so there's a legitimate concern: "I could take this, tell the truth, and not pass." That's true, and we have to be sensitive to that. It's not 100% going to catch things, and that's a reality. I don't want to invalidate that; it's a legitimate concern for somebody stepping up to take a polygraph.
But what people forget is: who holds the consequences if he doesn't? Then the partner is sitting there trying to become a human lie detector, and you can't be a human lie detector. There's always doubt there, particularly after the kinds of things that go on in the addiction, and in recovery. My God, the recovery is sometimes harder than before. After the gaslighting, partners get really doubtful of, or disconnected from, their own intuition. So polygraphs are helpful for more than the obvious. They're really helpful for a partner beginning to reconnect with their own intuition and getting to say, "I don't have to be a human lie detector anymore," because that's crazy-making. It strips us of our soul. I get the concerns that many professionals, and many of our couples, have about the possible negative implications of a polygraph. But if you choose not to do it, you're leaving that entire burden of uncertainty on the partner's back.
Dan Drake: Can I make my pitch to the men listening, real quick? We hear all kinds of things, and I get it: it's always an individual decision, whether it's a polygraph or a disclosure for that matter. It's always going to be your choice. Sometimes men tell me they feel backed into a corner, like they don't have a choice, like it's an ultimatum: "Either you do this or I'm done." What I would really encourage you to see is that this is all about safety. It's about re-establishing a foundation of honesty and truth in the relationship, helping your partner feel safe, and ultimately starting to build trust back. So if a polygraph is one thing your partner is asking for so she can start feeling more safe, then doing whatever it takes to show you're willing to help her heal is, to me, a small ask.
I hear some people say, "If we're at the point in our relationship where you need a polygraph, is it even worth it? I can't believe we're there." They feel controlled, or backed into a corner. But the reality is, if you're like most couples, your partner got blindsided through discovery. She didn't know what was coming, and she's trying to figure out where the bottom of this is. She's free-falling, trying to find a foundation of truth and where the bottom lands. All of this is a way of re-establishing a new foundation in the relationship, so my strong recommendation is to really take that into consideration. In our fear of doing something scary or challenging, we sometimes want to discount all this and find reasons not to do it. We hear it all the time.
I thought it was all extreme when I first started this work. A disclosure with a polygraph sounded like a lot, pretty extreme. I never set out to write a book or work on all these resources on disclosure with anybody, and yet I've seen the value of this process so much over the years. I'm so grateful that Janice and I could work on this, to provide a safe way to go through the …
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How Can Therapeutic Disclosure Help Heal Marriages Affected By Sexual Betrayal
In our conversation, Janice and Dan walk us through the disclosure process, emphasizing the impact of betrayal, readiness for disclosure, tailored approaches, the "choreography" of disclosure, and the post-disclosure phase that highlights potential obstacles when rebuilding trust.
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Transcript: How Can Therapeutic Disclosure Help Heal Marriages Affected By Sexual Betrayal
Jonathan: All right, Dan Drake and Janice Caudill, welcome to the program.
Dan Drake: Thanks for having us.
Jonathan: Dan, it's welcome back for you, because you were on the program about four years ago to talk about therapeutic disclosure in marriages affected by sexual betrayal. I'm so glad we get to have both you and Janice on, because you've developed some really good resources together on this topic of disclosure. But before we dive into it, can you both tell us a little about the work you do, and how people can get connected to the resources?
Dan Drake: Go for it, Jan.
Janice Caudill: Okay. There is a centralized place for our resources now. Dan, I'm going to let you pronounce the name of the website, and then I'll spell it.
Dan Drake: Of course: kintsugirecoverypartners.com.
Janice Caudill: Kintsugi, just like the artwork: K-I-N-T-S-U-G-I, recovery partners. There you have access to the workbooks we created, the his-and-her companion workbooks. Coming soon, there will be access to workshops Dan and I are planning to do together for those preparing for disclosure. We also train other professionals in how to do this, and the website has a find-a-guide section, so you can find somebody who not only uses our materials but understands the underlying reasons we have things in there the way we do, and how that relates to the greater healing, for you both individually and for the relationship.
Jonathan: Well, let's dive into this topic of disclosure. In our ministry we come across a lot of couples, and sexual betrayal can enter a relationship in all kinds of ways: an affair, the introduction of pornography, all kinds of other things. When a piece of that comes to light and a couple says, "Okay, this is terrible, this is awful, but we want to figure out if there's a way forward for our relationship," they start asking, "What do we do with what may still be unknown? What do we do with the fullness of all this brokenness?" That's where this term "disclosure" comes in. But first, could you both give us a simple definition? What are we talking about when you say disclosure?
Janice Caudill: In simple terms, it's a coming clean by the disclosing party. It unveils secrets, lies, and distortions, as well as the sexual betrayal. So there's a broader piece to it, because it's not just the sexual betrayals; it's the lies that covered them up, which is a conspiracy. For partners, truth is the only path to healing. Discovery is so disorienting for partners. Often it confirms an intuition you didn't speak about, because you had nothing outside you to verify it, and you wanted to believe in your husband. For other women, it blows the lid off a secret life: everything I thought I could believe is now untrue, and I don't know what to trust, including my own thoughts and my own perception. So for partners, truth, the pattern of truth, is just a starting point for even figuring out how do I heal, and how does my healing fit into the healing of the relationship?
Dan Drake: If I could add: I totally agree with what you're saying, Jan. At its most core level, disclosure is a restoring of truth in a relationship. Without that base of truth, it's like rebuilding a relationship on sand; there's no foundation. The truth builds a new foundation the relationship can be built on, on solid ground. That's what our model is trying to do: restore that in a way that gives each person in the relationship what they need. Then the question is how much of the truth we share, and that varies. Every betrayed partner wants to know different levels of information. So there are nuances we can bring into the process to tailor it to each couple and what restoration looks like for them.
Janice Caudill: And there's understanding the potential implications of each level of information. Then there's also what Dan and I call behavioral truth. Somebody can share a full history of transactions, but if they do it in a way that's really damaging, defensive, that doesn't convey they're holding their partner's heart, that's information too. It's information about where he may be in his own recovery. And choice, I'm sorry, let me just say one last thing: choice is really important. I forgot to say that our workbooks are on Amazon, and the first volume is actually about understanding this whole process and what your choices are.
Jonathan: I want to ask: who is disclosure really for? I get the feeling some couples listening aren't in a place where disclosure would even be helpful. They're not ready for it. What are some of the prerequisites, if I could put it that way, for determining if and when a couple is ready to enter this level of truth-telling?
Dan Drake: I'll start on this. I love the question. You used the phrase "when are they ready", and I want to key in on that because it's such an important question. In some ways, the person doing the disclosing, the betraying party, is never ready. When is someone ready to share the whole truth? They're never fully ready emotionally, mentally, spiritually. There's never a perfect or optimal time to do it, so typically we can't wait long enough for them. But for the betrayed party (and I'll defer to Janice on the research we did in a minute), the person who's waiting to know "What am I dealing with? What's the foundation? I feel like I'm free-falling without knowing the truth of who you are and the extent of the damage," we can't do it soon enough.
So, readiness. First of all, if the person who engaged in the behaviors, the addict in this case, isn't willing to tell the whole truth, that to me is foundational. If they're going to keep lying or deceiving, or share a partial truth, we never want to do a disclosure. Someone may say, "I'll share 80%, but these last few things I just can't share, because they're too painful for me." Usually they'll say they're too painful for the partner to hear. So it's critical that someone be willing to share the whole truth. Then come the nuances. Does the partner want it? Sometimes the person who did the behaviors is willing, and the partner says, "I don't want to know." We're never going to force a disclosure on someone who doesn't want to know. Then there's how much they do want to know.
Readiness comes in a lot of different ways, and that's part of the model. This is Janice's thinking, which helped me think it through: a lot depends on where a couple is in their healing journey. A disclosure in the first few months after the discovery of a betrayal is going to look different from one three years later, in the level of detail, or the insight the person has into their behaviors. Sobriety builds extra clarity. They're out of the fog; they may understand what was going on, and so they may have more empathy for and understanding of the impact, too. So there are different levels depending on where the couple is and what they need from disclosure. The readiness question is a really good one, and a difficult one, because on some level we're never going to have the perfect time.
Janice Caudill: And I'd say ideal readiness is different from readiness. Maybe even shift the word from readiness to need. One thing I like that Dan and I did is that we tested our own beliefs and assumptions about disclosure. We did some research; we took it to the source. This first piece actually comes from an APSATS survey, where we asked partners to rank the level of pain, one to ten, from the discovery, and, for those who had gone through a disclosure, the level of pain from the full disclosure. We also asked them to rank the pain of that long wait: sitting in "I don't know, I can't trust anything I think I know." For the discovery itself, the emotional pain was 9.6 on a ten-point scale. The pain of the disclosure itself was 7.7, which is still a major earthquake, with damage to most buildings. But the wait time was 9.2. Sometimes when partners get quiet, people presume that aching need isn't there, and it really is. So you have to balance the readiness, the ideal readiness, of the person disclosing against that ongoing 9.2 pain of the wait for the partner, and also where the needs and the purpose are.
Sometimes I've participated in guided disclosures very early on, where we knew, and the partner knew, that he wasn't going to be able to come fully clean. But there was some extremely basic information she needed before she could focus on herself. Sometimes it involves kids: does it involve our kids? Sometimes we follow those with polygraphs, or not. But a lot of partners can't even breathe without that information. And Dan, I'd say I've sometimes been part of one where the guides knew going in that he really wasn't ready to come clean, but we went ahead with it, because the partner almost needed that validation of where he was at, the behavioral truth. She needed to see that and accept it. That's also true: he's done some good work, maybe around sobriety, but there's no engagement with deep recovery. That was important for her as well. It's almost like a cross-check for her.
Jonathan: Before we get into the nuts and bolts, the actual content, contours, and elements of a disclosure: are there different types of disclosures, or is it one size fits all?
Dan Drake: Can I take this? Janice mentioned the workbooks we created. When we started, we didn't think it would be such intensive work together. We thought, "We have some resources; let's put them into a pretty simple workbook." And I don't know how many years later—
Janice Caudill: Twenty years later.
Dan Drake: Twenty years later, right. We ended up with these workbooks because we realized there isn't one process. There are a bunch of choice points along the way that each couple needs to navigate uniquely for their situation. So in our view there isn't one type of disclosure or one size that fits all, because every couple is different. There are some major types. There's a verbal disclosure versus a written disclosure; we tend to advocate a written disclosure, because it's usually more thorough. It may take more time, but it's usually more thorough. And even within that, there are different types: is it more bullet-pointed and categorized, like a timeline format, or more narrative? So there isn't one way. We try to give choices and say what we generally recommend, guiding people through the options rather than saying, "This is the way to do it." Everybody's going to be different. How the partner hears information, and how they process it, will also matter for how we write it.
Janice Caudill: And the word "choice" is really important. We're not talking about carte blanche. It's a carefully considered needs assessment: what do I really need in order to begin to take a step toward healing? What does our relationship need? We operate overtly from a model, and for trauma, "choice" is probably the most important word in healing. That's probably most obvious from the partner's perspective. But betrayal, and its discovery, is traumatic for the relationship, for the marriage. So what we thought was really important is that it's not just the choice of one person. There's a navigating of needs and wants for the healing of both, which ultimately starts a healing process for the relationship itself.
Jonathan: That's so good. Let's dive into some of the practicalities, because I'm sure there are couples listening right now going, "Okay, but what do you do?" You talked about verbal, you talked about written, I heard you briefly mention a polygraph. What does the overall process, and some of the key elements of actually, if I could put it this way, doing a disclosure, look like, and how do you as therapists guide people through it? And within that, I know I'm peppering you with questions: I know every couple is different, but in terms of a bell curve, what can couples expect regarding timelines for the elements of a disclosure?
Janice Caudill: It would probably help if you could give us an age group.
Jonathan: Let's talk general. The bell curve of the audience we serve is a couple from their early-to-mid 30s to their mid-50s: kids, a very family dynamic. Probably the mid-30s to mid-50s is the range of the couples we get who are dealing with a betrayal issue.
Janice Caudill: So I'm going to use the term "uncomplicated". Dan and I call the actual sharing of information the rite of truth. For the rite of truth itself, I would say around two hours for an uncomplicated disclosure. Add many more if there are lots of complications. Is that the same or different for you, Dan?
Dan Drake: I agree it's about two hours, but it could be more, depending on the needs and the questions the partner has throughout. Generally, in the rite, at least the way we advocate it, the disclosing person brings in a document they've created that shares their history. It gives the information the partner wants to know, without too much of the detail they don't want to know. Essentially, they read that document in that session. There are different ways to do it. We recommend it be supported by a specialist, a trained professional. I personally like to have two people there: one to support the partner, and one to support the person disclosing. A lot of times that's why it takes two hours, maybe more. We need to take breaks. It's a lot. Maybe we need to slow down and process the information. So we build in a way to support each person throughout. Breaks and individualized support are ideal, I think, but not everybody can afford that, and not everybody works that way, and that's completely fine too. Janice, you do most of yours solo, correct?
Janice Caudill: If I do them in an intensive, I do them solo. I do all the variations. But there's a real practical advantage to navigating it as the couple's therapist or guide, which means you manage all the parts. A lot of the couples I've done disclosures with had been stalled for months. They were ready, but finding two guides with time in common can really prolong the process. So I've done it every way, and the reality is that it's a helpful process when done well, no matter how you navigate it. You're a step ahead.
I'd also add, Dan, that I think of it as a choreography in three parts. In the first part, the disclosing party reads the document to the partner. With the exception of maybe some clarifying questions (I call those anchoring questions, like "What time are you talking about?"), she's mostly listening, maybe taking notes, maybe jotting down follow-up questions she'd like to ask. The second part is halftime. If I'm the partner's guide, we might be processing emotions, because there might be deep pain, deep grief, deep anger, or shock. So part of it is processing any emotions that need to come out and be dealt with sooner rather than later. But there's also: let's take some time to take in the truth you got. Did you get the answers to your questions? Or did ten more pop up in their place? So it's reassessing the needs.
The third part of the choreography is her being able to ask those questions out loud and get a verbal answer. Sometimes it's the thing partners feel they never got, despite their quest for truth: "That was great. I got to ask a question and have him answer respectfully, without minimizing or deflecting." Or: "He did a great job with the written disclosure, but when I started asking verbal questions, I saw shame kick in." If that's the case, I might be by her side asking, "Okay, but did you see anything suggesting he's put in motion any of the recovery work he's been doing? Did you see him recognizing he was in shame and trying to manage it so he could come back into connection with you? If he didn't, was he able to respond when Dan stepped in to cue him?" And I encourage partners: that's part of the disclosure too. If that happens, it's not a bad thing. We actually get the opportunity to see him putting his recovery in motion. So it's a three-part process, and every piece of it plays a really important role in the quality.
Dan Drake: Can I add to that? And Jonathan, we can spend more time there or not. That's the actual rite of truth, the big session; that's the disclosure. As you can tell, the person comes in with a prepared document, and that takes time. For me, the pre-disclosure prep time is really important, especially when I'm working with a disclosing person, because I may work through a dozen revisions of the document. It's really difficult to write all this out. These are the things we wanted to keep secret: "I didn't want to share this. I never wanted to hurt myself or my partner, and here's a list of all the things I'm most ashamed of." Of course it's difficult, and we usually try to find ways to minimize or distance ourselves from it a little.
So my job as the disclosing person's guide is to look for subtle minimizations: "it was only such-and-such", "I rarely did this". Or blame-shifting: "When you were doing X, Y, and Z, I did this." My job is to help edit those out, so they step in with full responsibility: here are the things I did, without justification, minimization, or blame-shifting. That's part of the prep process for the disclosing person, too: seeing all the rationalizations. It's difficult to take full accountability and stand there in strength with your partner as you share it. Some people take months to do it. I think six to eight weeks; anything less than six feels a little rushed to me. Sometimes people need more. But generally six to eight weeks is our guideline for preparing these. That's not a hard-and-fast time frame, but if someone really wants to do the work, I think they can do it adequately in that time.
Jonathan: Once that main chunk is done, once the truth comes out, what's the intended hope, the trajectory you're hoping for beyond that? Once it's all on the table, where do you go next in the overall disclosure process? Janice, you mentioned the third part of the choreography, the response, but I'm assuming there's more than what happens in that two-hour period. She's going to need to process her response. What does that look like?
Janice Caudill: Well, remember the 7.7 earthquake of the rite of truth. That takes some time to recover from. And one size doesn't fit all, even in the response. I've seen couples where it was well done, and with couples there's almost always something that solidifies in the foundation. Some couples leave feeling both pain and a lot of hope. For others, say a lot of information wasn't known, and some of the partner's worst fears were confirmed, it can be like going back into shock. If somebody's in shock, that's a different scenario. But usually it's: "Okay, now that I have the puzzle pieces of what was actually going on in his timeline, let me put it together. Let me see if I can get a holistic picture." Then almost always it turns to, "Now that I know what was really happening in his life, what was going on for me?" Their own story gets reconstructed, but this time based on truth. So there's often some solidification in their personal growth.
That's usually followed, when possible, by a partner impact statement, which can be a really powerful vehicle. Now I can shift from trying to figure out what was going on with him to me, and I can begin to really take care of myself. Often it facilitates a process of grief and, in many cases, the start of some personal empowerment. The hope for partners who share their impact statements ("This is what you did; this is how it hurt me, in the short term and the long term") is that it facilitates a phase of developing empathy in the disclosing party, and that it ultimately ends in shared grief. Shared grief is really important for the transition, because it's something they can do together.
Dan Drake: Can I add to that? A visual to think about: the hidden sexual behaviors, and their impact, with the lies and deceptions and all of that, are like a cancerous tumor in the relationship, for both parties and for the relationship. Our goal in the rite of truth is to remove the cancerous tumor. But it's major surgery. You won't find relief right away. The recovery and repair afterward take time. So immediately afterward my thinking is: rebuild safety, rebuild trust. Those are what I want to focus on. Boundaries may be part of that: what do we need to establish a new sense of safety as we rebuild the relationship? We've got a new foundation to start with, but the house isn't rebuilt. We've got to build that house, and build it solid.
Then, for the disclosing person, preparing for what Janice is talking about, the impact statement: the next phase after disclosure is, "I've told my story; now I want to start thinking about her story." So instead of "In 2015, in such-and-such month, this is what I did," it's: what was going on in your partner's life during that time? What are the significant events she's going to key into that might be part of her grief? Was there a significant event where you were acting out and weren't present? Now she's recognizing that, she's betrayed by it, and she's really in pain. So it's starting to build empathy for what was going on for her, as we prepare for the impact statement. That's when empathy development starts, too.
Janice Caudill: And I'd say the level of distress for the partner after the disclosure doesn't depend only on what she learned or how difficult the rite of truth was. It also depends on the preparation she does beforehand. Her preparation helps her be stronger in the aftermath. If you had a choice, you'd go through heart surgery in pretty good shape, rather than, "I've let myself go. I haven't exercised in years. I don't eat healthily." All in all, the person who's stronger going in will probably have an easier, more rapid recovery. You really see the gains of all that prep work after the disclosure.
Jonathan: I've got one other major question as we start to land the plane. What are the primary obstacles for couples, either to doing a disclosure or once they're in it? Where do they get stuck? What are the sticking points where couples can't go forward, or are struggling to take the next steps?
Janice Caudill: Shall we popcorn this, Dan?
Dan Drake: Sure.
Janice Caudill: I'll start with when there were lies, when they didn't really come clean in the disclosure. And I'll also throw in that sometimes, when disclosures are done really early, partners do get important information, but they're not ready to accept it. There's a difference between knowing the truth and being able to accept, "Oh, this is the reality." That's kind of like getting stuck in being able to grieve. Okay, your turn, Dan.
Dan Drake: Two things. On the disclosing person's side first, as I mentioned before: we've had cases where the partner wants a disclosure (and we haven't even touched polygraphs today, but say a polygraph is on the table too), and the disclosing person refuses. That's a hard stop. It's hard to move forward if the partner says, "I need to understand what happened and the extent of it," and the disclosing person says, "I'm not willing to do that." That's a huge place where couples get stalled, and to me it's hard to recover from.
The other thing is my real plea to anyone brave enough to do a disclosure. I love working with people doing this, because it's so brave, so important, and so foundational for healing a relationship. But I find most of the guys I work with think disclosure is the finish line, rather than the starting line. It's a huge starting line; it gets us to a good foundation. But a big barrier I see a lot is when someone isn't adequately prepared for the idea that disclosure is a starting point for healing the relationship, not the end goal, and thinks, "We're going to get back to the way things were afterwards." It doesn't work like that.
Jonathan: I was going to ask a follow-up on that. How important is it for couples, especially those moving toward greater health after disclosure, to realize that disclosure is actually laying a foundation for a rhythm of truthfulness in their relationship?
Dan Drake: That is so critical, because for the guys who think it's a finish line, it's like recovery versus recovered. I like the idea of recovery as a process, a process of sanctification. I'm never done. I'm never perfect. I'm always going to be growing and improving. So hopefully it does lay a foundation. But some guys I've worked with, I don't know about you, Janice, have this distorted thinking: "If I can just give her what she wants, she'll get off my back, she'll calm down, and then I can get back to the way things were before." That's the distortion. It doesn't work like that after betrayal. It just doesn't work after discovery. That's the thinking I see, and I have to try to help them understand that's not how this works.
Janice Caudill: Yeah. It's not getting back to where we were, because where you were wasn't actually a foundation. And partners sometimes expect that because there was empathy during the disclosure, during the exchange, he now has empathy and will be comfortable with all this emotional stuff. They don't recognize that it's really a starting place. Empathy has to actually grow, and there's a lot of work afterward for that.
Jonathan: Well, this has been a great conversation. I want to give each of you an opportunity to share a word of hope or encouragement for any couples listening who are in the thick of it, especially the betrayed partner who's thinking, "I just have a sense I don't know everything. I'm still in that limbo of unknowing." What word of encouragement would you give those couples to take the next step toward disclosure? And then, could you share again how folks can get access to the resources you've created?
Dan Drake: You want to start, Jan?
Janice Caudill: No, I want you to start, sir.
Dan Drake: Oh, you want me to start. My encouragement is for the person considering disclosing. I recognize that most people I've worked with have learned to hide, to keep these things secret to protect themselves. In their minds, "If I share all this, it's going to devastate me. It's going to kill our relationship. Disclosure is actually the most harmful thing to do." What I want to say is: we are only as sick as our secrets. That's a phrase, and I really believe it. It's not in secrecy that we preserve relationships. It's in authentic brokenness, for lack of a better word: being able to be a whole human being, which is not perfect. And yes, it is painful for your partner to hear these things. But you give your partner so much by giving them these choices, by giving them the information they desperately need to heal. You give them, and your relationship, this incredible gift of healing. Honestly, we couldn't do this work if it were hopeless and everything crumbled after disclosure. We wouldn't have created a model; it would be super depressing. We see this as a beautiful, sacred healing process couples can go through to rebuild, heal, and restore their relationships. And the relationship can be so much more beautiful through it, because it's real. It's authentic. There are no secrets anymore.
Janice Caudill: Part of what Dan and I learned in creating these resources is that our words aren't as important as the words of other couples who've gone through it. So I'll speak for them, through some of the research we did on the outcomes of disclosures. It is painful; these are difficult things. But I think something upwards of 93% of those who've gone through the process acknowledged that yes, it was really tough, and also said the benefits outweighed any of the pain or harms. Again, I think of the medical model: heart surgery really hurts. It's dangerous, it's slippery, it's scary. But the gift you get from it […] is really living.
Jonathan: Yeah. So give the website again, where people can get your information, and also the workbooks.
Janice Caudill: Sure. I'll start by saying the easiest way to get the workbooks is to go to Amazon. There's one comprehensive volume for the addicts, and there are three separate volumes for the partners, so it's not quite as overwhelming. Dan, do you want to do the titles?
Dan Drake: Yeah. The title is Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth After Sexual Betrayal, for the disclosing person. We call it the big blue book. Then there are the green books, the partner companions: volumes one, two, and three, Full Disclosure: Seeking Truth. On the kintsugirecoverypartners.com website, we're also trying to build a community, because disclosures can go really poorly with people who aren't well trained. So we've been training professionals: pastors and clergy, coaches, therapists. We want a model people can access, and also a resource consumers can use to see who's using this model. So there's a disclosure guide resource there, too, for people to find someone.
Jonathan: Again, Dan and Janice, thank you both for the work you're doing, and for being here today to share with couples a very hopeful message about disclosure. Like you both said, it's not an easy or necessarily comfortable process, but you wouldn't be doing it if there weren't a hopeful return on that investment. So thank you for being with us today.
Janice Caudill: Thanks, Jonathan.
Dan Drake: Thanks for what you do.
Jonathan: Listeners and viewers, we're going to put a lot in the show notes about what you heard today from Dan and Janice. Couples who feel stuck, or who just need to take that next step toward really getting to the truth and experiencing the hope that can come from it: please reach out to us. We want to help you take your next best step. Also check out all the resources in the show notes. We look forward to seeing you back here next time on the Pure Sex Radio program. Take care.
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How To Tell Her About The Porn: Full Disclosure with Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill
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.
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Transcript: How To Tell Her About The Porn: Full Disclosure with Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill
Drew: 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 Caudill. I've 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. 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. They're the founders of Kintsugi Recovery Partners. They've co-authored five books in the Full Disclosure series, and they've developed the first full disclosure training and certification course, which you can find in the show notes. They bring so much wisdom, grace, and kindness to the way they talk about this. You're going to learn what disclosure is and what it isn't, when this process should happen and where it fits into a couple's healing, a little about the research that's been done on disclosure, and the alternatives: what often happens when disclosure isn't 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.
Welcome to Husband Material. Today we get to be with Dan Drake and Janice Caudill, experts in full therapeutic disclosure. Welcome to the show.
Dan Drake: Thanks, Drew. Good to join you.
Drew: It's been a long time coming that we needed to talk about disclosure. Why are you so passionate about it?
Janice Caudill: For me, the disclosure process is a little metaphor for the entire recovery process. In it you get to work on all the skills, really and truly all the skills, you'll need for the long journey of life.
Drew: You all have this great pyramid with truth on the bottom. And what else is in there? Intimacy. I can't think of anything that's more important.
Dan Drake: Yeah. And the more we've done this, I consider disclosure a sacred experience. It's an unveiling of truth in a way that's contained, 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, shame, and secrecy into the light, and restoring. It's building a new foundation for a relationship. So I take these very seriously. We want them to be very supported. It's not something we do flippantly. We've seen these go really badly if they're not done well, without proper execution, training, or support. So we really wanted to help people do this in the safest, healthiest, most sacred way possible.
Drew: I hear some of the horror stories of people who've had a very negative experience, where a disclosure did more harm. So let's get the record straight: what is a full disclosure, and what isn't?
Dan Drake: A couple of things. On what isn't disclosure, I'll say two, and maybe, Jan, you can add one. One: disclosure is not a series of truth extractions. It's not an interrogation. It's not something that'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. Janice is amazing at doing research, and we found through the community that the most traumatic form of disclosure is when it's dribbled out, staggered over time. Unfortunately, that's usually the way this goes.
Janice Caudill: Dan knows I have a pet peeve about using the word "disclosure" for that trickle process, because it's just a bunch of confessions.
Dan Drake: Yeah, in-the-moment confessions. I'll tell you what's at the top of my head. Disclosure itself has come to have a more specific meaning. So what it isn't is a staggered series of confessions. But it's also not just an unburdening of the disclosing person. I'm all for accountability groups. I'm all for men being vulnerable and transparent with each other. What we've seen sometimes is that men start to realize, "Oh, I can unburden this shame when I'm talking to other men. I see the value of that instead of holding these secrets." So they come home and share all the stuff with their wives, and just dump it on her. To me that's more of a confession. It's oversharing. It's not supported. It unburdens the person doing the disclosing, but then the partner is left reeling and traumatized, because she wasn't prepared and had no support. So at either extreme: it's not a complete unburdening of the person. It's done with support for both.
Drew: 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.
Dan Drake: Yes.
Drew: Confession is important, and we need to do that. And there also needs to be a professionally supported process that lets partners and wives go through this without being harmed even further.
Dan Drake: Right.
Drew: I think that's huge, because a lot of guys resist disclosure. They think, "I don't want to hurt her more. I don't want to do more damage." But as you said about the staggered disclosure: sharing a little more of the porn, a little more of what I'm struggling with, is like cutting off a puppy's tail one inch at a time.
Janice Caudill: Yeah. And the partner is in this place where, quite frequently, she hears the phrase "this time it's everything." And it isn't. Then when the next dribble comes, it's like the scab that was starting to form gets ripped right off, and it gets deeper and deeper, and damages trust more and more, and the partner can't start to heal. Things also get worse another way. The majority of the disclosures I work with involve men with really good hearts for their partner: "I really don't want to hurt my partner." Then they learn a little about the disclosure process, or they're at a workshop and get this energy to do it, and they come home, and she's in the kitchen cooking, and she's not just blindsided, she's carpet-bombed. The shock is so tremendous, and none of the support is there to even begin the healing process. So sometimes, for the best of reasons, when you do it off that energy, without guidance, the thing done to begin healing actually potentially exacerbates the wound.
Dan Drake: Can I use a metaphor, if it's okay? I find a medical one helpful. You used the scab. To me, let's say I had a cancerous tumor. I think the sexual secrets we can keep are tumorous. They're malignant. They're damaging to us, and they're damaging to relationships. Say we go through surgery and get the tumor removed: "We got it all." Well, guess what. If we find out later, "Actually, there's still some more; we didn't get it all," you're going to be reeling. It's not just scary; it throws you back into "Oh no, am I going to be safe? Am I okay?" And then, "No, we got it all this time." What if this happens five times, ten times, fifteen times? Could you imagine what that would do to your system, if you thought you got all the cancer but you didn't, and how you'd feel?
Drew: And you're saying that's what it feels like to receive this kind of dribbled-out disclosure.
Dan Drake: Yeah, because we're talking about truth being a foundation. When partners don't know all the information, they feel like they're free-falling: "What's true and what's not? Who are you? Who am I? What's the extent of this? What did you do, and what didn't you do?" Then: "Okay, we've got a new foundation. We think we've got all the truth out there." Oh wait, it's not the truth. Then the foundation we started building crumbles, and we have to rebuild it. The safety starts eroding, and all the stuff at the top of the pyramid, safety, trust, vulnerability, starts crumbling again. It gets harder and harder to rebuild each time.
Drew: I feel like we have a really vivid picture of what not to do. On the other side: what is a full disclosure?
Janice Caudill: It's a process for the disclosing party to carefully put together his own history of acting out. The discloser has to come into self-truth, so there's a lot of work that can happen there, a lot of recovery work. Sometimes I work with people who've been in recovery a long time: "I know it all, she knows it all." Then, with that really careful process of putting it together, maybe a good 90% of the time it's, "Oh wait a minute, how could I have forgotten that?"
For the partner, we now have ample research showing that, for at least the majority, there is betrayal trauma. The discovery of what was going on really does rise to the level of a trauma: "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." So for the partner, it's really about how we blend in the elements of trauma healing. Most importantly, how do we do this in a way that gives the partner some choice, carefully thinking, "What do I really need to know? And what comes up impulsively when I'm triggered, that really and truly isn't wise for me to know?" So there are choice points. And most importantly, support: a lot of support, not just from the person or people guiding the disclosure, but hopefully from a community.
With that, there's the opportunity to insert time into trauma. When you're learning something in the dribble method, or in the avalanche method, there's no time to pause, no time to breathe before the next piece comes. There's no chance to say, "Drew, can you pause for just a second? I need about 30 seconds before you give me the next piece," or "Dan, I need a time-out. I just need to walk around for a few minutes." You wouldn't believe the number of women I've talked to who felt they had to go through it all, when maybe what they wanted was to go cry, or scream, or vomit. So there's the opportunity to insert time in a way that repairs. There's healing even as the pain is coming.
Drew: Wow. That makes so much sense, from what I've learned about trauma. What differentiates a tragedy from a trauma is that in the trauma you're alone and powerless. So it sounds like disclosure is a way of making sure you have support, that you're not alone, and that you're not powerless: you have a voice and a choice, and you get to go at your own pace, rather than just being overwhelmed.
Janice Caudill: And it's not a passive preparation process for the partner. Remember the old movie A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson on the stand: "You can't handle the truth!" Well, sometimes that's true, if you do the do-your-own-surgery version, or a poorly led one. For partners, part of the preparation, figuring out what I really need to know, is also, "And how do I handle it?" If I don't have really strong, well-developed coping resources, okay, I should probably work on that. If I'm preparing carefully and conscientiously, it's sometimes painful to look at: What do you need to know? What do you think you know? What are your greatest fears? You start the coping process there: "Oh, time-out, I'm overwhelmed." Or you realize it's probably pretty smart to book in something regulating, then deal with a little of the really hard, painful stuff, then pause and do something regulating again. When you prepare that way, it's like building a muscle inside you, 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. One metaphor Dan and I use in our materials is people from hurricane-prone areas. They don't wait until five seconds before the hurricane hits to start preparing. You prepare because you want to come through better.
Dan Drake: And I'd say the same thing on the disclosing person's side, the husband's side: there's prep ahead of time. We advocate a written disclosure process, but there are different ways this can go. We don't think there's one way to do this. And what you said, I think, was critical: support is very critical to its success. But there are different ways this can go, and we wrote workbooks that don't say, "This is the way." They say, "Here are all the choice points along the way, and how to navigate them in a way that makes sense for each couple." That's how we really tried to frame it.
It's being able to prepare for doing a written disclosure, but also, for the person disclosing: how do I stay present and not go into shame, and not mistake shame for empathy? Sometimes I hear people say, "I'm such a terrible person. You should just leave me. I don't know why you're still with me." They think that's some sort of connecting response, when really it's still about me, still about my shame, and I'm still protecting myself. So how do I learn to do the very thing that, in active addiction, the addiction tells us not to do? The addiction says: keep this secret, don't tell anybody, because if you tell, they'll reject you, they'll abandon you; there's no way your wife could handle this. We're advocating the exact opposite: sharing this truth is actually going to heal, not keeping the secret. That takes time to really settle, to buy into: it's the sharing of truth that builds a new foundation, not keeping the secret. It takes a lot of courage. That's why I love walking with men through this, because it's a courageous act. Some people won't ever do it, because they're too scared, or for a lot of other reasons. But to anyone committing to this: it's so beautiful to really support someone through something so difficult. It's humbling. It's an honor to walk with guys through this.
Drew: I'm imagining some guys listening feel a little inspiration, or are opening up to the idea: "Maybe I could do a full disclosure and have that foundation of truth in my relationship, with support for both of us, and prepare for it instead of just doing it suddenly." When is the right time for couples to do a full disclosure?
Dan Drake: The hard thing is that there's usually not a right time. In the study we did of betrayed partners, on a scale of 0 to 10 for the level of impact, zero being no impact and ten the worst possible: discovery for partners was, and I don't know the numbers, maybe you tell me—
Janice Caudill: 9.6 on a ten-point scale. That's huge. For the full disclosure itself, 7.7 on average. To put that in earthquake terms, that's still a major earthquake. But the wait time, the time between discovery and full disclosure, was 9.2 for the partner. Even if it's a quiet pain, it's an ongoing agony. So the answer for most partners was, "I couldn't do it soon enough. Yesterday was the right time." And yet that's like giving yourself five minutes to prepare for the hurricane.
Dan Drake: And for the disclosing person, too. That number surprised me. It doesn't surprise me now, but it was really helpful to see. So for partners, you can't do disclosure soon enough. Yet for most men we work with, we can't wait long enough, because there's a lot of work we need to do around self-awareness. We tend to compartmentalize truth: "I don't want to see this, so I'm going to bury it and close it behind different closet doors." Sometimes it takes time to really start getting some self-awareness, to get out of the fog of an addiction, and to get some emotional maturity, build empathy skills and attunement, and understand what my partner is going through. That takes time.
Janice Caudill: But the truth of the matter is that disclosures occur on a continuum. Sometimes, for very good reason, a partner feels, "I need to know some basic things. Dan, if you're the discloser, I need to know what you know of yourself right now, because I've got kids. How am I supposed to recover if I have no idea what I'm recovering from?" So Dan and I don't take a stand that there's a perfect time. But you have to go into it with realistic expectations. If you do it really early in the recovery process, there's a certain quality you can get, and a certain quality you probably won't. If I'm the partner, I might have to be aware it might feel like surgery with not quite enough anesthesia. The impact might be harder, the understanding might be harder, and we might be doing another disclosure down the road, when he really understands more, has unpacked more, and memories have fully come out of their compartments. So for me it's about being aware of the reality: here's what you get if you do this right now; is that what you need? The thing we hear a lot in the community is "at least three months sober", and that would be wonderful. But I've also worked with men who got to two days before the three months and suddenly relapsed, again and again and again. We've participated in disclosures that happened without sobriety, and surprisingly, most of those men became sober after the disclosure. But the partners were aware of that, and they had some choice points.
Drew: 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.
Dan Drake: I do think the field has shifted to doing disclosures sooner than we used to. In the past it was more focused on the man: "He's not ready, he's not ready." That didn't mean he couldn't share truth. It meant he wasn't emotionally mature enough, or didn't have empathy skills yet. That might be true. But I advocate for them earlier, though not for everybody. And to Janice's point, I see these go more successfully when both people have realistic expectations of what's going to happen. We give informed choice. I'm not going to say, "This is the way," and 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.
Drew: I think in some ways it depends. I'm probably going to butcher this metaphor, because you're the person who lives in the more earthquake-prone part of this country. But I learned about the Mercalli scale. The Richter scale measures the intensity of an earthquake; the Mercalli scale measures its actual impact. So a 9.2 earthquake in, say, San Francisco, where the structures are really prepared, will have a very different impact than in a village somewhere that isn't prepared for it.
Janice Caudill: So if you do those really early disclosures, you really need more preparation. 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. The dilemma is that it takes people a really long time to accept that recovery takes a long time, that you're not going to knock this thing out in three months. If you're not in that place, it's really hard to understand that you really do have to muscle up emotionally: do the self-regulation things, do the things that help you. That's a bit of a dilemma with early ones. There's a certain level of naivety still there in both parties.
Dan Drake: That brings up a really important point for the person doing the disclosing, too. Janice, you mentioned this: some men I work with say, "Okay, I've finally bought into disclosure. I think I can do this." And they think disclosure is the finish line. Don't get me wrong, as I said before, I'm so honored to walk with anybody through it. It's a courageous step, and it's huge. But it's the foundation. We're building a new foundation; the house isn't rebuilt. Let's say I go through major surgery. There's going to be a post-op period where I might actually feel worse. My body may be more tender, open, and exposed, and things may get worse before they get better. So the realistic expectation isn't, "We cross the finish line, then we're all good and go back to the way things were." We've built a new foundation. It's delicate, but it's an important foundation we can build from. I have to say that to build realistic expectations, because in the past I hadn't prepared some men as well as I could have for what happens after, and they got really discouraged: "It's worse now. This is a failure." That's not the case. We expect that. You've built a new foundation, and nobody can ever take that away. You can build from there.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, you're using that surgery metaphor again. Very few people jump up and start working out five minutes after major surgery. There's a time in the ICU maybe, then the recovery room, then a long stretch of healing, and healing involves pain. Somehow we accept that a little more easily when it's medical or physical than we do with the enormity of the emotional impact. Something a little harder for partners to accept early on is that there are two truths in any disclosure. There are the facts: did he lie, did he fully share the history of acting out? That's what people get really focused on, particularly early on. But there's also the truth of behavior. If somebody does a disclosure really early on, you're probably going to see more shame, or defensiveness, or tap-dancing so to speak, or checking out. That doesn't mean it's a bad disclosure. The partner is watching to see the impact, the history of the addiction, but also getting the opportunity to see how he handles it. Does he catch that he's in shame, and then do his own coping, whether it's breathing or praying, to come back into himself? If he can't, and Dan leans in to help him, does he fight Dan, or does he actually let Dan help him? The partner prepares to watch for that, and you get to see recovery in motion. That's really powerful. Sometimes the behavioral truth is actually the most powerful and important part for partners.
Drew: We talked about setting expectations. Some guys really want to know: what research is out there about disclosure? What are the stats?
Janice Caudill: I like research, especially when it validates my beliefs. To my knowledge there are three studies, and collectively, across those three, over 93% of the partners and addicts said it was the right thing to do, even though it was really, really painful. The fact that there's so much consistency across the research makes that a pretty strong stat. In our research, because we held partners and disclosers, we asked: when people didn't hit that 93% mark, or when the pain was well over 7.7, what factors contributed? Often the factor from the addicts was that they lied. You can't restore truth with lies, and it made things worse. For the partners, it was that they weren't prepared. Looking at the data, and this was your interpretation, Dan, they were working with somebody guiding them who didn't help them prepare, so they were underprepared. So here's the principle, and it really sucks for partners: you actually have to over-prepare for things that might not be true, that you might never hear in the disclosure. But over-prepared is better than under-prepared. I heard a lot of stories from partners where the addict's guide, or the guide for both of them, wasn't partner-sensitive or trauma-sensitive. They really controlled the process: "We only have two hours, and that's it, so we'd better get it done," or a 50-minute therapy session, or "You can't ask that." We even heard from disclosers who felt that an untrained, unprepared, insensitive guide actually damaged their spouse, while he sat there watching in good faith, listening to the guide. That's my lead-in to saying: all our research said vet your guides carefully.
Dan Drake: Usually that question comes from men, not partners. Partners generally don't ask about stats and effectiveness. At least for me; I don't know about you, Janice.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, that would be true.
Dan Drake: What I'd do is flip the question. Let's say we don't do disclosure. That's an option; we're not going to force anyone to do it. What is that person's plan for healing and restoring the relationship, if we don't do disclosure and the partner wants it? If the partner doesn't want disclosure, we don't do disclosure. I'm not forcing someone to know information. But if the partner says, "I do want a disclosure," and the person who did the behaviors refuses, it's going to be really hard to heal and repair. Usually what happens in those cases is that either the relationship starts to disintegrate, because there's no foundation to build from, or the partner has to accept a non-reality. I wouldn't say accept; they resign themselves to it. Usually that takes a toll on them, on their bodies. They start getting sick. They have to move forward with no security, no safety, and just trust blindly, and that doesn't usually go well for the partner or the relationship. I've had people try that, and they never actually get to the intimacy they think they're going to build, or go back to, because what are we building, and how? It's building on sand again; there's no security. That would be my answer. I'm not going to force anyone. But I get that the question usually comes from an understandable need for 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 that you'd have that question. But usually it's a self-protective question. Who am I protecting: me, or my relationship? I want to fight for relationships.
Janice Caudill: And in my experience with partners, that need doesn't go away, even for those who, because of faith beliefs or children, say, "I'm in this relationship." The ache, and the need to know what's real, don't go away. And the irony is that our research also validated who actually gains more from the full disclosure process: it's the addict. Sometimes it feels like full disclosure is supposed to be just for her, and it really isn't, because truth is healing in relationships, and you can't heal yourself without your own willingness to step into it.
Drew: Looking at some of the documents and exercises you've put together, they're empowering, soul-searching, and equipping. Going back through your story is revealing, and I can see how this is recovery for both people. For those interested in learning more, what resources should they start exploring?
Dan Drake: As a labor of love, over years, we put together some disclosure workbooks. Just so you understand, there's a blue one and three green ones. Well, there's a big blue one and a small blue one. The blue one is for the person doing the disclosing, in the Full Disclosure series. The big one has the whole process, from what disclosure is (the kinds of things we talked about today) to the preparation process to a little of the post-disclosure healing. There's a skinny one if you just want to write your disclosure and need support with that: a 10-step guide we created, which takes a portion of the big blue one. Then the green ones, which we call volumes one through three, are for the partner. Volume one is what disclosure is: is it right for me, those kinds of things. Volume two is the prep. It's the meat of it, a really beautiful work. I think it's a huge contribution, Janice, that she spearheaded, for helping partners. There's so much trauma support in it, as well as how to prepare for the disclosure as the partner. Volume three is post-disclosure healing for the partner.
Janice Caudill: If I can clear up for the audience why there's a green book and a blue book, and why the big blue book is one big blue book while the partner material is in three volumes: quite frankly, we just didn't think we could get men to buy three books if we split it up. And partners are so overwhelmed to begin with that they needed it chunked.
Dan Drake: So that's the awkwardness in talking about blue and green; it gets confusing, so I was trying to break it down. Our website, Kintsugi Recovery Partners, has more resources. Janice mentioned how important it is to vet your disclosure guide. We created the first disclosure guide training for professionals, and it's not just for therapists. We have coaches, and we have clergy doing this too. We believe in this process, but we know people are doing them out there, and some are going really poorly. So we want to educate and train professionals, so we can do this in the most effective way possible and help other people heal and restore their relationships.
One thing we're really excited about, which we're working on, is this: we understand not everybody can afford an expensive therapy program, or two therapists facilitating it, which is often what we do. So we're putting together a group workshop that will lower the cost, so people can do the prep process for disclosure, which is usually the most time- and labor-intensive and costly part, together as a cohort, and work through disclosure prep together.
Drew: Wow.
Janice Caudill: I'll just add, about the training for professionals and paraprofessionals: it's not just going through the exercises, because you can get those in the workbooks. We wrote the workbooks for the people who'll be using them. But there's actually a model, a trauma-informed model, behind why we created the exercises we did and the order they go in. We call it the Restoring Truth model, and it was important to us that other professionals really understand its heart. We also wanted a way for those who need a guide to have some idea of a guide's training: this is a partner-sensitive, trauma-informed, relationship-nurturing process. So there's a way to find somebody with that training. Those who are certified, and even those in training, are on our website, kintsugirecoverypartners.com. We're hoping to become something like an eHarmony for people needing a disclosure, to find somebody with the same heart and training to help them restore truth.
Drew: There's an abundance of resources that Dan and Janice have created and are creating, which is so needed and so exciting. And I love the name Kintsugi, if you've ever seen that Japanese art form where broken pottery is put back together with gold, and it's even more beautiful than before. As we say goodbye, can you tell everyone what kintsugi means?
Janice Caudill: At its core, it's the art of transforming brokenness into beauty. Not restoring something broken to its original form, but reconnecting the broken parts with melted gold. We felt that metaphor was so important for the work people do in recovery and in the disclosure process. The goal may be different for different people. But it's blood, sweat, tears, pain, shame, triggers, trigger-busting a million times. We fought so hard to restore truth that, when you do, it becomes so precious to you. Then that's the inspiration when things go poorly or triggers come up: "We worked too hard for this. It's too precious. We can't walk away from this."
Drew: That is so redemptive, as you help couples restore truth and safety and create space for healing. What's your favorite thing about this process?
Dan Drake: It's seeing people transform. There's something so powerful about it. There's a lot of pain in it, but it's pain for a purpose, and watching lives transform is so rewarding for me. It connects me to the belief that there are things more powerful than ourselves. It's so inspiring: even if it's a difficult experience, so many beautiful things can come out of it. People do the most surprising, amazing things. Sometimes partners actually thank them: "Finally, finally I got it." They're actually grateful sometimes. Not always; they can be very angry too, of course. But for me, the thing I love most is walking through this process with a man and helping him move from darkness, secrecy, and shame into the light, taking huge, courageous steps to do something he's never done before, when his whole system said, "Don't do this, because you'll die, or it'll kill your relationship." To actually challenge himself, show up, and be a better human being, a better man, through this, so he can walk away saying, "I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear anymore. I can actually be the authentic man of God I wanted to be from the beginning." He knew he wanted to be this person, and it was so out of reach, and he can actually become that. That's so transformative and beautiful to see: someone becoming who they were supposed to be from the beginning. That's incredible.
Janice Caudill: The part of this process I love most for partners is actually the back end: seeing them do the work and muscle up, and now, "I'm actually a better coper with all kinds of things." But the impact statement process for the partner afterward is where the kintsugi process happens for them. If it's taken seriously, and sacredly, it's the pathway to post-traumatic growth.
Drew: 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. It's bigger than us.
Dan Drake: It's not two litigators on two different sides. It's creating an experience where it's safe and secure, and we're there to support a couple, and there's something greater than us in that room.
Janice Caudill: It's true.
Drew: It's true. He's in every layer of the pyramid. Dan and Janice, thank you so much. If you want some of these resources, or to find professional help, go to kintsugirecoverypartners.com. I'm going to put all these links and all this information in the show notes. Gentlemen, always remember: you are God's beloved son, and he is well […]
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Disclosing Truth after Betrayal with Dan Drake, Janice Caudill & Dr. Jake Porter
Dr. Janice Caudill and Dan Drake help us to understand the nuts and bolts of creating a safe and healing professionally-guide disclosure process after sexual betrayal.
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Transcript: Disclosing Truth after Betrayal with Dan Drake, Janice Caudill & Dr. Jake Porter
Announcer: Welcome to Betrayal Recovery Radio, the official podcast of APSATS, the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists, hosted by Dr. Jake. APSATS is a nonprofit organization providing professional training and compassionate support to partners affected by problematic sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. In each episode, Dr. Jake guides a conversation of enlightening insights and practical tools to empower those affected by sex addiction and betrayal trauma to use their voices and live their values. The mission of Betrayal Recovery Radio is to offer hope to those in need of healing, and growth to those moving through grief. And now, here's your host, Dr. Jake Porter.
Jake Porter: Welcome to another episode of Betrayal Recovery Radio. I'm your host, Dr. Jake Porter, and I'm so excited to tell you about the show we've got for you today. APSATS is an incredible nonprofit organization that provides training, support, and advocacy for betrayed partners of sex addicts. Today we have two founding board members joining us: Dan Drake and Janice Caudill. They've both worked in the field of psychotherapy for many years. They were on the founding board of APSATS, and they've been grateful to see the organization blossom from a grassroots effort to support betrayed partners into an organization that provides support and resources to betrayed partners, coaches, and therapists across the world.
Dan is out in California, where he works with Banyan Therapy Group, his practice. He's an LMFT and an LPCC, so both a marriage and family therapist and a professional counselor. He's a CSAT and APSATS-certified. Janice Caudill is here in Texas. She's a clinical psychologist, a CSAT, and also APSATS-certified. Both of them have done lots of trainings and written books. Today, though, they're going to talk about work they've done together writing about disclosure: disclosure preparation, how it works, and providing resources for that process.
We talk about disclosure a lot, but the fact is it's massively important for almost every couple moving through a process of recovery and healing from sex addiction and betrayal trauma. There are lots of ways to do disclosures, and that's one of the things we'll talk about today: all the options out there. So, listener, if you find yourself in a situation where helping professionals are saying, "It's got to be this way," and that's not sitting right with you, be empowered. Listen to this podcast, hear about the different choices you have, and reach out and get support if you need it, from Dan, from Janice, from me, or from others trained by APSATS, so we can help you move through a process of recovery and healing that's the right fit for you. Dan and Janice are both really fun, delightful people. They're both smart as a whip, and I even get to do a little lightning round with them at the end and put on the pressure. So sit back and enjoy my conversation with Dan Drake and Janice Caudill.
Well, hello, Dan and Janice. Great to have you.
Dan Drake: Great to be here, Jake.
Janice Caudill: Yes. I love your work, love being with you, and I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Jake Porter: On disclosures. That's something y'all have thought about a little bit. Just a bit, right?
Janice Caudill: Maybe more than we care to.
Jake Porter: Right. So why don't we start there? Tell our listeners how much thought you've put into disclosure, both individually and together: some of the work you do, and the work you've done together. Dan, why don't you go first?
Dan Drake: Janice and I have known each other a number of years, from being on the APSATS board from the beginning. I don't even know how many years ago this was, Janice—
Janice Caudill: It was a different era.
Dan Drake: It was a different era. We were working on another project, and, long story short, we decided to put together the materials we had on disclosure, just to see if we could make a little practical workbook for clients. Then we realized we had more than we thought. That little project turned into a giant undertaking, and a couple of years later we finally put out a couple of workbooks for preparing the person doing the disclosing, and the partner, for disclosures.
Janice Caudill: They were going to be really tiny, because we figured all we'd have to do is write down what we actually do with clients to prep them. It turns out you can speak much more efficiently than you can write. As we did it, we both realized how much we actually do, trying to do this with real integrity, clinical soundness, and concern for each individual and for the heart of the relationship as well. It turned out to be a lot. And I learned a lot from Dan. Dan would be writing something for the addicts, and I'd read it and think, "Oh my gosh, I've got to prepare partners for that. They have no idea what that is. They won't know how to interpret it. It's going to look like an excuse." And the same thing the other way: I'd write something for partners, and Dan would say, "I've got to have a counterpart for that in the workbook." So it really grew. It also grew because we take the stand of doing it from the perspective of partner betrayal trauma, which means we really had to attend to the people who need more preparation, as well as to people who are at a different starting point when they jump into the process.
Jake Porter: Yeah. And it is not a little notebook. It's a tour de force, and it's definitely something for y'all to be proud of. I know it's making a difference in a lot of couples' lives as helping professionals use it. But let's back up. Say this is someone's first time listening to Recovery Radio, and they're thinking, "What are you talking about? What's this disclosure thing?" What is a full disclosure, a full therapeutic disclosure? Either one of you, take it away.
Dan Drake: You want to take it, Janice?
Janice Caudill: Thanks, Dan, I'll take it. Maybe we do what we normally do and go back and forth. That's sort of how I think we fleshed it out into what I think is a thorough process. And by the way, they are big books, but you don't necessarily have to do all of it. If you're at the beginning, you probably should. But I'll speak from the partner side: we wanted to develop a process that gets her what she needs to assess her situation, figure out what her needs are, and make choices from an informed stance. That's truth. But we wanted a process that isn't the typical one we hear about, the really escalated cycles between couples, being trapped in the bathroom, those kinds of things, where the partner feels the only way to get truth is to ask the absolutely perfect, loophole-free question. And where the answer isn't coming from the first instinct: "How much do I think she knows? Where am I, and what am I willing to disclose?", at a place where maybe I'm in really early recovery. We wanted a process that really helped the addict prepare for that as well. And with that preparation, we wanted it to be joint, a his-and-hers companion, so everybody's using the same language, the same concepts, the same boundary exercises. So it really feels like it's syncing up, for a process that allows the full truth to come out. Maybe, Dan, you want to pick it up from "full truth"?
Dan Drake: Yeah. At its most basic, if we're just defining it, it's a process of unveiling the whole truth: the whole truth of what the partner wants to know, no more, no less. At one end of the spectrum you have the pretty typical story, the staggered disclosure situation, which we don't call disclosures. Those are staggered confessions, where I share a minimal amount of information, or just enough, while holding some things back. At the other end of the spectrum, maybe I feel convicted after a retreat or something, and I unburden myself of everything, confessing everything to my partner. We don't want either end of those spectrums. We want to give all the information to the partner without putting so much out there that it's now about the addict unburdening themselves of shame.
Jake Porter: So why do this? I'm thinking especially of a listener who'd be the one doing the disclosing, and he or she is thinking, "I don't want to hurt my partner even more. That's just going to do more damage." So why are we actually calling for full disclosure?
Dan Drake: I love that question. Can I take that, Janice? And thank you, Jake, because that makes sense. In addict logic it makes sense, because the fact is that disclosures are painful. Disclosures can be traumatic. We have data that shows this. It's true: it will be painful to hear the information, and we can't deny that. But in our experience, the damage done by not sharing is so much greater. Once part of the truth comes out, once the partner discovers something or some part of this comes out, they want to know what the rest of it is. I often use the analogy of a possible cancer diagnosis. We know there may be cancer there, some tumor, but we don't know if it's benign or malignant, or how bad it is. Once we know that, most of us would actually want to know what we're dealing with. That's what disclosure is: what are we dealing with? What's the extent of the betrayal? Because with betrayal come deception, lies, minimizations, and potentially gaslighting. So we're trying to get to the extent of all this in a way that's actually helpful for the couple.
Jake Porter: Yeah. What would you add?
Janice Caudill: I'd like to add that from the partner's perspective, the root is deception and secrets, so the restoration of truth is really important. And it's not just the betrayals themselves. Part of the betrayal is this: if I'm the partner, and you're the betrayer, Jake, you chose what information to tell me. It's about who controls the flow of information, which should be more equally shared. Some partners don't want tons and tons of detail, and we honor and respect that. But it's also about disabling one person's control of the flow, because that dramatically affects the entire coupleship. It contaminates the foundation.
Jake Porter: Right. It's like, "If I had known that information, I could have chosen differently." You managing the information disempowers me from choosing how I show up in this relationship.
Janice Caudill: Yeah.
Jake Porter: So, practically, what are some of the benefits of going through this, and at the same time, what are some of the risks? Because there are risks as well. Let's talk risk. Do you want to take this one first, Janice?
Janice Caudill: Yeah. Part of the risk, and it's a realistic risk, is that things can blow up. Some people aren't good at assessing their readiness to handle really painful information. And even when the ultimate outcome is good, both individuals empowered in the relationship and ultimately able to heal, there's almost always a period where the relationship feels really rocky. It's the out-of-surgery-but-in-the-recovery-room piece. And sometimes a partner finds out information and realizes, "I can't live with this," or now there's a real dilemma. So there's real soul-searching personal work, and not everybody likes soul-searching personal work, like perhaps the three of us do. Dan, anything you'd add?
Dan Drake: Yeah. To your point, Janice, things usually do get worse before they get better. These disclosures can be really beautiful, sacred, healing, connecting experiences for couples; I've seen it. But they can be really painful, difficult, and disconnecting too. So that's a risk, of course. The big benefit, obviously, is that now we have a relationship that isn't built on a foundation of deception and dishonesty. It's a relationship based on a foundation of honesty, and what that can be rebuilt into is incredibly valuable and beautiful, unlike anything the couple will have experienced before.
Janice Caudill: Ironically, sometimes the full truth, as painful as it may be for both of them (and there may be a lot of shame in the process for the person disclosing), actually allows for the creation of a measure of safety for the first time.
Jake Porter: That's right. Yeah. Thank you. There are a lot of ways to do these disclosures, and all three of us do them. Most of what we do is the same, but there are even some differences in how the three of us do them. So let's talk options. What are some different ways you've seen disclosures done?
Dan Drake: That's the great thing. In fact, one reason the workbooks ended up so big is that Janice and I don't necessarily do disclosures the same way. There are a lot of similarities, but what we wanted was not to say, "This is the way to do a disclosure." There are different choices along the way: here are the decision points; how do you want this disclosure to work for you and your specific relationship? That's why we ended up with more than we thought. Janice and I actually had to come to terms with that. For example, she does a lot more solo, in an intensive format, than I do. I personally like to have two support people there with the couple from beginning to end the whole time. I know that can be costly and difficult to manage, but that's something we do. We typically advocate a written, formal disclosure, but not everybody does it that way. There's an option for a verbal disclosure. And I think the way you do it, Jake, is a little different, but you can add in pieces of connection, attachment, and reconnection in beautiful ways too. So this doesn't have to go one way. That's my first start. Janice, anything you want to add?
Janice Caudill: For me, we actually started writing these workbooks before some of the really important shifts in the profession as a whole in the last few years. And for me it was really important, particularly since you and I, Jake, have some similar trauma training, and between us we cover a lot of turf, that the commonality in any trauma training, the piece that was always missing, is what you restore. Which is often choice.
Jake Porter: That's right.
Janice Caudill: Often it's the ability to pause, take some time, gather yourself, and be prepared to say, "Okay, now I'm ready for you to continue reading." So the choice point was really crucial. In fact, we set our workbooks up in three separate volumes. Volume one is all about explaining the process to clients in a way they can hopefully understand, and explaining the choice points so they can make informed decisions about what best fits their needs, and then find a clinician who's willing to navigate the disclosure of their choice. To put some flesh on this and make it real: we're talking about everything from whose office it's in. Does the addict go to the partner therapist's office? I think our answer would be the same: she gets to choose. You chuckle when I say that, Jake, but that's a huge thing.
Jake Porter: That's huge. Universally, we do this.
Janice Caudill: We can say that, but you have to really know, because that's not necessarily the way it's done everywhere. There's no shot clock. Where I am, in the DFW area, my original experience of disclosure was, "If it doesn't get done in a 50-minute session, well, we're coming back next week." Can you imagine your surgeon in the middle of surgery saying, "Oh, you know what, I've got my next appointment. Just stop the bleeding, let it scab over, and we'll finish it next week"? A lot of things have really changed, and I'm very proud, because I think APSATS has been part of pushing a lot of those changes.
Jake Porter: Absolutely.
Janice Caudill: But there are still lots of places in this country and other countries where there's very little choice.
Jake Porter: Right. So let's give them some of these choices: where it takes place, how much time is devoted to it. What are some others?
Janice Caudill: The setup of the room. When it's my office, there's no therapist chair anymore. You go into a therapist's office, and it's pretty clear which is the therapist's chair, the professional's. I'm talking about the throne, which doesn't exist. Wherever the partner wants to sit: where does she feel comfortable? What's the spacing between her and her partner? Where does she want the support person or people sitting? Breaks: how many breaks do we have, pausing, stopping. There are all kinds of choices. Who comes in and who goes: does the partner start in the room and then invite the addict in, or does the partner want to be able to move, and come and go? Those are some pretty practical ones.
Dan Drake: Yeah. And the ambiance as well, a lot of things.
Janice Caudill: The ambiance. For some partners this is really sacred, and we treat it like a sacred ritual. For people of faith, for example, we have a clinician who's also a minister, and if they want the room blessed, that will be done. If possible, if they want him to come and start with prayer, we'll do that. It's bringing in the objects, the symbology, of things that are really important to me. If my grandmother's necklace was the first thing I clutched at discovery, and it brought me a sense of comfort, then I'm going to want to bring my grandmother's necklace. Other partners say, "No, I don't want to treat this like something sacred at all. I'm coming in my sweats. We're going to kick off our shoes. We're going to ceremony it down." And for others it's business: "This is business. I want to treat it like a business."
Dan Drake: Another choice, for example, is what types of information you need to know.
Janice Caudill: Yes. We also wanted this workbook series to be helpful for clinicians and coaches, anyone who facilitates disclosures, because for me, the times I've learned information from the other therapist at the last minute have been really awful: "Would she want to know this?" I don't like being in the position of having to make that call. So it's about real thoroughness, and really working with the partner, so it meets her needs, so she's vetted all the possible options and outcomes, and coping plans are in place.
Jake Porter: And boundaries in place.
Janice Caudill: Right.
Jake Porter: How about the question of timing? When should this happen? That's another hotly debated topic in our field.
Dan Drake: I don't know if you'd agree with this, you guys, but generally I'd say we usually can't do disclosure soon enough for the partner, and we usually can't wait long enough for the addict. The addict generally needs more time to be emotionally, spiritually, physically, and mentally prepared, and the partner generally needs it ASAP. So there's some zone in there. I don't know what you'd say, Janice.
Janice Caudill: I think the field has shifted to doing these quicker than in the past.
Jake Porter: I don't know what the standard used to be. Maybe some people waited a year?
Janice Caudill: Oh, that would have been early.
Jake Porter: What the standard was just a few short years ago. I did my CSAT training in 2013, and at the time some of my supervisors were saying, "Until the addict gets 90 days of sobriety, there can be no disclosure." So that partner is waiting and waiting and waiting. I've had couples come to me who've literally waited three years, because the addict hasn't gotten 90 days of sobriety.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, exactly. They get to 28, 29 days, then boom, there's another relapse. I generally like both parties being as stable as they can be, sure. But the lack of information also breeds a lack of stability, so it's a real dilemma. I've had more than a few where we decided, "You know what, it's going to be years, if ever, if we wait for the sobriety and only then start working on all of this," because there are sometimes months of work afterward. I've had a lot of addicts who only got sober after the disclosure.
Jake Porter: Ditto.
Dan Drake: Yep. And this is something I appreciate about Janice's mindset: there are benefits and risks either way. The longer you wait for a disclosure, the more likely the addict will have a better understanding of what they've done, the impact, and the reasons behind it. They may understand the betrayal and have more empathy. That's definitely true. They may have more maturity, and have taken a fuller, deeper dive into their behaviors. That's the benefit of waiting. The obvious drawback is the research. Janice, do you want to talk about the research? It was mind-blowing for me, the wait-time distress for partners. It was really important for me to realize that big drawback of waiting too long.
Janice Caudill: That came out of the APSATS research. We looked at the emotional impact of the discovery, compared it to the emotional distress of the planned full disclosure, and then also compared both to the distress of the wait time in between. The numbers shift back and forth a bit, so I may be off. But for the initial discovery, or what I sometimes call the initial dawning ("It just dawned on me, it hit me, it finally added up, and I see it for what it is now")—
Jake Porter: I love that.
Janice Caudill: —on a zero-to-ten scale, zero being no distress and ten being the most imaginable, the average distress rating for discovery is about 9.64, I think.
Jake Porter: Wow.
Janice Caudill: Yeah, that's really high for partners. And interestingly, addicts taking our addict surveys generally got that the partner's distress was much higher than theirs. But, and this is an extrapolation, it looks like they actually underestimate how intense it is. The full disclosure itself averaged 7.7, which, I always like to point out, is a major earthquake on the Richter scale. But the distress of the wait, no matter how calm she might look on the surface, was 9.2.
Jake Porter: Wow.
Janice Caudill: It was significantly higher. Well, it was higher; "significant" has mathematical meaning, and I probably shouldn't be using it. It probably was, though. But it's really painful. So when weighing the timing and how long you wait, you also have to weigh in that 9.2.
Jake Porter: That's so good. I want to shift a little and talk about another option. Some consider it an option, some say it's absolutely not an option, some say it's the only option: polygraphs. Do we do them or not? Do we love them, do we hate them? What do you think?
Janice Caudill: I'll take a stand. I like them when they're done well, and when they're done with informed consent, like anything else out there. Polygraphs aren't foolproof, and they're absolutely not the only tool. You can't put all your eggs in the polygraph basket. But I do tend to like polygraphs, because what I think they often do best, with the majority of people, is this: I see people get a lot more thorough when they're contemplating a polygraph.
Jake Porter: I agree.
Janice Caudill: If I were to do this myself, with any activity I probably ought not be doing, like too much sugar, and just wrote my own list from memory of what I've done, there'd probably be a lot of gaps. But if I were going to take a polygraph on it, I might go through the trash and look at the empty containers. I might take a look in the pantry to see what's missing, or in the fridge. I'd go to a much higher level. If I were disclosing, I might use some of the same memory techniques the partners do, to be as thorough as I can. I think most of the people I work with have generally good intent for disclosure, but they're holding on to a few pieces. If I knew I was taking a polygraph, and there was no way out of it, I'd probably want to get that information to my partner before, or at a minimum before, the polygraph. So I do think it helps. It's a memory aid; let's put it that way.
Jake Porter: Yeah. Dan, anything you'd add?
Dan Drake: We have to say it is controversial, for sure. Anyone listening has to understand that, depending on where you are, some places don't have good polygraph examiners, or it's not used very well. I'm a big proponent. I've seen it be really helpful for both. I leave the choice up to the clients, the couple. But I've absolutely seen their value. And I want to emphasize: this is a fidelity polygraph, not a forensic one.
Jake Porter: That's right.
Dan Drake: A fidelity polygraph is trying to validate the truth. The person isn't going to make up something that isn't there, and they want to give this person every chance to pass. So it's jogging the memory. With the examiner I generally work with, if something isn't going too well, he'll say, "Is there something you're not telling me?" and give them the chance. We can do things a different way, as opposed to trying to catch someone in a lie or ambush somebody.
Jake Porter: That's generally how they go. No gotcha questions. We want them to pass. It's meant to be supportive, and hopefully the examiner understands that.
Dan Drake: Yeah, and that means having a good examiner who gets the process. And more often than not I've seen an unexpected byproduct for the addicts I've worked with. Once they've gone through it, if the partner gets triggered or something comes up, they're more likely to validate: "It makes sense that you'd be triggered, based on what I did in the past. That's not what's happening now. I'm willing to take a polygraph on that." So they have this baseline: "I'm willing to do this if it would help you feel safe." Sometimes that's enough, once they've already shown they're willing to do whatever it takes to help rebuild safety and trust in the relationship. That goes a long way.
Jake Porter: It does. I've seen people use the polygraph and not use the polygraph, and depending on the couple, they can still heal. But something about that external validation seems to speed up the process of rebuilding trust.
I want to ask you guys this. I hear there's a certification and training program under development. For listeners who might be professionals, can you speak to that?
Dan Drake: Yeah, we're really excited. APSATS is going to sponsor a disclosure certification program, so anyone who's a therapist or coach will have a way to learn to facilitate disclosures more effectively. These things can be difficult, and potentially damaging, if they're not done safely and effectively. So it's a more streamlined process for professionals. We're really excited to have it rolling out, hopefully next year.
Janice Caudill: I'd also say we wrote the workbooks as if talking to the clients, but there's an infrastructure underneath that wasn't really necessary to put in. For partners, for example, volume two, the actual prep for partners, has polyvagal underpinnings throughout. So for therapists who really want to know how to do this and factor in good trauma recovery, good nervous system work, working at a higher level, we pull back the cape on all of that. We've also created some tools specifically for the person guiding the disclosure that weren't part of the workbooks.
Jake Porter: So we're talking 2023. Where would people go to find out more? Maybe it's not out there yet.
Janice Caudill: I don't think so. I just emailed Dan that I'm booking into January, because we were looking at getting it out in January, penciling in a date. When we have it, there's a section for supervision on the website under my name, and if you go to that link, we'll keep the information there, including a sign-up if you'd like us to send it to you when it's ready.
Jake Porter: Great. We'll have all the links below the video or the audio. The one Janice is referring to is intensivehope.com. So be on the lookout. Is that right?
Janice Caudill: That's right.
Jake Porter: Okay, cool. Good. Go ahead.
Janice Caudill: Toward the end of the month, we're actually on our way to film some role plays using these tools for the training. I don't know why, Dan, but I'm really excited about that. I think it's because role plays seem to capture the intensity, whether the professional has their own story or is just thinking about clients who were really dear to them: "Oh, I wish I'd known this then." At least in APSATS, the role plays seem to generate a lot of thought.
Jake Porter: When I did the multidimensional partner trauma training with APSATS, I did the role play, and Dan was there. Dan, I don't know if you remember, but you were worried about me. It was so intense. It was an intense experience, and you came over and checked on me, I think just knowing I have my own story around a lot of this stuff. So that's really great. Any professionals out there who are interested: that shows you how seriously they're taking this, making those investments, creating those videos and doing those role plays. I agree, it takes it from head knowledge to something we viscerally feel and can appreciate. So thank you for doing that. That's amazing.
Dan Drake: Yeah. Like seeing Janice do a somatic intervention, for example. We can talk through the intervention, but seeing it in action... I know I learn so much more by seeing and doing than by reading a script.
Jake Porter: For sure. Let's go back to our listeners who aren't professionals. Say someone's listening and thinking, "This is new information for me. I didn't know what the word 'disclosure' meant 30 minutes ago. I need to learn more about this process, how it works, and whether it's the next step for me." What would you say to that listener?
Janice Caudill: That's volume one, isn't it, Dan? Give him the name. I have mine right over there; I could reach it, but my arm's not long enough.
Dan Drake: Well, probably the practical thing is to give you the colors; that seems to be the way people remember them. It's really a his-and-hers companion series. The blue book is for the disclosing party, and the green book is for the partner.
Janice Caudill: But volume one covers all of that: understanding what it is and why the heck we'd do it, dispelling myths, sharing options for how you might do it, and how to even find a therapist, coach, or other professional who might guide you through the process. I think maybe the only difference is that there's a little more information about polygraphs in the partner one, because it's a hot topic.
Dan Drake: Yes. I'm grateful there's so much more information about disclosures out there now. I'm glad that many savvy partners are able to find out about disclosure, usually before they've even contacted me. There's so much information out there, and so much good information too. What we tried to do in the workbooks was the whole first volume: what is disclosure, is it right for me, what are the benefits and risks, what are the myths, polygraphs, all that kind of stuff, and what's the choreography, what it typically looks like.
Janice Caudill: As for where you get them: both books are on Amazon. The partners' one is Full Disclosure: Seeking Truth After Sexual Betrayal. And, Dan, I don't remember the addicts' title.
Dan Drake: It's Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth After Sexual Betrayal.
Jake Porter: Okay. I want to try something fun with you guys. I haven't done this with anybody yet, but I thought, "These are the people to try it on." Are you scared?
Janice Caudill: Yes. But I want to warn you about something. Since we had to switch to a different computer, my battery is low, so I'm going to dip below and plug in right here.
Jake Porter: Sure, please dip below. If you're leaving, all the tough questions are going to Dan. Go ahead and plug in; we don't want to lose you. Here's what I'm thinking. I want to do a lightning round, going back and forth between you two. I'll throw a question or a disclosure myth at you, and you give me your quick, 20-to-30-second response. How does that sound?
Dan Drake: Sounds super fun.
Janice Caudill: We can't say a sentence quickly, you know.
Jake Porter: But I'm just the one asking the questions, so I get to watch y'all sweat. All right, let's try it. If it's not any good, I'll edit it out. But it's going to be great. Here we go. Dan, you're first. A client comes in and says, "I'm not doing a disclosure. It's going to hurt my relationship even more." What do you say?
Dan Drake: First of all, I usually empathize: I can understand where that comes from. I usually validate that someone's learned negative core beliefs say, "I'm defective, I'm bad, I'm unworthy, I'm unlovable, so I have to hide these things I've been doing, because if people really knew, they wouldn't love me." So it makes sense that someone would come in with that myth. But the reality is that it's just not true. As we said before, yes, sharing the truth can hurt, but withholding it will be much more damaging to the relationship long term, especially if the partner wants to know.
Janice Caudill: In fact, it's usually fatal.
Jake Porter: Yes. Thank you. Okay, Janice. You're seeing a partner, and you get a call from the addict's therapist, who says, "I'm sorry, we're just not even close to being ready for disclosure. He's still got to work through his family-of-origin issues and deal with his shame." And you say, under your breath or out loud... This is why I wanted to ask you this one. I love your honesty, Janice.
Janice Caudill: I'd probably talk to my client, the partner, about that. If I'm doing that, I've got permission, so people know what's happening. Sometimes we have to, shall we say, put a little fire under some fannies, because we all know that people we work with in addiction can be procrastinators as well. For me, and I also advocate for addicts, and I work with couples, the single biggest thing that gets in the way is the relational cycles that get in the way of focusing on it. So I'd probably talk with my client, the partner, and get a sense of how much longer she can tolerate that, because the therapist is really asking me to put his client's individual recovery ahead of my client's needs.
Jake Porter: Right.
Janice Caudill: We might talk about timelines. We might talk about some boundaries around that, so there might be, not a punishment, but some consequences, so they don't all fall on the partner. We might talk about whether there are some options, like, you know, Jake Porter's in Houston, and he's pretty good at getting people ready through intensives. Or there are a lot of people who do preparation for the document outside the therapeutic work. So: let's think about a team. Is there a possibility of a team that can come in and help speed up the process? Because we all know that to work through shame, you have to be willing to face some of it.
Jake Porter: That's right.
Janice Caudill: My experience guiding disclosures is that the person who usually ends up with the greater personal recovery gain is the addict.
Jake Porter: That's right.
Janice Caudill: And the data Dan and I collected bears that out. So I don't necessarily hold the belief that he can't work through it first. That's an attitude that the disclosure is just for the partner, and it's really for both people's recovery and their relationship.
Jake Porter: That's a great point. Thank you, Janice. Okay, Dan, kind of similar, but flipped around. You're working with an addict, and he says, "Hey man, I don't think my wife's stable enough to sit through that." What do you say to him?
Dan Drake: That happens, for sure. What do I say? First of all, hopefully I've had good collaboration with the partner's support person, so I can vet that and raise the concerns. Sometimes it's helpful for them to hear, because sometimes the partner's support person doesn't know some of the things happening outside. But I want to know: is this true support for his partner, or is it a stall tactic? Hopefully at this point I've built a bit more of a relationship with my client. But I'm not the one to assess the partner's readiness. I need to let the person who's actually helping the partner determine that. And as Janice said earlier, sometimes a partner's stability isn't established until the disclosure, because of the distress of the wait time we talked about. So yes, it may be a volatile, difficult time, and she may be "unstable", quote unquote, because it's incredibly distressing to know, "I've got a cancer diagnosis, but I don't know if it's stage one or stage four." So I'd hear him out, and say, "Let me check on that." But I'd also try to dive back into him: what's happening for him, what's coming up in terms of disclosure fears, threats, anxieties, things like that. I'd imagine it's more about his own fear of doing it than about protecting his partner.
Jake Porter: That's right.
Janice Caudill: And if Dan calls me about that, about some fear about her stability (I don't like that word; it's usually fear about her emotions), I've got a different perspective, because I've been working with her. If there's some validity to it, that lets me talk to her about it and say, "There's a reason we created a workbook with a lot of exercises. If you need some time for preparation, the preparation isn't just about what information you want. It's about how you can handle it, so you get through it better." Sometimes that's really great for partners, because in those early phases, when the emotional roller coaster is just devastating, it's really hard to put on your agenda all these little regulation exercises that help you when you never feel like doing them. But if that's a carrot I can use: "Okay, let's show them. Let's start now. Let's start doing those, because now there's a very concrete agenda that you want, and we're going to double up on them." So for me, with both clinical parties communicating about it, it's a win-win.
Jake Porter: That's great. Well, that was fun, guys.
Dan Drake: Wait, doesn't Janice get a second question?
Jake Porter: Okay, okay. I did have one more for her, but since she answered yours, I thought, okay.
Dan Drake: Yeah, no, this is a good one. I just want to give you the opportunity.
Jake Porter: One more, and it's a good one. Janice, you're supporting a couple, seeing them both, and you're talking about getting ready for disclosure. And the addict is adamant: "I have already told her everything. I swear I have. I don't know why I need to do this disclosure process."
Janice Caudill: I'd probably say, "Jake, that's really wonderful, except she doesn't really believe you. You've told a lot of lies." I might say it more gently. Probably not. "And the ways you've told her, I've usually been with her: she's had to ask you questions five or six times, the stories evolved, and it happened over months and months and months. Some of it she doesn't even remember, because it was late at night. The way the information came out did damage to your relationship. If somebody has a broken leg that heals improperly, sometimes you have to re-break it and stabilize it so it can heal in a way that lets you actually use the leg again. That's what she's asking of you in the relationship." And I'd probably say, "Let me tell you about Dan Drake; he's great. We'll get somebody to help prepare you, and we'll do it in a way that has you both in sync on what the goal is, with some boundaries. If you have concerns about her, I'll work with her." We probably should have had a visual, Dan, the pyramid diagram we use in the workbooks. The pyramid works for individual recovery, but it really works for relational recovery. I might use it to say, "Okay, Jake, what do you actually want in your relationship? You want intimacy? Okay." And I pull out the pyramid, and the bottom of the pyramid is truth: proof that both people feel they've gotten the truth. How are we going to get to the top if we're not even sure about the bottom?
Jake Porter: That's good. Thank you. Well said. Well, y'all, this was a lot of fun. I always enjoy you two; you do great work. Dan, if folks want to get in touch with you, where can they find you?
Dan Drake: At banyantherapy.com. We also have a joint resource.
Jake Porter: And Janice, how about you? Preferred way for folks to contact you?
Janice Caudill: intensivehope.com. We actually have a couple of divisions there: one for counseling within Texas, and the intensive recovery side, which is the spot on the website for all of that.
Jake Porter: Great. Great to be with you, my friends. I appreciate you and all the hard work you're doing, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Dan Drake: Thank you.
Janice Caudill: Bye-bye.
Jake Porter: You've been listening to Betrayal Recovery Radio, the official podcast of APSATS. If you've received help or hope from this episode, I encourage you to share it with someone you know. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite listening platform. Thank you for joining us. I'm Dr. Jake Porter, and you can always email me directly [address not captured]. I'd love to hear your ideas, questions, or comments about the show. Until next time, keep choosing to use your voice and live your values. It's good for you and for this world.
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The Truth Shall Set You Free: How Full Disclosure Can Benefit Couples in Recovery with Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill
In this conversation, Janice Caudill joins Dan Drake, Wendy Conquest, Jeanne Vattuone, and Tim Stein to discuss therapeutic disclosure in recovery from sex addiction.
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Transcript: The Truth Shall Set You Free: How Full Disclosure Can Benefit Couples in Recovery with Dan Drake and Dr. Janice Caudill
Tim Stein: Hello everyone, and welcome to Conversations on Sex Addiction and Relationships. So glad you're here. I'm joined today, as always, by my good friends Wendy Conquest, Jeanne Vattuone, and Dan Drake, who today gets to be both a member of the Conversations crew and part of the team we're actually having a conversation with: Dan Drake and Janice Caudill, who have written a couple of books on therapeutic disclosure, one for the addict's preparation and one for the partner's, to help therapists and couples walk through this. I'm so excited to have this conversation, and Dan, I'm thrilled we get to put you in this dual role today.
Dan Drake: Yeah, it's a little weird. I'm excited. I'm excited to have Janice on too, and to talk about this.
Tim Stein: So, disclosure. First of all, I think we might want to define for our community what that is, because some folks who listen to us are familiar with the sex addiction and betrayal trauma world, but other folks have no idea what we're talking about. So which one of us wants to do a simple definition, and we'll start there? I love it. Wendy wants to.
Wendy Conquest: I think Dan's the expert in this, but I'll take a stab at it. When there's been a secret sexual behavior, and the partner finds out, in our field we call this discovery. A lot of times the addict will then start talking about all the things they've done. That is not a therapeutic disclosure. It's simply a disclosure, and it's usually not beneficial. It can be very harmful and hurtful to the partner. It's usually done in a passionate, uncontained, not-thought-out way, and we've found it isn't helpful and can really harm the partner. What we want is what's called a therapeutic disclosure. This is where the addict puts in time, energy, and a lot of preparation. (I'll want to ask the whole team, and Janice as well, how long a disclosure should take to prepare, because in our field there's a lot of controversy around that.) It's a more intentional, detailed (but not too detailed) document that's created and then intentionally shared with the partner, with therapeutic support. In a perfect world that would be her therapist (sorry, I don't want to assume gender), the addict's therapist, and the partner's, and it's done in a very mindful, thoughtful, thorough way. How's that?
Tim Stein: Nice. All right, good. Well, let's get Janice on here. Let's bring in the other expert. Janice, do you want to join us? There you are!
Janice Caudill: Hey, guys.
Tim Stein: I'd like to start by holding the books up so people can find them. Janice and Dan, where can people find these books?
Dan Drake: Amazon.
Tim Stein: And what are the names, for the people who can't see them? I'll start. I'm holding up Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth After Sexual Betrayal. This one is for the addict, and it's the blue one.
Dan Drake: Blue, yeah.
Tim Stein: It has a blue cover. And I've got the partner one, which has a green cover, with broken glass: Full Disclosure: Seeking Truth After Sexual Betrayal. About that thick. Those are by Dan Drake and Janice Caudill and can be found on Amazon. There we go. How did you two come to write these books?
Dan Drake: Janice, do you want to take that, or do you want me to start?
Tim Stein: I think you should both...
Janice Caudill: Well, it took a long time for these books to come to pass, so there are a lot of stories; that's why Dan and I are kind of sharing memories. It really started with the two of us working on a different project, where the subject of disclosure came up in a really lively, juicy conversation. I discovered that Dan had begun writing materials for his clients, and I'd been doing the same for mine. We printed them out, laid out what we had, saw we had a really good start, and made the decision to go ahead, thinking it would be really quick and easy, because we do all this really, really fast. What we kept discovering is that when we actually wrote out all the things those of us who guide disclosures do, it's a lot.
Dan Drake: Yeah. I'll just say that I, at least, never set out to write a giant book on disclosure. That wasn't the initial idea. We were working on something else, then putting this together, and we thought it would be quick, like Janice said. As you can see, there are so many pieces to it. There are a lot of resources on disclosure out there already, but what we tried to do was break the process down into its different decision points. There's an exercise in the addict's book that corresponds to one in the partner's book; we really tried to have them used in conjunction with each other. It was a synergistic process: Janice would come up with an amazing exercise, and I'd think, "Oh shoot, I don't have anything on the addict side that corresponds to that," so I'd have to write something. That's why they're a little big, but comprehensive.
Janice Caudill: Well, yeah. You'd come up with something, and I'd think, "Oh wait a second, I've got to prepare the partners for that, because they're not going to get it. They won't understand it." So the process is really designed for those actually going through it, so couples can do it in sync, with a common language, a common understanding around boundaries, and, hopefully, a common purpose: restoring truth as part of rebuilding intimacy.
Tim Stein: I'm thinking there are probably people listening, and I know there are addicts who come into my office, who have the reaction, "You want me to do what? There is no way on God's green earth I'm going to do that. That's just going to devastate my relationship." So why on earth are we recommending that couples do a full therapeutic disclosure? And can you both refer to some of the statistics in the book? There is some data behind why this is beneficial.
Dan Drake: Janice, do you want to take that one from me? Well, first let me thank you, Tim, because this is one of the first points in understanding betrayal trauma and how we heal from it. If you're on the addict side, if you're the one who has engaged in these behaviors, generally an addict has learned over time, "I have to hide these behaviors from other people, because at my core I feel unlovable, defective, unworthy. I feel a lot of shame. I feel bad about myself. I don't want people to find out about these behaviors, because if they knew what I'd been doing, they would reject me and abandon me." So a lot of times the addiction comes with so much secrecy, hiding, gaslighting, and deception. Post-discovery, after the partner discovers something, we've found that to heal... Say I've got cancer, a tumor in my body. We want to make sure we got all of that tumor out before we close things up and try to heal. Same thing here. If a cancerous, problematic behavior has infected our relationship, we need to know we've got it all before we can start building a new foundation to heal from. So I can empathize with the addict's side, with how hard this is for them, and say: actually, the healing journey is the exact opposite of what you've practiced your whole life, hiding and secrecy. It's sharing the truth that will actually heal and restore your relationship. It goes against everything addicts believe, and yet that's what we've found. This is more Schneider and Corley's research. Janice, do you have the stats for that?
Janice Caudill: I could make them up and be a good... no. Not necessarily theirs per se, but in the studies out there (and Dan and I did some informal survey data that was very consistent with what's out there), of the studies I'm familiar with, over 93 percent of both partners and addicts reported that the process was beneficial. My recollection is that that's true regardless of whether the relationship continued or not.
Dan Drake: Yeah, yeah. I think that's Schneider and Corley's work.
Tim Stein (?): I was going to say, I want to put that out to folks, because some people will ask, "Where was that study?"
Janice Caudill: To follow up on that, though: Dan, you did a really good job talking about the benefits for the addict's personal recovery, and Tim, you asked about the relational side. I'd point out that there are really two pieces we're looking for progress in healing. The relational stuff might be iffy for a while, because your partner is going to be in a great deal of pain and grief, and, depending on the gap between how much was known and how much was shared, there could be a lot of shock. So the relationship is a little more iffy for a while afterward. But what I tend to see in my personal experience, and I think it was confirmed in the data Dan and I collected, is that the addict gets a boost in their personal recovery. And that's an ironic experience for the partner, because on the one hand it's what she or he wanted, but there's also, "Well, the addict's feeling better, and I'm in pain and grief."
Tim Stein (?): When I do preparation with addicts for disclosure, one of the things we talk about and highlight is: I want you to practice keeping your face neutral. It's not uncommon for addicts, as they go through disclosure, to feel that lightness and that absence of secrets and start to feel better. And if they break into a beaming smile in the middle of disclosure, it's typically not received well by the partner. So there's that piece: let's practice how you present this, even though you might feel lighter as you get to the end.
Janice Caudill: Maybe I'll put one other piece in, for those who don't quite see how the process might be beneficial. For the non-betraying partner, who really doesn't know the exact history, it's very difficult to figure out how you heal when you don't know what you're healing from. One of the things I like about the APSATS research we're involved in is that when you compare the subjective pain of the discovery itself, the wait time (sometimes prolonged, and even when it isn't, it always feels prolonged and agonizing for the person waiting to find out what's real), and the subjective pain of the formal therapeutic disclosure itself, the wait time is much more painful for the partner than the actual disclosure.
Tim Stein (?): Do you remember the exact numbers on the Likert scale, zero to ten?
Janice Caudill: I have a rough idea. It fluctuates; I'm sort of the person who monitors some of the APSATS data, so it fluctuates. But generally, the emotional impact of discovery is 9.64, with ten being the worst imaginable and zero being nothing. The wait time for the partner is 9.2. And the pain impact of the full disclosure is 7.7. So the wait time is heavier, harder, more painful.
Dan Drake (?): Yeah. And this is partners making these comments and rating the scale.
Tim Stein: Can I just ask, how do the two of you, Dan and Janice, guide people on what's too short a time? The partner says, "I don't want them to hurry through this and have it be incomplete, but I don't want to wait a year either." And there are some therapists out there who'll say, "The addict's not ready. They're not emotionally stable yet. They won't be able to do the disclosure. We have to wait." What do you say?
Janice Caudill: Well, for me, a principle in our profession is informed consent. So it's really important, on the partner's end, that the partner understands there are consequences and pros, and that disclosure occurs on a continuum, as does recovery. The earlier in the process you do it, here are the possible benefits, and here are the possible consequences. I put that to my clients, and we have a lot of discussions around it.
Dan Drake: Can I expand on that, Janice? For example, for me it takes roughly six to eight weeks to prepare the betraying person for a written disclosure. There are different types of disclosures, but we're talking about a written document. Sometimes less, rarely more, if someone's really taking it seriously, because we go through multiple revisions and edits. But I like what you said, Janice, because we can do a disclosure really early on. I guess we have to look at the goal. What's the point? Is it to get to a new grounding, a foundation of honesty and truth in the relationship? Is it to build empathy and validation for the partner's experience? What are we doing this for? Where we are in the healing and recovery process will dictate what the disclosure looks like and what the result might be. I think that's the informed consent Janice is talking about. But on the idea of a wait time, again using cancer: if a practitioner told me, "You have cancer, and we'll tell you in a year what stage it is," can you imagine what that would be like? "Wait six months, and maybe then you'll be ready to handle what stage of cancer you've got." That's cruel, in my opinion. Maddening.
Dan Drake (?): But there's a balance we try to walk here. I sometimes say that for partners, disclosure never comes soon enough, and for addicts, it always comes too soon. We're figuring out when the addict is able to do an honest, full disclosure, because there is that piece to it, and at the same time, when they're just dragging their feet because they don't want to do this, and the partner is being harmed in the process. I wish there were a solid answer, like "do it this many days into recovery," but there's not.
Tim Stein (?): What are your guidelines for...
Janice Caudill: I really think this comes back to informed consent. A partner might say, "Look, I understand it's not going to be the best quality, but I need something sooner rather than later, even if it's lower quality, so I can calm down enough to know whether my children are safe, whether I have to worry about news crews showing up at my door. I need something so I can begin to focus on myself and my own healing." And I'm sorry, I know we talk about two disclosures: an immediate one addressing one or two concerns, and then the full one. But I just want to be clear that it's an option to say, "I choose this. I've been educated on the pros and cons. I request that the addict provide a disclosure sooner rather than later, and I understand we're going to get what we get, based on where that person is in their therapeutic process. That's what I need." I want to honor that.
Dan Drake: And that's why it ended up being three volumes for this workbook. We started with, "Okay, what's the procedure for disclosure?" Then we thought, "Well, there are different ways to do this." So volume one became, in its entirety, deciding: what are the benefits and risks of disclosure, the pros and cons, the myths of disclosure, what it is, what it isn't, how we deal with a polygraph (we haven't even approached that word: polygraph or not, and when to do it). One thing I appreciate Janice helping me think through is content versus behavioral truth. If I'm getting information in a disclosure, that's the content. But I'm also getting information about behavior: how is the person showing up? What's their maturity level? Are they taking it seriously or not? There's a maturity level we can see, and that's information the partner can get even early on, when their maturity or empathy may be lower. And yes, there will be benefits to waiting longer, because the addict will hopefully have more maturity, and more understanding of their addiction, the problems, and the consequences and impact it's had. But, like you said, Tim, we have to weigh that against what's in the best interest of the partner and the relationship. Can a relationship that's so fragile and traumatized hang in there long enough to wait for this?
Janice Caudill: I also want to point out that there's a tendency sometimes to think of the full disclosure as the icing on the cake of the wonderful recovery the addict may be in. But I've navigated these as a partner guide, an addict guide, and a couples guide, and I can remember so many people whose real recovery process, really dropping down into it, came because of the full disclosure. That might be a disappointment to the partner, say, but it prompts the healing process both parties wanted to begin with. And I've had a lot of people who never got real sobriety until after the full disclosure.
Tim Stein (?): Let me ask a softball question. Do you recommend that people pick up your workbooks, work through them on their own, and do a disclosure themselves at home, just the two of them?
Wendy Conquest: And I want to ask it a different way. For people who can afford two therapists and live in communities with access to people qualified to do this, that's one thing. What about people who can't afford therapists, or live somewhere without access to this kind of therapy?
Tim Stein: Good point, Wendy. Good point.
Janice Caudill: Optimally, I think it's great if you've got that therapeutic piece, but if you don't... Dan, maybe I'll take one piece of that, and you can take the rest. Here's a piece that might be controversial, at least in the CSAT and professional community that specializes in betrayal. I know there's a lot of talk that there should be two therapists, one for each party. I don't always have that luxury: I do full-disclosure intensives, so for many years I didn't have anybody else with me. There weren't a lot of disclosures going on in Texas in those days; we're talking five to ten years ago. So I had to start that process. And what I've found (this is just Janice's statistics, pulled out of my fanny) is that seven out of ten times, it's easier, and in some ways less frustrating, to have one person guiding it. That's because otherwise you're trying to coordinate logistics between two therapists or professionals with busy schedules, or two professionals who coordinate the full disclosure in very different ways. That's part of what we tried to build into the workbooks: a way for everyone, including the professionals, to be on the same page. But about three out of ten times, when I'm guiding as a couples therapist, I think, "This really would have worked better with another therapist." And Wendy, that's something I've also thought a lot about, because before I was in private practice, I worked with Medicaid and Medicare clients. Low-income clients were the majority of my career. While we certainly didn't want people trying to do this on their own if it's unnecessary, we did want to create a process where they could do some of the prep, and perhaps find a guide, maybe an intern specializing in this, at lower cost. There are other types of professionals stepping into the ring for navigating full disclosures too; some of it is coming out of the faith community. While I'd prefer that everybody has a very well-trained guide, I also want those who are in the position of having to think of alternatives to have resources, and for those who don't have the training to have something in addition, because it's happening anyway.
Crew member (?): I appreciate that, Janice, because sometimes with sex addiction and betrayal trauma we're thinking mainly of the United States, and I'm finding that throughout the world there's more and more evidence of people seeking help with pornography addiction, sex addiction, and betrayal trauma. For people in other countries, and for professionals who wouldn't even know how to guide them through it, this could be so valuable.
Janice Caudill: And I'll put in a plug: there are an awful lot of those people in our country too. The USA still has an awful lot of people on the poverty line, and it's getting closer and closer for lots of folks, especially post-COVID.
Dan Drake: Yeah, and I'll just say thank you; I echo everything you said, Janice. I think the question is important, because unfortunately, up to this point, it's been private-pay clients with resources who could afford this kind of thing. While we might recommend two therapists in the room, I think there are other options. We do recommend this be guided by a professional, but one of our big reasons was to streamline the cost and time, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. If you work through some of this yourself, you can save a lot of time and money, and then have a guide help you through it. That's one reason we wanted to do this: so you could buy a workbook instead of paying a professional's hourly rate to work through all this. So I do think there are different ways to do it. I'm actually really excited about coaches who may be able to help in parts of the country or the world where therapists have license restrictions. And, though we don't have great data on it yet, remote disclosures are happening, and they're working for the most part. I never would have thought that would be a thing, but it's becoming one. I've even served as a consultant for a guide; maybe the rate is lower. I'll look at someone's document and give feedback, which is way cheaper than having a professional work the whole time with someone. So there are different options that can streamline the cost and make it more accessible. But it's a really good point, because right now it's typically been people with resources who can afford this work.
Tim Stein: I want to put out there that there's a training coming in 2023 that Janice and Dan are creating, sponsored by APSATS, specifically training professionals in how to do this. It's not for clients; it's for professionals: an intensive training on how to do quality disclosures. So that's a resource coming out next year.
Janice Caudill: I'd also like to point out (this is going to make me sound very morbid) that I love disclosures.
Dan Drake: I'm with you.
Janice Caudill: Because they're a microcosm of the whole healing process. Part of the reason it took longer than we thought is that there's a lot of evidence out there now about the partner experiencing trauma, so the process we're looking at contributes to trauma healing. I think partners initially see themselves as passively waiting for the addict to create the document and share the truth, as if that's their only role. But I'm in Texas, so I've got some Houston and Galveston folks. When they hear a hurricane's coming, they decide whether to hightail it out or stand their ground. Those who stand their ground don't just sit around waiting. They start preparing, because they want to come through it in the best shape they can. Once they've got the emergency supplies, they go for comfort: "Okay, we can make it through the storm, but we might be without power for three or four weeks." So they start attending to comfort, to come through it with greater comfort, the same way the Red Cross might show up with comfort items. That part is really important for the partner. What I see is that when they prepare that way, there's a tiny bit less patience with the time it takes the addict to write the document, but they come through better. And everything they gain in the preparation isn't thrown away just because the disclosure's over. They use all of it in the recovery process that comes afterward. Even though they can't see that while they're in the prep, I can, and professionals can. I'd also say, about preparation for the addict (Dan, I haven't told you this; it's something I felt really good about): the last two or three times somebody reached out to me to help get the document done, I was equivocating about how long it would take, because I never know what shape the document is in when we start. The last three had actually used the addict's workbook, Dan. When I first looked it over, I thought, "Oh, okay. This isn't really going to take that long to get into final shape." So it really cuts down what might have been weeks and weeks of preparation, and makes the process a lot kinder and gentler, I think.
Tim Stein (?): That's fantastic. In the partner's workbook, is some or all of that prep in there?
Janice Caudill: Yeah, that's in volume two. I've been a Somatic Experiencing practitioner for twelve-something years (I don't want to do the math). We wrote it from the perspective of the person doing the workbook, the partner, so it's not big and technical. But for professionals out there, the entire underpinning of that volume is a polyvagal-informed preparation for the full disclosure.
Jeanne Vattuone: That's great. We've talked a lot about preparation, and I think we're all on the same page about its importance. But one thing I'm realizing we haven't really talked about is expectations, or thoughts about how it will go after the disclosure. You've done all this preparation, the document, the questions and answers, and maybe a polygraph (which we haven't gotten to; maybe that's disclosure part two). What about managing expectations of what it's like after those disclosure sessions?
Janice Caudill: It's interesting. Dan, I don't know if you remember how some of those exercises in part three evolved. I just happened to be doing a ton of disclosures that year, and I'd call Dan up: "Dan, you've got to write something. I've got somebody who's just devastated because of inappropriate expectations on the back end." I think that's how "it's going to get worse before it gets better" evolved. We really followed all of our people, seeing what happened for them after the disclosure, and wrote both information and exercises to help them through afterward.
Dan Drake: Yeah, there's literally an exercise: it's going to get worse before it gets better. I realized the hard way that, like you said, Jeanne, we focus so much on preparing for disclosure and getting through it that sometimes, at least for me, I didn't focus enough on "Okay, now what?" Because on the addict side it's a huge undertaking: "Okay, I'm committed to doing it. I see the value. I'm going to do it. I did it. All right, I'm done. We're good. Now we can go back to life as normal." That's one side. They feel relieved, like Tim said. They feel unburdened: "Finally I have no secrets anymore." How freeing that is. And yet, "I'm scared. I don't know what my partner's going to do with this information." But we have to realize that with this unburdening of secrets, the partner now has to sit with all that pain and trauma and heal from it. That's the beginning point of the healing, not the end point. So we did a lot to prepare for that. And then, at least on the addict side, there's a shift: disclosure was about me sharing my narrative; now my job is to focus on my partner's story. So it's about how I get to more of the empathy journey afterward. Now that I see the impact on my partner, I'm looking back through my timeline and saying, "I was acting out during this significant period in my partner's life, while she was pregnant or during a difficult time, and I was completely absent." That helps prepare them for the impact work, or restitution, or whatever we call it, or even the amends afterward. So I think there's a lot of focus we need to put on afterward, for sure, and on clarifying the expectations, like you said.
Crew member (Jeanne or Wendy?): It's like the addict tends to feel unburdened and the partner tends to feel weighted. It's like the dump truck pulled up and unloaded its load on the partner's side of the fence, in the partner's yard, and now the partner is looking at it, going, "How do I make sense of this?" So patience is needed for the partner to have whatever experience she needs to go through that and figure it out.
Janice Caudill: Yeah. For the partner, I call it the big grief. Now that I think I know it all (and if I've had a polygraph, maybe I think a little more strongly that I have it all), the really deep grieving begins, at the same time that she's trying to put it all together and understand his story, so she can then toggle from his story to "Oh, this is my..."
Dan Drake: I'll just say one more thing on the addict side. If we go back to their core beliefs: "If I share all this, I'll be rejected and abandoned. There's no way my partner would stay after hearing this." So there's this usual fear and terror of needing to know the answer: "Are you staying or are you going?" And I have to say it's so much more complicated than that. I've literally had an addict say, "Okay, you've got two weeks to decide what you're going to do," because of their own anxiety. That's not fair to put on anybody, obviously. So we have to focus on how they manage their own anxiety now that their partner has this, and on the relational healing ahead: safety rebuilding, trust rebuilding, let alone intimacy rebuilding.
Tim Stein: I just want to remind people that you're listening to Conversations on Sex Addiction and Relationships, and today we've got Janice Caudill and Dan Drake with us, talking about disclosure. Thank you. So, Janice, tell me a little about what it's like working through this process, because it can be daunting, heavy, and scary for the partner and the addict.
Janice Caudill: Yeah. I imagine the partner and the addict listening probably feel a bit daunted and scared right now. But I go back to the medical analogy Dan used, the cancer. If you can't get to the root of it and clean it out, there really can't be healing in the long run. Things will get worse. So even though there's a rawness now, you're finally really dealing with truth, and truth can be painful, but that place of truth is the start of the rebuild. Part of the reason I love the disclosure process is that, for the couples who do it, and I think people would be surprised how many couples do it, rather than saying "I'm not going to do it" or doing it half done, there's such a depth to their relationship afterward. There's a confidence: "If we could get through this, there's really not a lot left we can't get through." And you have to learn a lot of skills to do it. For the couple, there's a thing called post-traumatic growth. The criterion is that something shattered: things broke you apart, and you have no idea on earth how to put it back together. Somewhere along the way you give up on putting it back together as it was, and you put it together as it now can be, and it becomes very precious and cherished, so you really protect it. I'm actually a family psychologist, so my base training is in working with couples, and I never saw couples working to this depth until I came into this specialty. So it feels really sacred to me.
Tim Stein (?): A great way to end this conversation. Thank you, Dan and Janice. Ending on post-traumatic growth, and marriage, relationship 2.0... I feel like we just went through the whole process. That was lovely. Thank you, Janice.
Tim Stein: Well, what a great conversation. I'm so glad Dan and Janice were here to talk about their books and the importance of disclosure. I really liked how you talked about the variety of ways to go about disclosure and how beneficial it can be. Again, the books (I can't read them from here): Full Disclosure: Seeking Truth After Sexual Betrayal, and Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth After Sexual Betrayal. Green is for partners, blue is for addicts, both written by the brilliant Janice Caudill and Dan Drake, and available on Amazon.com. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. I hope you found it helpful, and I hope you'll join us for future conversations. If you haven't already, please rate us wherever you found us, which I assume is Spotify or Stitcher or YouTube, or one of the many places our podcast ends up. Again, thank you for joining this conversation, and we hope to see you in the future.
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Using Somatic Interventions In Betrayal Trauma Healing
We now know that the body bears the burden of betrayal. As such, the body and the wisdom it holds are an important focus for healing trauma. Dr. Janice Caudill, a highly experienced Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, shares how to include a body focus in the recovery process.
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Transcript: Using Somatic Interventions In Betrayal Trauma Healing
Janice Caudill: Hi, guys. I'm Dr. Janice Caudill. I'm a partner betrayal trauma specialist, and a Somatic Experiencing practitioner for well over a decade. I'll be presenting "The Body Keeps the Score: Integrating Polyvagal and Somatic Interventions in Recovery" at APSATS' first annual conference. I'm super stoked about this, because the somatic work is my absolute passion.
I think we all know, after our training, that the body really does keep the score. We have some pretty good ideas on how to use somatic interventions to achieve some basic stabilization, anchoring in a sense of safety, when we really want to calm our clients and bring them back into a window of resilience, or a window of tolerance. But what do you do when you've already achieved that, and now it's time for stage two work? It's time to go beyond always trying to stabilize, and sometimes to activate in a really specific way. A way that enhances all the things we want for our partners as they move into a more empowered state: embodying boundaries rather than just thinking them up on a piece of paper, feeling growth and a sense of strength inside themselves, deepening a connection with their bodies.
So if you're really interested in knowing how to go beyond, and how to use our knowledge of the threat response cycle in healing, come join me in January. You can learn how this particular little device is a fantastic somatic toy, and how it became the most well-used toy in my full disclosures. I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
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How Can Therapeutic Disclosure Help Heal Marriages Affected By Sexual Betrayal (Podcast version)
Kristin interviews CSATS and Partner Betrayal Specialists Dr. Janice Caudill and Dan Drake about the benefits & best practices of Full Disclosure in this episode!
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Transcript: How Can Therapeutic Disclosure Help Heal Marriages Affected By Sexual Betrayal (Podcast version)
Kristin Carey: Friends, welcome to the Living Truth podcast. I'm Kristin Carey, and I'm really grateful to be here today with Dan Drake and Janice Caudill. Janice and Dan are an amazing duo. They've written many books together on therapeutic disclosure, and they're going to explain more about what that is and why it's so important for you to know about it. Both of them are therapists. Dan, you're in California, right?
Dan Drake: Right.
Kristin Carey: And Janice is in Texas. They're both sex addiction specialists and partner specialists. You can read their bios in the written material with the podcast, because the list of all these two have accomplished goes on and on. The main thing you need to know is that they're experts. They love people, they love what they do, and they're passionate about helping people understand the power of a therapeutic disclosure in the process of recovery. So Dan and Janice, welcome to the Living Truth podcast.
Dan Drake: Thank you.
Janice Caudill: Thank you for having us. So good to be here.
Kristin Carey: Awesome. I don't care which of you starts, and I'm sure you have enough of a friendship to tag-team, with all the books you've written.
Dan Drake: We'll be polite.
Kristin Carey: I love it. Please explain, especially for listeners who don't know: what is a full therapeutic disclosure?
Dan Drake: Janice, do you want to do it?
Janice Caudill: No, I was going to ask you to start, and then I'll interrupt you.
Dan Drake: Oh, that sounds even better. Okay, why not? There are a number of ways to do this, but a full disclosure is essentially the unveiling of truth in a contained, controlled environment. It's typically facilitated by a professional, and there's often prep work ahead of time, but it's essentially a process of unveiling the secrets after sexual addiction or sexual betrayal, and sharing them with a loved one. Anything you'd add, Janice?
Janice Caudill: Yes. We refer to the actual exchange as a rite of truth, because it's the restoration of a missing piece in the absolute foundation of a relationship, which is truth. It's a sacred ceremony. It's not the thing that happens in the middle of the night, or in the living room, or in the bathroom, or when questions come up and things only get answered if the right questions are asked. It's a real sharing, and a real transition toward beginning to rebuild.
Kristin Carey: So powerful. I've been part of many, many therapeutic disclosures, and it really is a sacred space. Janice, what you said, that it's not what happens in the middle of the night, not what happens when you ask the right question, makes my heart skip a beat. I think of all the couples I've heard of where one person has had some kind of sexual addiction or unwanted sexual behavior. Inevitably there are lies and secrets involved, and there's what we call the dribble-out or trickle-out disclosure, which is what you were describing. Can you explain why that is so damaging? You've already described how different it is from a full therapeutic disclosure, but if you want to elaborate.
Janice Caudill: Well, for the person seeking the truth, the partner, it usually comes about through her effort, her questions, and often from asking the same question fifteen different ways before something finally trickles out. It's a bit like a criminal procedure where you have to break somebody down, and usually only a tiny kernel of truth comes out, quite often what the secret keeper thinks is already known. Then the partner does all this work and hears, "Now you know everything." Okay, now that I know it, I can start my healing process. And a week later, two weeks later, three months later, the scab is ripped off completely when you go through it again. Each time, the scar tissue builds, and each time "now you know everything" is trusted less and less. Each time, more healing time is added: to the partner's healing, the addict's healing, and the coupleship's. And even if a partner can eventually get all the little pieces of truth over time, it takes a great deal of effort, and the way the truth is gotten does not restore trust. The formal therapeutic full disclosure respects the sacredness of it, and it's done in a way that repairs both the fact that there wasn't truth and, to some degree, the way it was given.
Kristin Carey: I love it. There are so many more questions rolling around in my head, because this is so important. Dan, could you explain how a therapeutic disclosure is different from confession? For listeners from a conservative Christian background, confession is a really important part of our healing as believers. So how is a full therapeutic disclosure different?
Dan Drake: Well, this is the flip side. On one side we have these dripped-out, dribbled-out, staggered disclosures. On the other, sometimes I hear about something well-meaning: people go to a retreat or a conference, or they get some inspiration through friends, accountability groups, or even church groups, and they share their story. They feel a lot of freedom from sharing it with other men, and then they feel, "Now I have this responsibility," or this newfound freedom, and "I want to share this with my wife when I come home from the retreat." It's good intention; they've realized the freedom of it and how helpful it can be. But sometimes people do a confession that's a kind of litany. Instead of a paired process where both people feel contained and supported, it's dumping all the disclosing person's stuff onto the partner. To me, if I'm confessing before God, the confession is really for me. God doesn't need it; God's bigger than me, obviously. If I'm confessing, it's for my own healing, so God can do that work within me. A disclosure isn't just healing for the disclosing person. It's healing for the partner and for the coupleship. That's the big difference: the confession is really about me, me feeling better while I dump all this onto my partner, and she feels ambushed. All of a sudden there's an onslaught of information, which may be helpful for her to know, but it completely traumatizes her and catches her off guard.
Kristin Carey: In contrast, I've told people I've encouraged to go through a disclosure process, "Yes, it sounds really painful, but it's like scheduling surgery with a skilled surgeon instead of a back-alley operation with a dirty scalpel." That's the visual for me.
Dan Drake: I love that. We use that analogy all the time. I think it's perfect. Say it's a cancerous tumor: you want to make sure you get the whole thing out, so you don't start to heal up and then realize, "Oh no, we still have to get more of it." But you also don't want to take more than you need. I think that's part of what this process is, and why the skill involved matters so much. I think the surgery analogy is a perfect one. Go ahead, Janice, I can tell you've got something.
Janice Caudill: It's actually an analogy we use in the workbooks we created. We also use the analogy of a natural disaster, an earthquake. An earthquake can be measured by its intensity, and by its impact. If you live somewhere like San Francisco, where the infrastructure is really prepared for it, a fairly large earthquake might do minimal damage. If you're in my home state of Kentucky, even a relatively minor earthquake is going to topple everything, because we're not typically prepared. What you can control, to some degree, in a formal therapeutic full disclosure is the impact. You control the impact by helping prepare people to do it in the healthiest way possible. Dan knows I like research; I like surveys. In APSATS (the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists) surveys about disclosures, what we know is that, on a ten-point scale, the partner's level of emotional pain at the initial discovery, when you finally get it, "Oh my God, this is what's going on", even if it takes only a few words, is typically about 9.64. That's actually higher than the highest recorded earthquake in history.
Kristin Carey: That's not surprising.
Janice Caudill: And for disclosures, including ones that are average and ones that aren't well done as well as ones that are, it's 7.7 on average. That's still a major earthquake.
Kristin Carey: It is.
Janice Caudill: But it begins the process of repairing some of the damage of the discovery, and of the power struggles around truth that can happen between couples before the disclosure.
Kristin Carey: What do you think are the most common objections, especially from Christians, spiritual leaders, or counselors who aren't specifically trained in sex addiction and betrayal trauma? What are the most common objections to doing a therapeutic disclosure?
Janice Caudill: Dan, do you want me to take the partner side, and you take the addict side?
Dan Drake: Sure.
Janice Caudill: On the partner side, from Dan's and my own research, one is: I'm afraid of what's unknown, that it might be more than I can handle. (In our research the partners are almost exclusively women.) For some, it's: I'm afraid of having to hear all the things I've already heard, and it'll be too much to hear it all together. But the biggest one is: I'm afraid he'll still lie.
Kristin Carey: Okay. I do want to hear Dan's objections too, but how do we handle that? Can't he just lie again in a therapeutic disclosure? Do you include a polygraph as part of your encouragement in the process?
Janice Caudill: I don't require it, but yes. I encourage it. I'm openly a polygraph girl, for lots of reasons.
Kristin Carey: How about you, Dan? Are you a polygraph guy?
Dan Drake: I will say I'm a polygraph guy. I leave the choice up to every couple that goes through this; it's not really my place, and people do a lot of reading on polygraphs online. I understand it's a controversial topic in our field. But over the years I've seen them be very valuable for both parties, not just for the partner. When the person doing the disclosing knows the polygraph is there, they really do a deep dive into the preparation. They want to make sure they turn over every stone. They give their full effort, where otherwise they might do a "good enough" job that may not be as detailed or specific. They get real motivation when they know there's a polygraph. And (we could talk for hours about polygraphs, by the way) there's also the situation where someone earlier in their recovery may still be in a fog as they come out of their behaviors. They may not remember everything perfectly (not that anyone does), and they may have memory gaps or compartmentalized information. So if we're doing a disclosure early on, which is a whole other question, when to do it...
Kristin Carey: Yes, that is a question. Go ahead.
Dan Drake: ...we'll start with this one. If we're doing it early, there's a chance he (and I say "he" because that's often the case, though the person disclosing could be any gender) does the prep work, does the disclosure, and afterward realizes, "Man, I forgot this thing. Something happened, and as I'm further into recovery and my integrity is more fully online, I remember more." Now what does he do? Does he keep it secret from his partner? "Oh shoot, there was this thing I forgot to say. If I share it, then what happens?" I've found that if the person has done the polygraph, the partner is more likely to believe afterward that this was recovered truth rather than withheld truth.
Kristin Carey: Yes. There's a big difference.
Dan Drake: Absolutely. That's a big benefit I've seen of a polygraph. Plus, the willingness to do it says: "Your safety is so important to me, wife, spouse, partner, that whatever you need to heal, I'm going to do." I might feel comfortable: "I've got nothing to hide, nothing to fear." Or this may be scary in and of itself, and that's okay. It's normal to be afraid of the polygraph. I get it. But we're doing fidelity polygraphs, not forensic polygraphs. Big difference. It gives the person an opportunity to tell the full, honest truth, not to try to catch them in a lie. Everyone wants this to succeed. So anyway, I'm a polygraph guy. That's the short of it.
Kristin Carey: And you know what? I'm a polygraph girl too, so we're going three for three, because I also think it's very powerful. I've seen addicts who say, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad I have this." It's like a backup for when that little voice in my head says, "Just this once. What's the big deal? She'll never know." No, she will. A lot of couples do a maintenance follow-up polygraph every year, not a full disclosure, just a check. For some guys it's the most legitimate form of accountability. I think that's a good way of looking at it. Sorry, go ahead, Janice.
Janice Caudill: I was going to say, I don't think it's just some guys. In the research Dan and I did, the difference isn't big enough to be statistically significant, but when we rate who gets the biggest gains from a polygraph, it's not the partner. It's the addict.
Kristin Carey: Which is so interesting. And when partners find out that a polygraph is a legitimate option, at first they're like, "Wait, what? This is a thing?" Because it's not widely known that you can have it as part of your therapeutic process. It's so relieving: "I can finally take off my detective hat and leave this in the hands of the professionals."
Dan Drake: Can I say one thing on that? Janice, I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but I love the way you talk about the burden. There's a burden of truth here, and I think Janice explains it really well, polygraph or not. Would you mind sharing that? You talk about who's going to carry the greater consequences.
Janice Caudill: Right. Everybody's worried about a false positive. I think the stats are about 87% accuracy. So there's a legitimate concern: "I could take this, tell the truth, and not pass." That's true, and we have to be sensitive to it.
Kristin Carey: Can I ask you a question, though? If it's a good polygrapher, can't they keep pressing until they get there, or re-test at a later date?
Janice Caudill: That figure is from a meta-study. I think it's easier just to accept that that's life. It's like an X-ray or an MRI: it's not 100% going to catch things, and that's reality. I don't want to invalidate that it's a legitimate concern for somebody stepping up to take a polygraph. But what people forget is: who holds the consequences if he doesn't? The partner is left sitting there, sometimes having to try to become a human lie detector. And you can't be a human lie detector. There's always this doubt, particularly given the kinds of things that go on in the addiction, and in recovery. My God, recovery is sometimes harder than before. With the gaslighting, partners get really doubtful of, or disconnected from, their own intuition. So polygraphs help with more than the obvious. They really help a partner begin to reconnect with her own intuition and say, "I don't have to be a human lie detector anymore." That's crazy-making; it strips us of our soul. So I think it's really important to acknowledge that I understand the concerns many professionals, and many of our couples, have about the possible negative implications of a polygraph. But if you choose not to do it, you're leaving that entire burden of uncertainty on the partner's back.
Dan Drake: Can I make my pitch to men here, real quick?
Kristin Carey: Please.
Dan Drake: Is that okay?
Kristin Carey: Absolutely, yes.
Dan Drake: For those listening: we hear all kinds of things, and I get it. Something like a polygraph, which we're talking about right now, or disclosure, for that matter, is always an individual decision. It's always going to be your choice. Sometimes men tell me they feel backed into a corner, like they don't have a choice: it's an ultimatum, "Either you do this or I'm done." What I'd really encourage you to see is that all of this is about safety. It's re-establishing a foundation of honesty and truth in the relationship. It's about helping your partner feel safe and then, ultimately, starting to build trust back. So if the polygraph is one thing your partner is asking for, as a way to start feeling safer, then doing whatever it takes to show you're willing to help her heal is, to me, a small ask. I hear some people say, "Man, if we're at the point where you need a polygraph, is this even worth it? I can't believe we're there." They feel controlled, or backed into a corner. But the reality is, if you're like most couples, your partner got blindsided by discovery. She didn't know what was coming, and she's trying to figure out where the bottom of this is. She's free-falling, trying to find a foundation of truth and where the bottom lands. All of this is really a way of establishing a new foundation in the relationship. So my strong recommendation is to take that into consideration. Out of our own fear of doing something scary or challenging, we sometimes want to discount all this and find reasons not to do it. We hear that all the time. I'll say it: I thought it was all extreme when I first started this work. A disclosure with a polygraph sounded like a lot, pretty extreme. I never set out to write a book or work on resources on disclosure with anybody. And yet I've seen the value of this process so much over the years that I'm so grateful Janice and I could work on this and provide a safe way through the journey. So that's my quick pitch for the men.
Kristin Carey: I love it. Listeners, we'll have links to the books Janice and Dan have written. There are multiple books and workbooks: for professionals, for the partner, and for the addict, correct?
Dan Drake: Correct.
Kristin Carey: Awesome. So what are your suggestions for best practices? Say there are therapists listening, or a pastor who's thinking, "I'm not sure I even want to bring this up with the couple sitting in my office telling me they have this issue." If a couple is going through betrayal trauma and doesn't know where to go or what to do, why would you recommend they seek a disclosure, and how do they go about getting one? How do they find somebody who can do it? And then, what are the best practices within a disclosure, for the therapists listening who conduct them? That was like a four-part question. Is that too much?
Janice Caudill: Yeah, do it. Go for it.
Dan Drake: Okay, I'll try to start. Before best practices: when is disclosure on the table, and when do I start bringing it up? First, partners often find out about the process and bring it up to me. They may have already researched it: "So what's a disclosure, and how do we do this?" If it's already coming up, then clearly I'm going to talk about it. And if a couple comes in and the partner is asking so many questions, firing them at all hours of the night, constantly trying to understand what's going on and get to the bottom of it, that's when we'll try to triage a bit, so we have a contained way of getting those questions answered rather than at 3 a.m., when nobody's at their best. That's when we'll move toward a disclosure process. Those are a couple of big indications that we're heading for a disclosure.
Janice Caudill: It sounds like, Dan, you answered from the professional's perspective. To that I'd add: ideally we'd like somebody with some sobriety behind them.
Kristin Carey: How much?
Janice Caudill: Ideally, a minimum of about three months... yeah, I'm getting there, I know where you're going, Dan.
Dan Drake: All right.
Janice Caudill: ...partly just because of memory.
Dan Drake: For sure.
Janice Caudill: But I also work with and guide addicts, and I've seen this as the addict's guide, as the partner's guide, and as the couple's guide. There's a surprising little phenomenon: they get close to three months, and then all of a sudden there's a relapse. There are times when it becomes really apparent that if we wait for that, this partner is going to be a very, very old woman before truth is ever restored. So sometimes I've recommended and participated in disclosures when that hasn't been the case, and I've been really surprised how often the disclosure prompts finally getting sober. I don't think real healing begins until truth is restored. I've also seen addicts who thought they'd told everything, because they'd done it spontaneously. But (you've probably seen this, Dan) you see the look in their eye as you're working on the document with them: "Oh, you just remembered something, didn't you?" You can see the compartments start to open. And if I step into the shoes of a partner looking for this process, I want to work with somebody who knows both sex addiction and partner betrayal trauma.
Dan Drake: Absolutely.
Kristin Carey: So how do our listeners find somebody? Obviously, you two do these, and we'll have your contact information. But in general... I use Psychology Today a lot to find somebody who does EMDR, but I don't think there's any tool you can use to find somebody who does disclosure.
Dan Drake: No. Sorry, sorry, I cut in.
Kristin Carey: No, you're good.
Dan Drake: We put in some questions to ask your professional. In fact, a big choice we talked about when writing these books was: is this just for therapists, or could clergy use them, or coaches? In our opinion, there are some things a therapist would be better equipped to deal with, but we think this could be professionally guided by a pastoral counselor or a coach, as long as it's done within a certain framework and done safely. There are trainings you can do for this.
Janice Caudill: Dan, I'll remind you, too, that in the appendix of volume one, for partners, we put resources: organizations, with a little grid of what types of training they offer, including disclosure trainings. For partners, I think it's maybe a bit more important right up front, in the early stages of looking for a therapist, a coach, or support, to know a little about this, because there are some choice points around the disclosure process that can be really important for partners. If you don't find out until a year in that the therapist or coach you've been working with doesn't do any of those things, that's a real dilemma. Do I start over, or do I compromise on something that was really, really important to me about the truth?
Kristin Carey: That's really good. And I know a couple of the coaches who run our groups do full therapeutic disclosures, like Julie [surname unclear]; you probably know her. So contact us at [website], and we're more than happy to put you in touch with Dan and Janice and other people who can do therapeutic disclosures. You definitely want to see a specialized person with training in this area, rather than going to a back-alley person doing it without training, because it can be very traumatic. But in our experience, for couples who do this and are really in it to rebuild a marriage on a foundation of safety, yes, it's a deeply distressing and often draining day, but it can be the launch pad for a whole new beginning. So what are some of the benefits you see for couples afterward?
Janice Caudill: Dan, do you want to go, or do you want me to go first?
Dan Drake: Why don't you start?
Janice Caudill: I think the biggest benefit for couples is the same as the biggest benefit for the partner and for the disclosing addict: truth. That's even footing. We know what's true, and now we can grieve. We know what the truth is, and now we can assess where our recoveries are. And I have to say this: not everybody tells the truth in the disclosure, which can be very, very painful. But what I talk to partners about is that there's always truth in a disclosure. Sometimes it's the facts written on the page; sometimes it's the behavior. If, say, a polygraph isn't passed, the truth is that's where he is in his recovery. Now, as the partner, I can begin my own healing, and it's only through my own healing that our relationship has the capacity to repair. Part of the imagery we use in the partner's book (volume two is the book on preparing for disclosure) is, at the end, a phoenix rising. Things really do have to burn sometimes. Structures of lies and deceit have to burn before new growth can happen.
Dan Drake: You've said so much, Janice. I'd just add to the disaster metaphor. If I'm rebuilding a house... well, let me back up. This is one of the risks we didn't talk about as much, a reason not to do a disclosure.
Kristin Carey: Yes, please elaborate on that.
Dan Drake: One big thing is that couples may not make it. We have to put that out there. It may be too much. That's a possibility, and it's the fear of a lot of the disclosing people I talk to: "If my partner knows X, Y, or Z, there's no way they could stay with me. They just couldn't." That's a big risk they have to walk into, and it's based on their own negative core beliefs: I'm unlovable, unworthy, defective, a fraud, all the things underneath this. Because I have those negative core beliefs, I hide the things I feel ashamed about. I don't want people to know those things about me, because if they really knew me, there's no way they would love me and stay with me. So disclosure confronts the negative core beliefs addicts have about themselves, and they have to trust that their partner is going to stay.
Janice Caudill: And if I'm the partner, and I think you and I have talked about this a lot, Dan, it's: "God, X, Y, and Z are really hard to take, and it's going to take me a while to recover from that. But because the lies are gone, because there's truth, now I have the capacity to..." It's almost always the lies that end the relationship. As ugly as the truth is, it's the starting point.
Dan Drake: Yep, because it's vulnerability. It's finally a step of real intimacy. So, going back to the coupleship: instead of rebuilding a house that's just a facade, one wall that everybody sees with nothing behind it (because that's what the addiction is: I show a certain side of myself to you, to the world, to my community; I'm a pillar of the community, a pastor, a leader; but underneath I feel defective, bad, unworthy, unlovable, and full of shame), we're actually rebuilding a house that's furnished and authentic. There's a sense of authenticity, and relief: I don't have any more secrets. Now I can be truly vulnerable. I might feel that shame at first, but ultimately we can be naked and unashamed with our truth in the relationship. And yes, a disclosure is tough at first, it's traumatic for sure, but most partners leave because of lies, dishonesty, deception, gaslighting, and emotional abuse. They don't leave because of the truth that's shared. Like Janice said, I completely agree. In reality, those core beliefs aren't true, because partners generally do stay after this, hard as it is, because you took the risk to be fully honest and finally give her the gift of truth and transparency. That's what I've seen, and that new coupleship is built on real intimacy, not a facade of intimacy.
Kristin Carey: Yeah. So, Dan, you were...
Janice Caudill: Oh, I'll add one point. It's something I saw very early in my disclosure career that stays with me, from some research APSATS did on the disclosure process. I'm sorry; again, I'm kind of the researcher gal. As a researcher, you really pay attention to anomalies, and a big one is that when people don't have to answer something, they won't. So in the middle of a research survey that says, "If you've never had a disclosure, you can skip the next twenty questions," we had an anomaly: literally hundreds of women who had never had a disclosure were writing in, in that section of the survey. The one that stays with me is "40 years and still waiting." I feel such sadness every time I remember it, because that's not only a partner who isn't living the life she deserves; it's a relationship that can never be what it perhaps has the capacity to be. So there are risks in doing it, and there are gains in doing it.
Kristin Carey: That's a good reminder that there's a risk in not doing it.
Janice Caudill: Huge, huge risk.
Kristin Carey: So what needs to happen within the disclosure itself? I know people have different processes. How much detail do you share? Do you do it as a spreadsheet or as a narrative? Once you're in the room and it's D-Day, disclosure day, what do you recommend?
Janice Caudill: Well, D-Day starts long before the day of truth, at least for partners.
Kristin Carey: We say there are two kinds of D-days: the discovery days, the little D-days when he just tells you things, and then the big D-Day, your disclosure day.
Janice Caudill: I'm going to add a different D, and I'm just making it up: dig deep.
Kristin Carey: I love it.
Janice Caudill: Because what we know about trauma is that almost all trauma is missing certain pieces. Usually it's choice, enough time to prepare, and support. I might be super-prepared for the tsunami that's coming, but at the moment it's about to go over my head, I can't stop it. So the preparation for partners is all about choice. If Dan and I are working together, he's not working blind on the disclosure. In addition to the actual timeline and history of what happened, he has input from the partner. We have a very thorough disclosure needs assessment; I kind of call it a menu. Partners sometimes have no idea what their choices around information actually are, so it's a pretty detailed schematic.
Dan Drake: I can't tell you how helpful that is when I'm preparing someone to share. Let me back up. We often advocate for a written disclosure, though there are different ways this can go; you could do it verbally. We advocate for a written document because it has more structure: there's no room for ad-libbing or going off script. You want as complete a document as possible, and that's more polygraph-friendly. We typically do the disclosing person's history, in whatever format, narrative or timeline, and then I like to add answers to the partner's direct questions, which you can add to after the disclosure; that's fine. So those are the two main parts of the document. How do you do it best? The reality is, I don't know. It's so individual. Every couple is different in what they need. One partner may say, "I need to know chronologically, every single year. I don't want categories." Or instead of bullet points or a timeline, they want more narrative. I'm going to defer a lot to what the partner needs. And if you see these books, don't be alarmed; I know they're big. They got so big because we realized there isn't one way to do it (Janice and I actually do disclosures differently). What we wanted to do was say: here are the different choice points along the way, and here's how you can navigate them. For example, what do we do with the disclosure document before, during, and after the disclosure? You don't want to figure out that conversation afterward; you want to have it ahead of time. There are a lot of different ways this can go, every couple is different, and that's why we try to prepare every couple individually.
Kristin Carey: So what do you do when a partner says, "I want the nitty-gritty details"? This does happen sometimes, and I understand why. What do you do with it?
Janice Caudill: If I'm working with that partner, I'm going to want to know why. I'm going to want to vet that question; we have a process I put partners through. Quite often, if a partner wants the nitty-gritty details, there's a reason for it, and the addict or the addict's guide often won't understand it without asking. I wouldn't understand it without asking either. When I do ask, sometimes it's, "Oh, I totally get it. You need to know that piece." Or, "Oh, this is really about checking for lies during recovery: was there deception during recovery?" Once you know that's what it's about, you can ask a narrower question about that. There are ways to get the same information without the details. But sometimes the details themselves are the most important point. If I'm working with a partner, and I know the reason she has to ask about a particular restaurant is that every time she's been there for the last two years, something starts twisting in her stomach, then finding out whether he took an affair partner there lets her be relieved: "Oh my God, I wasn't crazy. My intuition... how wonderful my intuition is." That's a really important detail. So if I'm working with a partner, we're going to understand what it's really about. Are you phrasing the question so it actually gets at what you want? And what's your coping plan if you get the worst possible answer? And guess what: the answer you just gave as the worst possible answer probably isn't the worst possible answer. The worst possible answer is probably "I don't know." How are you going to handle it if you get that? So it's a very thorough coping plan. And what we know about people developing coping plans is that if they need them, for a 7.7-magnitude disclosure earthquake, they handle it a whole lot better. Sometimes the very process of creating a coping plan means you end up not needing it, because you've done some work along the way that changes the very situation you're going into.
Dan Drake: Can I just say, that's one reason I like to advocate, if possible (and I know everybody has different circumstances), in a perfect world, for two support people for a couple: one person preparing each party. All the things Janice would be working on with a partner really help me. If the partner wants to know nitty-gritty details and I don't know why, I may have other questions, or I might guide my person differently. If I know why, I think, "Okay, that's what we're doing." If there's a reason for it, or there's another question behind it, Janice will help that person get to the real question, and then I can help prepare the addict to disclose about it.
Janice Caudill: And that's maybe an area where Dan and I differ a little, because I was kind of the first person to do this in my local area, and I had to develop resources without that second person. I do couples intensives, so sometimes I navigate this as the couples therapist. I'd say about seven out of ten times, that second person isn't absolutely necessary. In fact, sometimes the frustration of two very busy professionals trying to coordinate times becomes maddening. But the other three out of ten times, I really regret not having another person there, when bombs are going off in both places. So I think it really depends on the circumstances. And a little while ago, when you first brought up bullet points versus narrative, I smiled a bit, because that's actually an area where Dan and I differed. As the person who did more work with the partner, I was thinking about how it looks and how it sounds. So there was a bit of a running debate between Dan and me early on, until I tried the bullet points. And darn it, they're faster. It speeds up the process. So my stance with partners is usually: we can do this as a narrative, but it will probably slow things down. What's important to you? And I sometimes find, depending on the level of manipulation in a relationship, that the more words get used, the more chances there are for subtle rationalizations, justifications, minimizations, denial, and blame-shifting.
Dan Drake (?): And of course you're scanning for that; you're reading it and scanning for it. But I'm also not their partner. I try to read it as if I were the partner, what I might hear in it, but I'm not them, and I don't know what the little triggers might be. I'm doing my best. So there's not one way this has to go; I think that's one thing we wanted to be clear about. The main thing is to keep it safe for the coupleship. And I firmly agree it's a sacred experience. It's beautiful what can happen. It's difficult, yes, but it's beautiful for couples to sit together in this healing space where the partner is hearing this information and the addict is sharing it. It can be really beautiful.
Janice Caudill: Yes, but I'd say sacred isn't necessarily the same as a Hallmark movie.
Kristin Carey: Oh gosh. It's absolutely no Hallmark movie.
Dan Drake (?): That's for sure.
Janice Caudill: I think that's also why it's important to have somebody with training and experience. I do couples intensives, and I could navigate something that looked and sounded fantastic, like a scene you might see in a movie: "Here's the truth." I could talk about how broken I am, how much shame I was in. I could probably do a pretty good job of creating a real emotional experience. But what sometimes happens in those really wonderful emotional experiences is that the actual truth gets pushed to the side, and maybe, if I'm the partner, three weeks later I realize, "Wait a second, I responded more to his feelings than to my own." So I just want to say...
Kristin Carey: And her empathy gets exploited, if it's all about an emotional narrative. I've often told couples, "You're not going to hear 'I'm sorry I did this, I did this, I'm sorry for that.' It's not an apology. It's the truth, just getting the truth out there." My husband, when he prepared guys, would have them make a spreadsheet first, to categorize behaviors by year, and then share it in bullet form. It's so much less about exploiting her empathy for how he feels about what he did, and more about her being able to hear the truth. And the truth sets us free, does it not?
Janice Caudill: It does. But the truth hurts, so you have to prepare to hear it.
Kristin Carey: It does, yes.
Janice Caudill: And that's the second leg of the work for partners: preparing themselves to be able to hear the truth. If I live where there are hurricanes, and one is coming at me and I've got three days, I'm going to be boarding things up and getting supplies. I'm going to put a lot of effort into preparing so I can withstand it as well as possible. The preparation the partner does for the disclosure is for herself. There's a lot of emotional regulation, self-regulation work you can do to prepare. And the beauty of it is that when you prepare yourself, once the disclosure is over, you still have yourself, at a stronger, more sustainable level.
Kristin Carey: Well, thank you both so much for sharing your wisdom and expertise. I know this is going to benefit our listeners so much, and I'm so grateful you took time out of your busy schedules to spend this time with me.
Janice Caudill: I loved being with you. So grateful to be here.
Dan Drake: Thanks so much for what you do, Kristin.
Kristin Carey: Thanks, guys.
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Conversations: Disclosure with Janice Caudill
In this conversation, Janice Caudill joins Dan Drake, Wendy Conquest, Jeanne Vattuone, and Tim Stein to discuss therapeutic disclosure in recovery from sex addiction.
Listen on Podbean (opens in a new tab)
Transcript: Conversations: Disclosure with Janice Caudill
Jackie Pack: This is the Thanks for Sharing podcast, the podcast where we explore all things recovery, healing, and relationship. Remember to subscribe and download episodes in the iTunes Store, Google Play, or on the Podbean app. And while you're there, I'd love a review.
Hi everyone, welcome to Thanks for Sharing. I'm Jackie Pack, your host. Today on the podcast I have two guests, Janice and Dan. I'm going to read their bios so you can be impressed by both of them before we get into talking.
Janice Caudill is a family psychologist in private practice in McKinney, Texas. She is a certified sex addiction therapist supervisor, a certified clinical partner specialist supervisor, a certified partner recovery therapist and intimacy anorexia therapist, a somatic experiencing practitioner, and a certified Daring Way facilitator. She uses EMDR and strength-based approaches in her work. Janice treats sex addiction and related betrayal trauma. She specializes in helping partners and couples heal in the wake of intimate deception. She offers individual, couple, and group traditional outpatient therapy, as well as intensives for partner trauma and for couples seeking to rebuild trust after betrayal. She also treats intimacy anorexia. Dr. Caudill is the clinical director of McKinney Counseling and Recovery, as well as Intensive Recovery Coaching. She is a founding board member and current vice president of the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS). She is also the author and co-author of workbooks preparing partners in recovery and addicts for a professionally guided full disclosure. She can be reached at drjanicecaudill.com (C-A-U-D-I-L-L), and the website for her workbooks is disclosurehope.com.
So that's Janice. Let's talk about Dan now. Dan Drake is the founder and clinical director of Banyan Therapy Group in Los Angeles, California. He is a certified sex addiction therapist supervisor and a certified clinical partner specialist supervisor, and he is EMDR trained. He received two master's degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary, in marital and family therapy and in theology. Dan uses his training and specializations to treat sex addicts, their partners, and their families in his group practice. In addition to his clinical background, he has taught and spoken domestically and internationally. His passion is to help his clients restore relational, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wholeness to their lives. His website is banyantherapy.com (B-A-N-Y-A-N). So welcome, Dan and Janice.
Dan Drake: Thanks, Jackie, for having us on.
Jackie Pack: I saw Dan a couple of weeks ago. We were at the IITAP symposium in Arizona; I got to talk with him and sit in on your panel discussion about disclosure. Janice, you weren't able to make it, but I saw some of your recorded material there in the panel. I'm glad to talk to you today.
Janice Caudill: Good morning.
Jackie Pack: So let's talk a little, because you two just recently had your workbook on disclosure published, right?
Dan Drake: Correct.
Jackie Pack: Talk to me about how that project came about, and what made you want to write a workbook on disclosure.
Dan Drake: Janice, do you want to take this one, or do you want me to do it?
Janice Caudill: Why don't you start, and I'll join in.
Dan Drake: Okay. First of all, Jackie, thank you so much for having us on. It's a real honor to be here. Also, I know Hope Ray did an amazing podcast with you a number of weeks back, so we don't need to reinvent the wheel on some of this. I think she said some amazing things about disclosure, so if anyone hasn't heard that podcast, go check it out. Most of us get along, right? We all respect each other. We're competitive with each other sometimes, but I think we're a good group of people.
How did this come about? Janice, another colleague, and I were working on another project, and one of the chapters was on disclosure. We said, "Let's see what resources we already have for disclosure," and we put them all out on a table. Mind you, this was about two or three years ago.
Janice Caudill: Yeah.
Dan Drake: We put them out on the table and said, "Well, we've got a lot here. This might be enough for a little workbook." And here we are a few years later, and what started as a little workbook turned into a massive undertaking: working through how clients prepare for the full disclosure process. We thought it would be a little thing, but we kept adding things along the way: "Oh, there's this missing piece, or this thing to add." Ultimately it became this massive project to walk through the whole process. So that's where we started. From my perspective, the disclosure process is so nuanced, and every couple approaches it differently. What was great about working with Janice was that we do things differently in our practices around disclosure, too. So we had to find a common language for the two of us: what our approach was going to be, or at least how we'd start facilitating these conversations about disclosure. Ultimately, what we have isn't the answer. It's more a way to help couples come to their own answer for how their disclosure is going to look. That's our journey with this. It was a really rich time, difficult at times, but really rewarding.
Jackie Pack: I'd imagine it would be an interesting perspective, two therapists coming together with their own ways of doing things and trying to put it together into something that benefits the clients.
Janice Caudill: Right. And I'll add that we tried to design the workbooks so they're useful if only one party is using them, but I think they work best when both parties, addict and partner, are using them. And there was a bit of a parallel process for Dan and me in creating the workbooks, because there were things we did slightly differently, or the timing was different. It really required us to ask: what are the implications of this? If you do it this way, what resources does the partner need to be made aware of? I don't think we quite realized it at the time, but our process of working together was a bit of a parallel process for how the partner and addict may work together toward a much more collegial disclosure process. As I read some of Dan's material, I realized, "Oh, I've got to go add this for the partner." And some of what I was preparing the partner for, he realized he needed to add to the addict workbook, so there was understanding along the way. It turned out to be much more of a parallel process than either of us had intended. In hindsight I'm really glad, because it gave us much more awareness of what it would be like to sit in either client's shoes, and what pieces really needed to dovetail in each workbook so they actually work together.
Jackie Pack: In that process, did you find there were some common misperceptions, or common things that got missed or skipped over?
Janice Caudill: Do you mean that we've seen in our clients, or things that got skipped over in our process and that we realized we'd missed?
Jackie Pack: Either. Maybe things therapists miss or hadn't considered, or misperceptions couples have about the disclosure process.
Janice Caudill: Well, the first part of the workbook is basically an educational description of what disclosures generally are and what they can be. In that section we include the misconceptions we see in each party: what misconceptions partners have about the addict's process and preparation, and vice versa. For example, one thing I included for the partner is an awareness of how long it can actually take to get a written disclosure on paper if you're doing it through an outpatient therapy process, and the things that can interfere, which in my experience is usually what's going on between the couple. There's a sort of myth among partners: "If he's not going to lie, why can't he just sit down and write it in one sitting?" So there are the practical awarenesses, and also letting them know that the process is more than just getting it on paper. It can take quite a while, and that's where the really great growth is, in terms of breaking through denial and cognitive distortions. So on my end, it's having the partner really aware of what the process is like on the other side. Dan, what comes to mind for you?
Dan Drake: I think it's helpful to look at what I hear commonly. Just so anyone listening knows, there are two workbooks. Janice took the lead on the partner prep workbook, and I took the lead on the addict's, or disclosing party's, workbook. A common thing I hear from those looking at a full disclosure from the disclosing side is the belief, or misconception, that if I tell my partner everything, it's going to destroy the relationship: that it's the truth that will destroy it. That makes sense on one level, especially if you look at the core beliefs many addicts have about themselves: I'm bad, I'm defective, I'm unlovable, I'm not good enough. That leads to the assumption that if people knew all of me, they would leave me. And what we're asking in a disclosure is to say, "Here's all of me," the dark stuff you didn't want to share with anybody, that you were going to take to the grave. And now we're saying this is actually what's going to heal your relationship. So it takes some faith that once I share the truth, that's what will heal the relationship, not kill it. But over and over again, what we've seen is that you can't rebuild a house without a new foundation when the whole old foundation comes crumbling down. The foundation we're trying to build is truth. And over and over I hear from partners, "I can handle the truth, but I can't handle the continued lies, deception, or gaslighting." So I wanted to make it really clear that I understand where the belief comes from, a lot of times negative core beliefs. Yet what ultimately undermines or kills a relationship isn't the truth; it's the continued lies. Partners can handle a lot of information. We can't predict what's going to happen with a disclosure, but it's not usually the truth that ends things. It's the emotional abuse, the gaslighting, all those other patterns.
Another thing that really struck me is the wait time. If I'm preparing the disclosing party, it can take, even in the best case, multiple revisions of the disclosure document, maybe ten revisions or more. But it was helpful to see the survey APSATS did, which Janice was a big part of, about partner distress leading up to disclosure. Was it a scale of zero to ten, or one to ten, Janice?
Janice Caudill: One to ten.
Dan Drake: One to ten: one being no distress, ten being the worst thing you can imagine. For the partners in the survey, the distress level at discovery was 9.6. That high is obviously so distressing, completely catastrophic. And at least in my brain, I'd think disclosure would be really high up there too. But what we actually found was that the wait time between discovery and disclosure was a 9.2 level of distress for partners, and the disclosure itself was a 7.7. So the disclosure itself was less distressing than the wait. For anyone listening: I get that it's hard to commit to this process, but the more you drag your feet, the more pain and potential trauma you put your partner through. You want to do this right, but we also want to get it done as quickly as we can, in a safe way. So I thought that was really important too.
Jackie Pack: When you're working with addicts preparing for disclosure, do you try to give them... I mean, it's hard to give a timeframe, but do you say, "Between this many months and that many months, we need to be giving this to partners"?
Dan Drake: Yeah, I try. Again, every situation is different, but I've learned the hard way and become more of a coach in the process. I tend to set the disclosure date and work backwards. I set a date maybe two months from now, and then I work backwards with deadlines: I need a first round of the disclosure document by this date, I need these things. I make it really practical that way. That also gives me a chance, if the person has difficulty meeting those deadlines, to have a different conversation. I try to build in some time to play with, a bit of a grace period, but it helps me work backwards. I found that if I didn't, it was week after week: "Okay, what work have you done on the disclosure?" "Well, I've been thinking about it. I pulled up the resources you gave me, and I did a little work." Week after week after week, and I didn't have much leverage to work with. Most of us respond to deadlines. That's helped me do it right, but also do it as quickly as we can.
Janice Caudill: Right. And that's one area where being exposed to Dan's process is actually changing how I work. I started out solo in private practice, in a city that really didn't have a recovery community, so I evolved into doing a little of it all, and at times I also navigate the addict's preparation. But the piece Dan does, making part of that process happen outside of session, much as a lawyer might do work out of session: I really see the benefits of doing it that way. You can still do the therapy that needs to happen in session, but it picks up the pace significantly on getting the disclosure document done. That's one way my practice is evolving by being exposed to my own workbook, and to informing partners that there's another option here as well. It's a really nice additional way of working, different from the way we typically work as therapists, and I think it really speeds up the process.
Jackie Pack: Yeah, sure. Okay. I had one question, and listening to you talk I now have another one, but let me ask the first one first. Dan talked about some of the prep work he does preparing the addict for disclosure. Janice, what do you add in terms of prepping partners?
Janice Caudill: For me, there are two large categories in prepping partners. The first is prepping partners for the scope of what the information might be. Quite often, in the surveys Dan and I created for this, a theme came out that partners felt blindsided in the disclosure itself, because they didn't have enough knowledge about how big the scope of sexual acting out could be. So some of that is general preparation. Then there's preparation for what we call the content, or the facts, of the disclosure. We have several exercises designed to have the partner assess her needs in terms of the specificity and categories of information she would want, and the types of situations and details she wouldn't. That's a big process, beginning to create and design the structure. So far, when I've done disclosures with colleagues who are prepping the addict, they find it really helpful to have a blueprint of what the partner's needs are.
Then we have a section that prepares her for the independent questions she might want to create and have answered on her own: questions that can be cut and pasted directly into the disclosure document after the timeline, so she knows she's getting her needs met. There's a process for vetting the questions, a bit of a flow chart, for understanding what need is driving the question. Once they figure out the need, quite often the way the question is phrased might change. If it's really about a lie, they ask about the lie rather than about a lot of intimate details of a particular event. It also prepares them for coping: how are they going to cope? They have a coping plan for each question, for getting the worst possible answer versus the best possible answer, or, if the fear turns out not to be true, for how they actually let go of it. That's the content part.
But what I think is really important, in my experience with partners, is that often what causes the greatest damage is not the information shared during the disclosure, even if it's fully complete and quite difficult. It's the way the information is shared. So part of the addict's preparation is: if shame comes up, how is he going to handle it? We prepare her for what we call the behavioral truth of the disclosure. And part of her own preparation is how she's going to handle the truth, because a 7.7 earthquake is a major one.
Jackie Pack: Talk more about that behavioral truth.
Janice Caudill: Well, in terms of the partner preparing for it: I have ten years as a somatic psychotherapist, building a lot of tools for regulation. So part of her preparation is that if the information is really, really difficult, she has already practiced how she's going to stabilize herself emotionally. How does she prepare emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, so she comes through the storm of the disclosure in a much better place than she otherwise might? Dan, maybe it would be better for you to speak to the behavioral truth for the addict.
Dan Drake: There are two main things with a disclosure. There's the content. There are different ways of doing this, but essentially a disclosure is a transfer of information: sharing the truth after betrayal, what are we dealing with? Usually we do it through a document, and that's the content. The document can look a lot of different ways; different clinicians facilitate it differently. I also like to include the partner's questions in it, if he or she has questions they want included, especially if you're adding a polygraph; that can be helpful. So that's the content. The behavioral truth, from the disclosing party, is: Am I getting defensive? If I collapse into shame, do I tend to take a victim stance and pull my partner into rescuing me? Do I tend to shut down, withdraw, or retreat? We try to work on those things before the disclosure, to really try to hold the truth. I even work with clients on their posture, how they're sitting. It's natural to want to close up and protect yourself, because I'm sharing this information and I don't know what my partner will do with it. But really try to take an open posture, an open stance. And the behavioral truth is: if the disclosing party goes into shame, can I catch myself and redirect, and really try to hold more space for my partner, emotionally, mentally, physically? So the partner can see not just what's shared in the document, but how the disclosing party is approaching the session itself. Do we have to push the session back because they didn't meet the deadlines? That's truth too. Their willingness to go through it. Are they pushing back, resisting, getting defensive and reactive? Those things share information too.
Jackie Pack: That's great. So talk to me too: like you said, you had a lot of resources that turned into a workbook. What was your hope for the workbook, or what did you think you were offering that others maybe haven't?
Dan Drake: Do you want to answer that, Janice?
Janice Caudill: Yes, I'll start, and then you can join in and clean it up for me. Part of it is just a really basic understanding of what the process looks like. I know as therapists we all have little pockets of pieces, but what I tend to see in practice is a lot of mystery or misconception about what the process is and what it looks like, depending on who you sat next to in a twelve-step group. I do intensives, so I have people who come to me from all over the country, and it's clear there are very different standards, from places where disclosures look only one way to areas of the country where no disclosures are happening. So we really wanted the process demystified for anybody using these workbooks. We wanted them to know that one size doesn't fit all, and that there are a lot of choice points in the process. Particularly for partners: when betrayal happens, choices were made that affected them without their input or consent. Part of my trauma training has always been that good trauma healing has to include choice wherever it can. So we include a lot of choice points around the disclosure process, so the couple can really and truly design what meets their needs, with lots of informed consent about the pros and cons of any given choice. What I wanted for partners is for them to understand how they can better get the information they need in order to heal, and how they can figure out what their own needs are around that. I wanted them to be better prepared for the process. For example, one of the big discussion points Dan and I had in creating the workbooks was around the use of polygraphs...
Jackie Pack: Everyone wants to talk about the polygraph.
Janice Caudill: Would you like me to hold that for later, or shall I go on with it?
Jackie Pack: Were you about done with what you were talking about, or are we ready to move into the polygraph?
Janice Caudill: I think I'm closing up on that piece. What I wanted is for partners to be prepared for the possibilities of what could happen, and to have figured out how they're going to cope with them in ways that lead to less damage. I live in a part of the country where we sometimes have pretty major storms, and when we know a storm is coming, we're in the store getting supplies to shore ourselves up in case we have to hunker down for quite a while. I wanted partners to feel they had done enough planning to navigate it better, including choices around the polygraph: whether to use it or not, and if so, when. And the other piece, again using data from the surveys we created along the way, is to be prepared that if you're using a polygraph, your coping plan has to start, in my experience, 24 to 72 hours before the polygraph happens. Quite often what a polygraph does is generate a trickle of information. Partners know to prepare for the disclosure itself, but they don't necessarily know that they also have to prepare for what they'll do when information comes up that's generated by a polygraph.
Dan Drake: Can I say one more thing before we move into polygraphs? There are a number of resources on disclosure out there, some really wonderful ones already. Our goal wasn't to reinvent the wheel; there are resources for clinicians, some really good material. What we wanted was a step-by-step, comprehensive guide to the journey. That includes: What the heck is disclosure? Is it right for me? What are the benefits and the risks? Like Janice mentioned, we also included survey data. We asked people anonymously who were willing to share their experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we wrote up some of their experiences with disclosure, to provide some support along the way. That's the first third of the workbook: What is disclosure? Is it right for me? How does it fit in my journey? The second third is: how do we prepare for this thing? And the final piece is: okay, now that I've done it, now what? There's a lot in the aftermath. From the disclosing party's side, there's the empathy journey. The disclosure is really the disclosing party sharing their truth, their story. Afterwards, it's a grief journey for the couple, moving from the disclosing party's story to real empathy for the impact this is having on the partner. And from the partner's side, being able to express that impact through an impact statement, an impact letter. So that's where we wanted to go. Sorry, go ahead.
Jackie Pack: I was just going to ask about that first part, "Is disclosure right for me?" Are there contraindications for disclosure? If somebody concludes it's not for them, what are those reasons?
Janice Caudill: One example: there's a little checklist flow chart you can take yourself through. From the partner's perspective, if you're three months into recovery and you want not only all the information but complete validation, understanding, and empathy, that's going to affect the timeline. Not really whether you do a disclosure, but when it gets done. So part of it is more realistic expectations about the disclosure process. We have some caveats, not a yes-or-no "you should or shouldn't," but caveats to think about. If you're in the divorce process, or the relationship has ended, we cover some of those unique situations. We don't make the decision for the reader, but we give a lot of information about the possible downsides of continuing with a disclosure, or of doing it rapidly, depending on your circumstances.
Dan Drake: These may be super obvious, but I'm thinking of a couple of major contraindications. One is if the disclosing party isn't willing to be fully truthful and honest. That seems like a no-brainer, but it happens. I've personally backed out of a disclosure because I felt the person I was preparing was going to share some of the information but not all of it. I can't be part of that, especially if the partner thinks she's getting everything. To me, that's huge. There may also be situations where the disclosing party does want to share, but the partner says, "I don't want it." It's rare, but a number of times, probably fewer than a handful, I've been preparing the disclosing party and at some point the partner says, "I don't want this anymore." I'm not going to push anyone; that's a choice the partner can always make. Then there are medical situations, like pregnancy. That comes up every now and then. If a partner is pregnant, what's the greater damage or the greater good that can come from a disclosure, and when we do it? Also access to trained professionals. You look at the greater harm or good. Do I have fears or concerns about this sensitive information? Like Janice said, if divorce is on the table, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't do a disclosure, but it triggers a number of other questions. What's the point? What's the purpose? And how do we manage the safety and security of it?
Janice Caudill: And I'd add a piece, as a partner advocate. One thing we include in the partner's needs assessment is whether, if the other side is open to it, she wants her guide to have an advance look at the disclosure, and perhaps give input on where it does or doesn't meet the specs. For example, she said, "I absolutely don't want an apology," and I read the document a week before and there's an apology. Or there's obvious blame-shifting...
Dan Drake: Janice, I'm curious about the apology one. Can you give a reason why? I know exactly what you mean, but some people might be confused. Why wouldn't she want an apology in something like this?
Janice Caudill: Because it may not be sincere, or it may actually be based on the disclosing party's needs, where the next step is often asking for forgiveness. The words "I'm sorry" have been used many, many times, and maybe seemed sincere in the moment, but the subsequent behavior showed they weren't genuine. Or they've been used to manipulate her, or they pull her into an emotional response. There's already a lot of emotion in a disclosure, and when you add extra pieces, it can become a bit of a shell game: you get through the disclosure and realize the facts either weren't shared or she can't remember them. So there are a lot of reasons an apology can be problematic in the disclosure process. What I hear more often is partners saying, "I guess I want it if it's genuine." And really and truly, neither her guide nor the disclosing party's guide can look into the heart, mind, and soul of a human being. Nobody can be a human lie detector. So generally, once my partners go through all the ins and outs of it, most of them choose not to have one. And if they've been really clear about that, and in my preview it's sitting right there in the middle of the document, now we've got a problem, because her wishes are being disrespected in the disclosure document. As a therapist, it's really nice that, because of the preparation work, all I have to do is go back and look at what she wanted to happen in this situation, because we've already discussed it. For some partners it may be, "If this gets delayed, it will never happen, so I want to go forward." For others it might be, "Janice, I'd like you to halt the process and respectfully ask the disclosing party and his guide to address the incongruity in the document." I don't like having to make that call, or guess, with a partner about something so important. So it's really helpful that we've already gone over it in the needs assessment, and I know how to respond.
Jackie Pack: Those are great points. I do want to get to the polygraph, and I also want to talk about what happens after disclosure. Is there an order that feels more natural for those two?
Janice Caudill: I'm thinking the polygraph might be a longer discussion; it generates a lot of interest. I can share what happens for the partner in the immediate aftermath of disclosure. Again, we've got lots of coping plans in there, so the process is as structured as it can be, but she's going to grieve. The partner impact statement is part of the process of helping her grieve and come to terms with, and accept, what is and what wasn't, and to begin to figure out the boundaries she needs for herself going forward. Depending on the partner, that may be a very short process, or a lengthy one. But if I had to use one word to describe what happens for the partner afterward, and what I'm working on with her as a therapist at that phase, it's grieving.
Dan Drake: And from the other side, I'd say it's coming to terms with the grieving at first. I hear this notion a lot: "Okay, I went through this whole disclosure process, it was really difficult, I can see the value of it, maybe I feel relieved afterwards. We're done now, right? I gave you what you wanted. Can't we go back to the way things were," or whatever the new normal will be. And then realizing: no, you're never going back to the old relationship. This is building a new relationship, and I don't mean this in a hokey way, but I really do think it can be more beautiful than the old one. It's definitely through grief, though. You have to walk with your partner through grief. For anyone considering it: as you walk through this grief journey with your partner, you help not only your partner heal, but your relationship heal, and ultimately yourself. That's a foreign concept, particularly for the men I work with. They think, "If she's mad or sad, I'm bad," so it means something's wrong if she's not doing well. I often use the analogy of surgery: it's like opening up an infected wound. Maybe you could have lived with it, but you weren't thriving. After surgery there's a recovery period, sometimes short and sometimes long, depending on the surgery. It often gets worse before it gets better, even with surgery. So be prepared, with disclosure, that the feelings that come to the surface for the partner may be more intense: your partner may be angrier, and the emotions may be more volatile for a season. That doesn't mean you're on the wrong track. It does get worse before it gets better. It's like releasing the toxins, releasing the pain; it's part of the healing journey. The more I see the addict, the disclosing party, able to hang in there with their partner and really develop empathy for what their partner has gone through, the more that ultimately helps the relationship heal. I see that as his job: really rebuilding safety and trust.
And I'll just say, Janice mentioned boundaries. There was an obvious oversight at the beginning: it wasn't until a few months ago that I realized I hadn't said anything, from the disclosing party's side, about how to respond to boundaries. I thought, that's a huge oversight. Boundaries are so important, and here's why: they're a gift the partner gives to the addict, saying, "If you do these things, this will help me feel safer. This will help rebuild trust if you're consistent with these things." It's a roadmap toward safety, the way I see it. So consistently following those boundaries, not forgetting them, not hemming and hawing; trying to understand what they are, of course, and whether they're possible. But I think it's such a gift partners can give to the addict, for how to rebuild and move forward.
Janice Caudill (?): And for the addict, having some internal boundaries, right? So that as she goes through this grief process, he doesn't tip into shame and think, "I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have told the whole truth," and take her grief as rejection.
Jackie Pack: That's a great point. Okay. On our professional listserv we just had a really robust discussion about polygraphs, which comes up every so often, and I read it with interest. So let's talk about polygraphs: their role, maybe why a couple would choose not to have one, and their limits.
Dan Drake: I'll start, Janice, and you can obviously jump in. That was something we had to address. I personally have seen the benefit of using the polygraph in my practice. I'll say that when I first started doing this work and people started using that term, I thought, "Whoa, are we kidding? A polygraph?" I thought it was so extreme, to be perfectly honest. But the more I saw the benefit, the more I saw it as essentially a third-party stamp saying that, to the best of our abilities and knowledge, this disclosure is true and complete. When you have years, sometimes decades, of betrayal, deception, and lies, trust obviously gets eroded. To say "We should just start trusting relationally right after a disclosure" feels a little naive. Yes, ultimately the goal is maybe not to rely on something external. But it's a validation, a verification of what's in the disclosure. So I've seen the benefit of using it. Janice, maybe you could talk more about the idea of a fidelity polygraph versus a forensic or criminal polygraph, because I think that's a key point. We're not talking about a criminal forensic polygraph here. We're talking about a fidelity polygraph. It's not what you see on TV, an interrogation where it's "Isn't it true that on this date such and such happened? I knew you were lying." It's really to validate and verify the facts and the truth being shared.
Jackie Pack: Several people on the email thread talked about seeing the polygrapher as a team member, someone who works with fidelity polygraphs, so it's not an adversarial setup.
Dan Drake: Yeah. In my experience, I'm not part of the polygraph itself. It's usually the polygraph examiner and the disclosing party. I come in after it's over, and typically, assuming they've passed, they're laughing together, the guy who just finished the polygraph and the examiner. I always joke, "What's happening in here?" And it's helpful, to make sure this isn't a shaming thing. It's seeing someone as a human being. It's not saying "you're so defective that we have to use this technique." It's that you're a human being, and you're trying to honor your partner and your relationship by saying, "Whatever it takes, so that you can begin to trust and get some sense of safety and honesty again, I'll do." That's what I've seen. I don't know what you'd say about that, Janice.
Janice Caudill: That was the first thing that came to my mind when the question came up: a fidelity polygraph has a different intent and purpose, and a different flow, than a criminal polygraph. In addition to the disclosure surveys Dan and I created, with input from people who've been through the process themselves, I also monitor the surveys for APSATS, and some really interesting write-ins have come in about the polygraph process. By the way, in both the APSATS surveys and in Dan's and my survey of people who've gone through disclosure, the polygraph was, all in all, considered helpful. But the write-ins about times it wasn't, as I recall, tended to say, "We found somebody off the internet." They didn't know how to distinguish between a fidelity polygraph and a criminal polygraph. The polygraph examiner Dan and I consulted about the material in the book actually put in a plea, which we include, about how important it is in a disclosure fidelity polygraph that the examiner work really closely with the therapeutic team, with the guides themselves. Unfortunately, I think the biggest dilemma is that people with that type of experience are a pretty small niche, and the need is growing. But as with everything in the workbook, I treat it as a choice point. For partners, as long as they can accept that it is one tool, I think it can be a really helpful process, particularly if the disclosing party is open to subsequent polygraphs down the road.
Post-disclosure polygraphs, I think, are really helpful for the partner with the fears and questions that come up, maybe when triggered, or generated by anxiety. My partners keep a question journal: they write the question down in the journal. I think it really helps them externalize it, so they're not carrying around the anxiety of the question themselves. When it's time for the polygraph, they go back through their list, and usually they don't even remember having written the vast majority of them. It's a process of helping them distinguish which questions were based on a fear in the moment, versus "This one has been a theme; it's come up multiple times; this might be my intuition telling me something." Overall, I find it helps partners recalibrate their intuition. The dilemma for partners without a polygraph is that they're going through a disclosure because their spouse has lied to them, perhaps repeatedly. If we rely only on the words, that's a bit like the same process that happened before the disclosure. So I think the polygraph can really help, as one component, one tool, to verify some of the information being shared.
On a different note, polygraphs were maybe one of the biggest changes I had to make in my thinking about the disclosure process. For whatever reason, in my part of the country most of my partners want the polygraph after the disclosure. Dan typically does them before.
Jackie Pack: Oh, interesting. I would have assumed afterwards, but okay.
Janice Caudill: And the flow of preparation really gets affected by that, because it means the disclosure document has to be done before the pre-disclosure polygraph can happen. All of a sudden there's a lot more emphasis on the partner getting her needs assessment done and getting her questions to them. It's a very different pacing than I was used to. And we were writing a workbook that gives the choice to put it in either place, depending on the needs of the people involved. So it really changed my thinking, and challenged me to think about the process, the pacing, the preparation for the partner, and how to build in that information. I don't know what that experience was like for you, Dan, because it was a little surprising to you when I said, "No, they always choose to do it afterward."
Dan Drake: Yeah, and maybe it's just the difference between Los Angeles and Texas, but most clinicians I know in Los Angeles tend to do a pre-disclosure polygraph. That's just been the established thing here. There are benefits and risks either way, and I've had some people decide they want to do both, to maximize the benefits. The benefit of a pre-disclosure polygraph is that if the disclosing party doesn't pass, you save the partner the trauma of going through the whole disclosure. It gives another major choice point: do I want to do this or not? Whereas if you do it after the disclosure and the person doesn't pass, the whole disclosure gets called into question. That's one benefit. The risk, as Janice said, is that you have to have a lot, if not the whole disclosure document, established ahead of time. And you're asking the partner to come up with questions when she may not even know what she's supposed to be asking: how do I know what questions to ask until I know what the information is? So that's the drawback of a pre-disclosure polygraph. What was helpful in talking with Janice is that I'm more open now. I don't have a clear-cut answer about which is better, but I have more informed ways to talk about it and give choice. I appreciated learning that from Janice: how we put this into a preparation journey, with the benefits and risks, and what's going to work best for each individual.
But I recognize, as you said, this is always a robust discussion. It brings up a lot of feelings, and I can imagine there are people out there who've been harmed by the process, where it wasn't done safely or was dehumanizing. It's a loaded conversation. I don't mandate polygraphs, but I've seen their value, even for the disclosing party. For example, one major benefit, especially if you're doing a disclosure early on: we know addicts tend to compartmentalize facts, so there are things they don't remember. In the fog of addiction, it's not until you get into recovery, and that can take months, that you really start getting your brain back. If you're doing a disclosure early, it's possible you'll remember things later, acting-out information, major details you may uncover, or as we put it, excavate. So what happens when I remember something else I did, after I've gone through a disclosure? That's a dilemma. What I've found is that if the addict has gone through a polygraph and remembers more later, the partner is more likely to say, "Yes, that was remembered," rather than intentionally withheld. That's a big benefit. It solidifies the foundation of truth from the disclosure. So I'm a proponent of it. But I've also had partners say they want the polygraph, and then a couple of days before the disclosure say, "The fact that he was willing to do it gives me some sense of security, so I'm choosing not to do it anymore." That's rarer, but it's happened. The willingness to go through a polygraph says a lot, compared with someone who researches the pass rates online and focuses their energy on "these aren't perfect tools." What's the behavioral truth that gets shared? Yes, we do need to look at false positives and false negatives; they can happen. But again, like Janice said, it's a tool, not the tool. And we give choice. I think choice is important.
Jackie Pack: Okay, we're almost at the hour, and we've covered so many things. This has been such a robust discussion. Is there anything we haven't covered that you'd want to add?
Janice Caudill: One piece, in terms of the intent of the workbooks: we tried to design them step by step. Not that everybody has to do every step, but so there's good preparation whether you're doing a disclosure fairly early in recovery or much later. The flow of the partner material felt a little harder in that later stance. But it really comes from the belief that one size doesn't fit all, and that coming to terms on the choice points, how you decide the disclosure process and how you handle the aftermath, can actually be some of the first steps toward repairing trust.
Jackie Pack: Which I love, because when I'm doing a disclosure with a couple, the partner often doesn't know what options are available. When you ask how she'd like it, she says, "I don't know, what are the options?" So I think it's great to walk them through that and give examples, "You might want to do this, or maybe not, maybe it looks like this," so they get to make that choice.
Dan Drake: For me, as Janice was sharing, I was thinking my plea would be to the guides, the clinicians, coaches, clergy, whoever is facilitating the disclosure. I hear it over and over in my practice, and we got this information through the surveys: this can go really badly, and a lot of times it goes badly because we as the guides make it go badly, because we can't agree on things. So my plea is that we set aside our pride, clinical pride or whatever it is, and really try to feel and hear where our clients are. There isn't one way this has to go. What's more important is that we're all on the same page about what's going to be most beneficial for the couple in front of us, if we're working as a team of two in the disclosure. I've seen over and over the damage that happens because we as professionals can't agree, and then people get into an argument in the disclosure, or it becomes a power struggle. So my big plea is that we really try to hear where our clients are and what they need. Of course we give guidance and make it as safe as possible, and we use our clinical judgment, but with some humility, respecting the people we're working with. That was so helpful to me in this journey with Janice. One reason it took us so long is that we had to talk through so many issues. We didn't agree on everything, and that's okay. You'll have people who do things differently and don't see eye to eye, but it's the journey of how we have these conversations together and communicate about this stuff, so that ultimately we can be the best for a client. That's what I would say.
Jackie Pack: So we've been talking about this workbook. What's the name of the workbook?
Dan Drake: The disclosing party's is Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth After Sexual Betrayal. That's the full, complete manual for the disclosing party. The full version of the partner's manual will be out shortly; it's not currently on the market. That one is Full Disclosure: Seeking Truth After Sexual Betrayal.
Jackie Pack: And are those both available on disclosurehope.com? How do people access them?
Dan Drake: You can go to disclosurehope.com, or you can go on Amazon and get them. There's a condensed version of the partner book available right now that gives some of the major choice points and some preparation, but Janice has done a ton more work than what's in that book. It's a great resource to start with, to prep for the disclosure.
Jackie Pack: And if people want to get hold of you again, how do they contact you?
Janice Caudill: For me, you can go to drjanicecaudill.com or mckinneycounselingandrecovery.com and contact me from there.
Jackie Pack: Okay. And Dan?
Dan Drake: For me, banyantherapy.com: B-A-N-Y-A-N therapy dot com.
Jackie Pack: Perfect. Thank you so much for your insight. This has been such an easy interview for me; I just got to listen to the two of you. I'm so looking forward to using this book with couples. I think there are so many great things this workbook offers. Thank you for all the hours and energy you put into providing this resource.
Janice Caudill: Well, thanks, Jackie.
Dan Drake: Yeah, thanks for your time, and for your willingness and leadership in this podcast. Appreciate it.
Jackie Pack: All right, good to talk to both of you. I want to remind you at the end of this episode that your story matters. Remember, there's something meaningful in every chapter. Don't wait to share your story until it's finished. Until next time, Jackie.
The legal stuff: this podcast is solely for the purpose of information and entertainment. It does not constitute therapy, nor should it replace competent professional help.
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Preparing for Disclosure
In this episode of Thanks for Sharing Jackie (Pack) talks with Dr. Janice Caudill and Dan Drake about their workbook that helps prepares couples for disclosure. Disclosure can be an important part of couples recovering, healing, and moving forward and it can also go poorly.
Listen on Podbean (opens in a new tab)
Transcript: Preparing for Disclosure
Jackie Pack: This is the Thanks for Sharing podcast, the podcast where we explore all things recovery, healing, and relationship. Remember to subscribe and download episodes in the iTunes Store, Google Play, or on the Podbean app. And while you're there, I'd love a review.
Hi everyone, welcome to Thanks for Sharing. I'm Jackie Pack, your host. Today on the podcast I have two guests, Janice and Dan. I'm going to read their bios so you can be impressed by both of them before we get into talking.
Janice Caudill is a family psychologist in private practice in McKinney, Texas. She is a certified sex addiction therapist supervisor, a certified clinical partner specialist supervisor, a certified partner recovery therapist and intimacy anorexia therapist, a somatic experiencing practitioner, and a certified Daring Way facilitator. She uses EMDR and strength-based approaches in her work. Janice treats sex addiction and related betrayal trauma. She specializes in helping partners and couples heal in the wake of intimate deception. She offers individual, couple, and group traditional outpatient therapy, as well as intensives for partner trauma and for couples seeking to rebuild trust after betrayal. She also treats intimacy anorexia. Dr. Caudill is the clinical director of McKinney Counseling and Recovery, as well as Intensive Recovery Coaching. She is a founding board member and current vice president of the Association of Partners of Sex Addicts Trauma Specialists (APSATS). She is also the author and co-author of workbooks preparing partners in recovery and addicts for a professionally guided full disclosure. She can be reached at drjanicecaudill.com (C-A-U-D-I-L-L), and the website for her workbooks is disclosurehope.com.
So that's Janice. Let's talk about Dan now. Dan Drake is the founder and clinical director of Banyan Therapy Group in Los Angeles, California. He is a certified sex addiction therapist supervisor and a certified clinical partner specialist supervisor, and he is EMDR trained. He received two master's degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary, in marital and family therapy and in theology. Dan uses his training and specializations to treat sex addicts, their partners, and their families in his group practice. In addition to his clinical background, he has taught and spoken domestically and internationally. His passion is to help his clients restore relational, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wholeness to their lives. His website is banyantherapy.com (B-A-N-Y-A-N). So welcome, Dan and Janice.
Dan Drake: Thanks, Jackie, for having us on.
Jackie Pack: I saw Dan a couple of weeks ago. We were at the IITAP symposium in Arizona; I got to talk with him and sit in on your panel discussion about disclosure. Janice, you weren't able to make it, but I saw some of your recorded material there in the panel. I'm glad to talk to you today.
Janice Caudill: Good morning.
Jackie Pack: So let's talk a little, because you two just recently had your workbook on disclosure published, right?
Dan Drake: Correct.
Jackie Pack: Talk to me about how that project came about, and what made you want to write a workbook on disclosure.
Dan Drake: Janice, do you want to take this one, or do you want me to do it?
Janice Caudill: Why don't you start, and I'll join in.
Dan Drake: Okay. First of all, Jackie, thank you so much for having us on. It's a real honor to be here. Also, I know Hope Ray did an amazing podcast with you a number of weeks back, so we don't need to reinvent the wheel on some of this. I think she said some amazing things about disclosure, so if anyone hasn't heard that podcast, go check it out. Most of us get along, right? We all respect each other. We're competitive with each other sometimes, but I think we're a good group of people.
How did this come about? Janice, another colleague, and I were working on another project, and one of the chapters was on disclosure. We said, "Let's see what resources we already have for disclosure," and we put them all out on a table. Mind you, this was about two or three years ago.
Janice Caudill: Yeah.
Dan Drake: We put them out on the table and said, "Well, we've got a lot here. This might be enough for a little workbook." And here we are a few years later, and what started as a little workbook turned into a massive undertaking: working through how clients prepare for the full disclosure process. We thought it would be a little thing, but we kept adding things along the way: "Oh, there's this missing piece, or this thing to add." Ultimately it became this massive project to walk through the whole process. So that's where we started. From my perspective, the disclosure process is so nuanced, and every couple approaches it differently. What was great about working with Janice was that we do things differently in our practices around disclosure, too. So we had to find a common language for the two of us: what our approach was going to be, or at least how we'd start facilitating these conversations about disclosure. Ultimately, what we have isn't the answer. It's more a way to help couples come to their own answer for how their disclosure is going to look. That's our journey with this. It was a really rich time, difficult at times, but really rewarding.
Jackie Pack: I'd imagine it would be an interesting perspective, two therapists coming together with their own ways of doing things and trying to put it together into something that benefits the clients.
Janice Caudill: Right. And I'll add that we tried to design the workbooks so they're useful if only one party is using them, but I think they work best when both parties, addict and partner, are using them. And there was a bit of a parallel process for Dan and me in creating the workbooks, because there were things we did slightly differently, or the timing was different. It really required us to ask: what are the implications of this? If you do it this way, what resources does the partner need to be made aware of? I don't think we quite realized it at the time, but our process of working together was a bit of a parallel process for how the partner and addict may work together toward a much more collegial disclosure process. As I read some of Dan's material, I realized, "Oh, I've got to go add this for the partner." And some of what I was preparing the partner for, he realized he needed to add to the addict workbook, so there was understanding along the way. It turned out to be much more of a parallel process than either of us had intended. In hindsight I'm really glad, because it gave us much more awareness of what it would be like to sit in either client's shoes, and what pieces really needed to dovetail in each workbook so they actually work together.
Jackie Pack: In that process, did you find there were some common misperceptions, or common things that got missed or skipped over?
Janice Caudill: Do you mean that we've seen in our clients, or things that got skipped over in our process and that we realized we'd missed?
Jackie Pack: Either. Maybe things therapists miss or hadn't considered, or misperceptions couples have about the disclosure process.
Janice Caudill: Well, the first part of the workbook is basically an educational description of what disclosures generally are and what they can be. In that section we include the misconceptions we see in each party: what misconceptions partners have about the addict's process and preparation, and vice versa. For example, one thing I included for the partner is an awareness of how long it can actually take to get a written disclosure on paper if you're doing it through an outpatient therapy process, and the things that can interfere, which in my experience is usually what's going on between the couple. There's a sort of myth among partners: "If he's not going to lie, why can't he just sit down and write it in one sitting?" So there are the practical awarenesses, and also letting them know that the process is more than just getting it on paper. It can take quite a while, and that's where the really great growth is, in terms of breaking through denial and cognitive distortions. So on my end, it's having the partner really aware of what the process is like on the other side. Dan, what comes to mind for you?
Dan Drake: I think it's helpful to look at what I hear commonly. Just so anyone listening knows, there are two workbooks. Janice took the lead on the partner prep workbook, and I took the lead on the addict's, or disclosing party's, workbook. A common thing I hear from those looking at a full disclosure from the disclosing side is the belief, or misconception, that if I tell my partner everything, it's going to destroy the relationship: that it's the truth that will destroy it. That makes sense on one level, especially if you look at the core beliefs many addicts have about themselves: I'm bad, I'm defective, I'm unlovable, I'm not good enough. That leads to the assumption that if people knew all of me, they would leave me. And what we're asking in a disclosure is to say, "Here's all of me," the dark stuff you didn't want to share with anybody, that you were going to take to the grave. And now we're saying this is actually what's going to heal your relationship. So it takes some faith that once I share the truth, that's what will heal the relationship, not kill it. But over and over again, what we've seen is that you can't rebuild a house without a new foundation when the whole old foundation comes crumbling down. The foundation we're trying to build is truth. And over and over I hear from partners, "I can handle the truth, but I can't handle the continued lies, deception, or gaslighting." So I wanted to make it really clear that I understand where the belief comes from, a lot of times negative core beliefs. Yet what ultimately undermines or kills a relationship isn't the truth; it's the continued lies. Partners can handle a lot of information. We can't predict what's going to happen with a disclosure, but it's not usually the truth that ends things. It's the emotional abuse, the gaslighting, all those other patterns.
Another thing that really struck me is the wait time. If I'm preparing the disclosing party, it can take, even in the best case, multiple revisions of the disclosure document, maybe ten revisions or more. But it was helpful to see the survey APSATS did, which Janice was a big part of, about partner distress leading up to disclosure. Was it a scale of zero to ten, or one to ten, Janice?
Janice Caudill: One to ten.
Dan Drake: One to ten: one being no distress, ten being the worst thing you can imagine. For the partners in the survey, the distress level at discovery was 9.6. That high is obviously so distressing, completely catastrophic. And at least in my brain, I'd think disclosure would be really high up there too. But what we actually found was that the wait time between discovery and disclosure was a 9.2 level of distress for partners, and the disclosure itself was a 7.7. So the disclosure itself was less distressing than the wait. For anyone listening: I get that it's hard to commit to this process, but the more you drag your feet, the more pain and potential trauma you put your partner through. You want to do this right, but we also want to get it done as quickly as we can, in a safe way. So I thought that was really important too.
Jackie Pack: When you're working with addicts preparing for disclosure, do you try to give them... I mean, it's hard to give a timeframe, but do you say, "Between this many months and that many months, we need to be giving this to partners"?
Dan Drake: Yeah, I try. Again, every situation is different, but I've learned the hard way and become more of a coach in the process. I tend to set the disclosure date and work backwards. I set a date maybe two months from now, and then I work backwards with deadlines: I need a first round of the disclosure document by this date, I need these things. I make it really practical that way. That also gives me a chance, if the person has difficulty meeting those deadlines, to have a different conversation. I try to build in some time to play with, a bit of a grace period, but it helps me work backwards. I found that if I didn't, it was week after week: "Okay, what work have you done on the disclosure?" "Well, I've been thinking about it. I pulled up the resources you gave me, and I did a little work." Week after week after week, and I didn't have much leverage to work with. Most of us respond to deadlines. That's helped me do it right, but also do it as quickly as we can.
Janice Caudill: Right. And that's one area where being exposed to Dan's process is actually changing how I work. I started out solo in private practice, in a city that really didn't have a recovery community, so I evolved into doing a little of it all, and at times I also navigate the addict's preparation. But the piece Dan does, making part of that process happen outside of session, much as a lawyer might do work out of session: I really see the benefits of doing it that way. You can still do the therapy that needs to happen in session, but it picks up the pace significantly on getting the disclosure document done. That's one way my practice is evolving by being exposed to my own workbook, and to informing partners that there's another option here as well. It's a really nice additional way of working, different from the way we typically work as therapists, and I think it really speeds up the process.
Jackie Pack: Yeah, sure. Okay. I had one question, and listening to you talk I now have another one, but let me ask the first one first. Dan talked about some of the prep work he does preparing the addict for disclosure. Janice, what do you add in terms of prepping partners?
Janice Caudill: For me, there are two large categories in prepping partners. The first is prepping partners for the scope of what the information might be. Quite often, in the surveys Dan and I created for this, a theme came out that partners felt blindsided in the disclosure itself, because they didn't have enough knowledge about how big the scope of sexual acting out could be. So some of that is general preparation. Then there's preparation for what we call the content, or the facts, of the disclosure. We have several exercises designed to have the partner assess her needs in terms of the specificity and categories of information she would want, and the types of situations and details she wouldn't. That's a big process, beginning to create and design the structure. So far, when I've done disclosures with colleagues who are prepping the addict, they find it really helpful to have a blueprint of what the partner's needs are.
Then we have a section that prepares her for the independent questions she might want to create and have answered on her own: questions that can be cut and pasted directly into the disclosure document after the timeline, so she knows she's getting her needs met. There's a process for vetting the questions, a bit of a flow chart, for understanding what need is driving the question. Once they figure out the need, quite often the way the question is phrased might change. If it's really about a lie, they ask about the lie rather than about a lot of intimate details of a particular event. It also prepares them for coping: how are they going to cope? They have a coping plan for each question, for getting the worst possible answer versus the best possible answer, or, if the fear turns out not to be true, for how they actually let go of it. That's the content part.
But what I think is really important, in my experience with partners, is that often what causes the greatest damage is not the information shared during the disclosure, even if it's fully complete and quite difficult. It's the way the information is shared. So part of the addict's preparation is: if shame comes up, how is he going to handle it? We prepare her for what we call the behavioral truth of the disclosure. And part of her own preparation is how she's going to handle the truth, because a 7.7 earthquake is a major one.
Jackie Pack: Talk more about that behavioral truth.
Janice Caudill: Well, in terms of the partner preparing for it: I have ten years as a somatic psychotherapist, building a lot of tools for regulation. So part of her preparation is that if the information is really, really difficult, she has already practiced how she's going to stabilize herself emotionally. How does she prepare emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, so she comes through the storm of the disclosure in a much better place than she otherwise might? Dan, maybe it would be better for you to speak to the behavioral truth for the addict.
Dan Drake: There are two main things with a disclosure. There's the content. There are different ways of doing this, but essentially a disclosure is a transfer of information: sharing the truth after betrayal, what are we dealing with? Usually we do it through a document, and that's the content. The document can look a lot of different ways; different clinicians facilitate it differently. I also like to include the partner's questions in it, if he or she has questions they want included, especially if you're adding a polygraph; that can be helpful. So that's the content. The behavioral truth, from the disclosing party, is: Am I getting defensive? If I collapse into shame, do I tend to take a victim stance and pull my partner into rescuing me? Do I tend to shut down, withdraw, or retreat? We try to work on those things before the disclosure, to really try to hold the truth. I even work with clients on their posture, how they're sitting. It's natural to want to close up and protect yourself, because I'm sharing this information and I don't know what my partner will do with it. But really try to take an open posture, an open stance. And the behavioral truth is: if the disclosing party goes into shame, can I catch myself and redirect, and really try to hold more space for my partner, emotionally, mentally, physically? So the partner can see not just what's shared in the document, but how the disclosing party is approaching the session itself. Do we have to push the session back because they didn't meet the deadlines? That's truth too. Their willingness to go through it. Are they pushing back, resisting, getting defensive and reactive? Those things share information too.
Jackie Pack: That's great. So talk to me too: like you said, you had a lot of resources that turned into a workbook. What was your hope for the workbook, or what did you think you were offering that others maybe haven't?
Dan Drake: Do you want to answer that, Janice?
Janice Caudill: Yes, I'll start, and then you can join in and clean it up for me. Part of it is just a really basic understanding of what the process looks like. I know as therapists we all have little pockets of pieces, but what I tend to see in practice is a lot of mystery or misconception about what the process is and what it looks like, depending on who you sat next to in a twelve-step group. I do intensives, so I have people who come to me from all over the country, and it's clear there are very different standards, from places where disclosures look only one way to areas of the country where no disclosures are happening. So we really wanted the process demystified for anybody using these workbooks. We wanted them to know that one size doesn't fit all, and that there are a lot of choice points in the process. Particularly for partners: when betrayal happens, choices were made that affected them without their input or consent. Part of my trauma training has always been that good trauma healing has to include choice wherever it can. So we include a lot of choice points around the disclosure process, so the couple can really and truly design what meets their needs, with lots of informed consent about the pros and cons of any given choice. What I wanted for partners is for them to understand how they can better get the information they need in order to heal, and how they can figure out what their own needs are around that. I wanted them to be better prepared for the process. For example, one of the big discussion points Dan and I had in creating the workbooks was around the use of polygraphs...
Jackie Pack: Everyone wants to talk about the polygraph.
Janice Caudill: Would you like me to hold that for later, or shall I go on with it?
Jackie Pack: Were you about done with what you were talking about, or are we ready to move into the polygraph?
Janice Caudill: I think I'm closing up on that piece. What I wanted is for partners to be prepared for the possibilities of what could happen, and to have figured out how they're going to cope with them in ways that lead to less damage. I live in a part of the country where we sometimes have pretty major storms, and when we know a storm is coming, we're in the store getting supplies to shore ourselves up in case we have to hunker down for quite a while. I wanted partners to feel they had done enough planning to navigate it better, including choices around the polygraph: whether to use it or not, and if so, when. And the other piece, again using data from the surveys we created along the way, is to be prepared that if you're using a polygraph, your coping plan has to start, in my experience, 24 to 72 hours before the polygraph happens. Quite often what a polygraph does is generate a trickle of information. Partners know to prepare for the disclosure itself, but they don't necessarily know that they also have to prepare for what they'll do when information comes up that's generated by a polygraph.
Dan Drake: Can I say one more thing before we move into polygraphs? There are a number of resources on disclosure out there, some really wonderful ones already. Our goal wasn't to reinvent the wheel; there are resources for clinicians, some really good material. What we wanted was a step-by-step, comprehensive guide to the journey. That includes: What the heck is disclosure? Is it right for me? What are the benefits and the risks? Like Janice mentioned, we also included survey data. We asked people anonymously who were willing to share their experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we wrote up some of their experiences with disclosure, to provide some support along the way. That's the first third of the workbook: What is disclosure? Is it right for me? How does it fit in my journey? The second third is: how do we prepare for this thing? And the final piece is: okay, now that I've done it, now what? There's a lot in the aftermath. From the disclosing party's side, there's the empathy journey. The disclosure is really the disclosing party sharing their truth, their story. Afterwards, it's a grief journey for the couple, moving from the disclosing party's story to real empathy for the impact this is having on the partner. And from the partner's side, being able to express that impact through an impact statement, an impact letter. So that's where we wanted to go. Sorry, go ahead.
Jackie Pack: I was just going to ask about that first part, "Is disclosure right for me?" Are there contraindications for disclosure? If somebody concludes it's not for them, what are those reasons?
Janice Caudill: One example: there's a little checklist flow chart you can take yourself through. From the partner's perspective, if you're three months into recovery and you want not only all the information but complete validation, understanding, and empathy, that's going to affect the timeline. Not really whether you do a disclosure, but when it gets done. So part of it is more realistic expectations about the disclosure process. We have some caveats, not a yes-or-no "you should or shouldn't," but caveats to think about. If you're in the divorce process, or the relationship has ended, we cover some of those unique situations. We don't make the decision for the reader, but we give a lot of information about the possible downsides of continuing with a disclosure, or of doing it rapidly, depending on your circumstances.
Dan Drake: These may be super obvious, but I'm thinking of a couple of major contraindications. One is if the disclosing party isn't willing to be fully truthful and honest. That seems like a no-brainer, but it happens. I've personally backed out of a disclosure because I felt the person I was preparing was going to share some of the information but not all of it. I can't be part of that, especially if the partner thinks she's getting everything. To me, that's huge. There may also be situations where the disclosing party does want to share, but the partner says, "I don't want it." It's rare, but a number of times, probably fewer than a handful, I've been preparing the disclosing party and at some point the partner says, "I don't want this anymore." I'm not going to push anyone; that's a choice the partner can always make. Then there are medical situations, like pregnancy. That comes up every now and then. If a partner is pregnant, what's the greater damage or the greater good that can come from a disclosure, and when we do it? Also access to trained professionals. You look at the greater harm or good. Do I have fears or concerns about this sensitive information? Like Janice said, if divorce is on the table, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't do a disclosure, but it triggers a number of other questions. What's the point? What's the purpose? And how do we manage the safety and security of it?
Janice Caudill: And I'd add a piece, as a partner advocate. One thing we include in the partner's needs assessment is whether, if the other side is open to it, she wants her guide to have an advance look at the disclosure, and perhaps give input on where it does or doesn't meet the specs. For example, she said, "I absolutely don't want an apology," and I read the document a week before and there's an apology. Or there's obvious blame-shifting...
Dan Drake: Janice, I'm curious about the apology one. Can you give a reason why? I know exactly what you mean, but some people might be confused. Why wouldn't she want an apology in something like this?
Janice Caudill: Because it may not be sincere, or it may actually be based on the disclosing party's needs, where the next step is often asking for forgiveness. The words "I'm sorry" have been used many, many times, and maybe seemed sincere in the moment, but the subsequent behavior showed they weren't genuine. Or they've been used to manipulate her, or they pull her into an emotional response. There's already a lot of emotion in a disclosure, and when you add extra pieces, it can become a bit of a shell game: you get through the disclosure and realize the facts either weren't shared or she can't remember them. So there are a lot of reasons an apology can be problematic in the disclosure process. What I hear more often is partners saying, "I guess I want it if it's genuine." And really and truly, neither her guide nor the disclosing party's guide can look into the heart, mind, and soul of a human being. Nobody can be a human lie detector. So generally, once my partners go through all the ins and outs of it, most of them choose not to have one. And if they've been really clear about that, and in my preview it's sitting right there in the middle of the document, now we've got a problem, because her wishes are being disrespected in the disclosure document. As a therapist, it's really nice that, because of the preparation work, all I have to do is go back and look at what she wanted to happen in this situation, because we've already discussed it. For some partners it may be, "If this gets delayed, it will never happen, so I want to go forward." For others it might be, "Janice, I'd like you to halt the process and respectfully ask the disclosing party and his guide to address the incongruity in the document." I don't like having to make that call, or guess, with a partner about something so important. So it's really helpful that we've already gone over it in the needs assessment, and I know how to respond.
Jackie Pack: Those are great points. I do want to get to the polygraph, and I also want to talk about what happens after disclosure. Is there an order that feels more natural for those two?
Janice Caudill: I'm thinking the polygraph might be a longer discussion; it generates a lot of interest. I can share what happens for the partner in the immediate aftermath of disclosure. Again, we've got lots of coping plans in there, so the process is as structured as it can be, but she's going to grieve. The partner impact statement is part of the process of helping her grieve and come to terms with, and accept, what is and what wasn't, and to begin to figure out the boundaries she needs for herself going forward. Depending on the partner, that may be a very short process, or a lengthy one. But if I had to use one word to describe what happens for the partner afterward, and what I'm working on with her as a therapist at that phase, it's grieving.
Dan Drake: And from the other side, I'd say it's coming to terms with the grieving at first. I hear this notion a lot: "Okay, I went through this whole disclosure process, it was really difficult, I can see the value of it, maybe I feel relieved afterwards. We're done now, right? I gave you what you wanted. Can't we go back to the way things were," or whatever the new normal will be. And then realizing: no, you're never going back to the old relationship. This is building a new relationship, and I don't mean this in a hokey way, but I really do think it can be more beautiful than the old one. It's definitely through grief, though. You have to walk with your partner through grief. For anyone considering it: as you walk through this grief journey with your partner, you help not only your partner heal, but your relationship heal, and ultimately yourself. That's a foreign concept, particularly for the men I work with. They think, "If she's mad or sad, I'm bad," so it means something's wrong if she's not doing well. I often use the analogy of surgery: it's like opening up an infected wound. Maybe you could have lived with it, but you weren't thriving. After surgery there's a recovery period, sometimes short and sometimes long, depending on the surgery. It often gets worse before it gets better, even with surgery. So be prepared, with disclosure, that the feelings that come to the surface for the partner may be more intense: your partner may be angrier, and the emotions may be more volatile for a season. That doesn't mean you're on the wrong track. It does get worse before it gets better. It's like releasing the toxins, releasing the pain; it's part of the healing journey. The more I see the addict, the disclosing party, able to hang in there with their partner and really develop empathy for what their partner has gone through, the more that ultimately helps the relationship heal. I see that as his job: really rebuilding safety and trust.
And I'll just say, Janice mentioned boundaries. There was an obvious oversight at the beginning: it wasn't until a few months ago that I realized I hadn't said anything, from the disclosing party's side, about how to respond to boundaries. I thought, that's a huge oversight. Boundaries are so important, and here's why: they're a gift the partner gives to the addict, saying, "If you do these things, this will help me feel safer. This will help rebuild trust if you're consistent with these things." It's a roadmap toward safety, the way I see it. So consistently following those boundaries, not forgetting them, not hemming and hawing; trying to understand what they are, of course, and whether they're possible. But I think it's such a gift partners can give to the addict, for how to rebuild and move forward.
Janice Caudill (?): And for the addict, having some internal boundaries, right? So that as she goes through this grief process, he doesn't tip into shame and think, "I shouldn't have done this. I shouldn't have told the whole truth," and take her grief as rejection.
Jackie Pack: That's a great point. Okay. On our professional listserv we just had a really robust discussion about polygraphs, which comes up every so often, and I read it with interest. So let's talk about polygraphs: their role, maybe why a couple would choose not to have one, and their limits.
Dan Drake: I'll start, Janice, and you can obviously jump in. That was something we had to address. I personally have seen the benefit of using the polygraph in my practice. I'll say that when I first started doing this work and people started using that term, I thought, "Whoa, are we kidding? A polygraph?" I thought it was so extreme, to be perfectly honest. But the more I saw the benefit, the more I saw it as essentially a third-party stamp saying that, to the best of our abilities and knowledge, this disclosure is true and complete. When you have years, sometimes decades, of betrayal, deception, and lies, trust obviously gets eroded. To say "We should just start trusting relationally right after a disclosure" feels a little naive. Yes, ultimately the goal is maybe not to rely on something external. But it's a validation, a verification of what's in the disclosure. So I've seen the benefit of using it. Janice, maybe you could talk more about the idea of a fidelity polygraph versus a forensic or criminal polygraph, because I think that's a key point. We're not talking about a criminal forensic polygraph here. We're talking about a fidelity polygraph. It's not what you see on TV, an interrogation where it's "Isn't it true that on this date such and such happened? I knew you were lying." It's really to validate and verify the facts and the truth being shared.
Jackie Pack: Several people on the email thread talked about seeing the polygrapher as a team member, someone who works with fidelity polygraphs, so it's not an adversarial setup.
Dan Drake: Yeah. In my experience, I'm not part of the polygraph itself. It's usually the polygraph examiner and the disclosing party. I come in after it's over, and typically, assuming they've passed, they're laughing together, the guy who just finished the polygraph and the examiner. I always joke, "What's happening in here?" And it's helpful, to make sure this isn't a shaming thing. It's seeing someone as a human being. It's not saying "you're so defective that we have to use this technique." It's that you're a human being, and you're trying to honor your partner and your relationship by saying, "Whatever it takes, so that you can begin to trust and get some sense of safety and honesty again, I'll do." That's what I've seen. I don't know what you'd say about that, Janice.
Janice Caudill: That was the first thing that came to my mind when the question came up: a fidelity polygraph has a different intent and purpose, and a different flow, than a criminal polygraph. In addition to the disclosure surveys Dan and I created, with input from people who've been through the process themselves, I also monitor the surveys for APSATS, and some really interesting write-ins have come in about the polygraph process. By the way, in both the APSATS surveys and in Dan's and my survey of people who've gone through disclosure, the polygraph was, all in all, considered helpful. But the write-ins about times it wasn't, as I recall, tended to say, "We found somebody off the internet." They didn't know how to distinguish between a fidelity polygraph and a criminal polygraph. The polygraph examiner Dan and I consulted about the material in the book actually put in a plea, which we include, about how important it is in a disclosure fidelity polygraph that the examiner work really closely with the therapeutic team, with the guides themselves. Unfortunately, I think the biggest dilemma is that people with that type of experience are a pretty small niche, and the need is growing. But as with everything in the workbook, I treat it as a choice point. For partners, as long as they can accept that it is one tool, I think it can be a really helpful process, particularly if the disclosing party is open to subsequent polygraphs down the road.
Post-disclosure polygraphs, I think, are really helpful for the partner with the fears and questions that come up, maybe when triggered, or generated by anxiety. My partners keep a question journal: they write the question down in the journal. I think it really helps them externalize it, so they're not carrying around the anxiety of the question themselves. When it's time for the polygraph, they go back through their list, and usually they don't even remember having written the vast majority of them. It's a process of helping them distinguish which questions were based on a fear in the moment, versus "This one has been a theme; it's come up multiple times; this might be my intuition telling me something." Overall, I find it helps partners recalibrate their intuition. The dilemma for partners without a polygraph is that they're going through a disclosure because their spouse has lied to them, perhaps repeatedly. If we rely only on the words, that's a bit like the same process that happened before the disclosure. So I think the polygraph can really help, as one component, one tool, to verify some of the information being shared.
On a different note, polygraphs were maybe one of the biggest changes I had to make in my thinking about the disclosure process. For whatever reason, in my part of the country most of my partners want the polygraph after the disclosure. Dan typically does them before.
Jackie Pack: Oh, interesting. I would have assumed afterwards, but okay.
Janice Caudill: And the flow of preparation really gets affected by that, because it means the disclosure document has to be done before the pre-disclosure polygraph can happen. All of a sudden there's a lot more emphasis on the partner getting her needs assessment done and getting her questions to them. It's a very different pacing than I was used to. And we were writing a workbook that gives the choice to put it in either place, depending on the needs of the people involved. So it really changed my thinking, and challenged me to think about the process, the pacing, the preparation for the partner, and how to build in that information. I don't know what that experience was like for you, Dan, because it was a little surprising to you when I said, "No, they always choose to do it afterward."
Dan Drake: Yeah, and maybe it's just the difference between Los Angeles and Texas, but most clinicians I know in Los Angeles tend to do a pre-disclosure polygraph. That's just been the established thing here. There are benefits and risks either way, and I've had some people decide they want to do both, to maximize the benefits. The benefit of a pre-disclosure polygraph is that if the disclosing party doesn't pass, you save the partner the trauma of going through the whole disclosure. It gives another major choice point: do I want to do this or not? Whereas if you do it after the disclosure and the person doesn't pass, the whole disclosure gets called into question. That's one benefit. The risk, as Janice said, is that you have to have a lot, if not the whole disclosure document, established ahead of time. And you're asking the partner to come up with questions when she may not even know what she's supposed to be asking: how do I know what questions to ask until I know what the information is? So that's the drawback of a pre-disclosure polygraph. What was helpful in talking with Janice is that I'm more open now. I don't have a clear-cut answer about which is better, but I have more informed ways to talk about it and give choice. I appreciated learning that from Janice: how we put this into a preparation journey, with the benefits and risks, and what's going to work best for each individual.
But I recognize, as you said, this is always a robust discussion. It brings up a lot of feelings, and I can imagine there are people out there who've been harmed by the process, where it wasn't done safely or was dehumanizing. It's a loaded conversation. I don't mandate polygraphs, but I've seen their value, even for the disclosing party. For example, one major benefit, especially if you're doing a disclosure early on: we know addicts tend to compartmentalize facts, so there are things they don't remember. In the fog of addiction, it's not until you get into recovery, and that can take months, that you really start getting your brain back. If you're doing a disclosure early, it's possible you'll remember things later, acting-out information, major details you may uncover, or as we put it, excavate. So what happens when I remember something else I did, after I've gone through a disclosure? That's a dilemma. What I've found is that if the addict has gone through a polygraph and remembers more later, the partner is more likely to say, "Yes, that was remembered," rather than intentionally withheld. That's a big benefit. It solidifies the foundation of truth from the disclosure. So I'm a proponent of it. But I've also had partners say they want the polygraph, and then a couple of days before the disclosure say, "The fact that he was willing to do it gives me some sense of security, so I'm choosing not to do it anymore." That's rarer, but it's happened. The willingness to go through a polygraph says a lot, compared with someone who researches the pass rates online and focuses their energy on "these aren't perfect tools." What's the behavioral truth that gets shared? Yes, we do need to look at false positives and false negatives; they can happen. But again, like Janice said, it's a tool, not the tool. And we give choice. I think choice is important.
Jackie Pack: Okay, we're almost at the hour, and we've covered so many things. This has been such a robust discussion. Is there anything we haven't covered that you'd want to add?
Janice Caudill: One piece, in terms of the intent of the workbooks: we tried to design them step by step. Not that everybody has to do every step, but so there's good preparation whether you're doing a disclosure fairly early in recovery or much later. The flow of the partner material felt a little harder in that later stance. But it really comes from the belief that one size doesn't fit all, and that coming to terms on the choice points, how you decide the disclosure process and how you handle the aftermath, can actually be some of the first steps toward repairing trust.
Jackie Pack: Which I love, because when I'm doing a disclosure with a couple, the partner often doesn't know what options are available. When you ask how she'd like it, she says, "I don't know, what are the options?" So I think it's great to walk them through that and give examples, "You might want to do this, or maybe not, maybe it looks like this," so they get to make that choice.
Dan Drake: For me, as Janice was sharing, I was thinking my plea would be to the guides, the clinicians, coaches, clergy, whoever is facilitating the disclosure. I hear it over and over in my practice, and we got this information through the surveys: this can go really badly, and a lot of times it goes badly because we as the guides make it go badly, because we can't agree on things. So my plea is that we set aside our pride, clinical pride or whatever it is, and really try to feel and hear where our clients are. There isn't one way this has to go. What's more important is that we're all on the same page about what's going to be most beneficial for the couple in front of us, if we're working as a team of two in the disclosure. I've seen over and over the damage that happens because we as professionals can't agree, and then people get into an argument in the disclosure, or it becomes a power struggle. So my big plea is that we really try to hear where our clients are and what they need. Of course we give guidance and make it as safe as possible, and we use our clinical judgment, but with some humility, respecting the people we're working with. That was so helpful to me in this journey with Janice. One reason it took us so long is that we had to talk through so many issues. We didn't agree on everything, and that's okay. You'll have people who do things differently and don't see eye to eye, but it's the journey of how we have these conversations together and communicate about this stuff, so that ultimately we can be the best for a client. That's what I would say.
Jackie Pack: So we've been talking about this workbook. What's the name of the workbook?
Dan Drake: The disclosing party's is Full Disclosure: How to Share the Truth After Sexual Betrayal. That's the full, complete manual for the disclosing party. The full version of the partner's manual will be out shortly; it's not currently on the market. That one is Full Disclosure: Seeking Truth After Sexual Betrayal.
Jackie Pack: And are those both available on disclosurehope.com? How do people access them?
Dan Drake: You can go to disclosurehope.com, or you can go on Amazon and get them. There's a condensed version of the partner book available right now that gives some of the major choice points and some preparation, but Janice has done a ton more work than what's in that book. It's a great resource to start with, to prep for the disclosure.
Jackie Pack: And if people want to get hold of you again, how do they contact you?
Janice Caudill: For me, you can go to drjanicecaudill.com or mckinneycounselingandrecovery.com and contact me from there.
Jackie Pack: Okay. And Dan?
Dan Drake: For me, banyantherapy.com: B-A-N-Y-A-N therapy dot com.
Jackie Pack: Perfect. Thank you so much for your insight. This has been such an easy interview for me; I just got to listen to the two of you. I'm so looking forward to using this book with couples. I think there are so many great things this workbook offers. Thank you for all the hours and energy you put into providing this resource.
Janice Caudill: Well, thanks, Jackie.
Dan Drake: Yeah, thanks for your time, and for your willingness and leadership in this podcast. Appreciate it.
Jackie Pack: All right, good to talk to both of you. I want to remind you at the end of this episode that your story matters. Remember, there's something meaningful in every chapter. Don't wait to share your story until it's finished. Until next time, Jackie.
The legal stuff: this podcast is solely for the purpose of information and entertainment. It does not constitute therapy, nor should it replace competent professional help.
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