Relational Recovery Disclosure Prep Manual for Professionals: Facilitating Healing Disclosures with Couples Impacted by Betrayal
What is Disclosure?
A facilitated, carefully prepared, and supported process where the unfaithful individual provides their partner with a fully honest account of their history of acting out behaviors.
In this process, the betraying partner comes prepared to vulnerably tell the entire truth about the scope and depth of the betrayal that has occurred and take responsibility for the pain and wounding the behaviors have created. The betrayed partner comes prepared to listen and to ask questions to fully explore and understand the betrayal they’ve experienced and make decisions about moving forward in the relationship with full information and awareness of what has occurred.
Equipping Professionals
Disclosure balances on a razor’s edge. When done well, it has the potential to be a critical pivot point for recovering couples, moving them out of the devastation phase that follows discovery of sexual betrayal and into the deep repair and healing of the relationship. When done poorly it has the potential to cause relational trauma and further rupture or damage trust and safety in the relationship.
Helping couples dealing with sexual betrayal navigate the process of getting to, going through, and healing after Disclosure is a complex process, demanding a high level of skill, wisdom, adaptability, and structure on the part of you, the therapist.
I’m Michelle Mays LPC, CSAT-S and over the past 20-plus years, I’ve facilitated dozens of disclosures. As a therapist specializing in treating those impacted by infidelity, sexual addiction, and betrayal trauma, I developed a model for facilitating disclosures called the RELATIONAL RECOVERY DISCLOSURE PREP MODEL.
Whether you’re a counselor specializing in working with couples impacted by sexual addiction or you’re a marriage and family therapist working with couples struggling with infidelity, you’re probably hearing your clients talk about and ask for disclosure as part of the healing process.
The following manual has been created to educate, empower, and support you to navigate the complex process of facilitating therapeutic disclosures with confidence and excellence.
Who’s it for?
New to Facilitating Disclosures
If you’re new to doing Disclosure, this manual will give you an enormous amount of information, tools, and support as you learn to take clients through the steps.
Experienced at Disclosures
If you’re experienced at doing Disclosure but are looking for new ideas and tools to help you refine your process and better equip clients, this guidebook is full of tips, resources, and information to help with that too.
Practice Settings
This Disclosure Prep method can be used to support Disclosures done in individual private practice, a group practice, or a counseling center setting.
Learning Objectives
The Relational Recovery Disclosure Prep Manual is designed to help professionals:
- Identify the potential benefits to clients of completing a full therapeutic disclosure and the contraindications for disclosure.
- Describe the three phases of the disclosure process and the key steps in each phase.
- Prepare a thorough and well-crafted disclosure document drawing on best practices and avoiding common mistakes.
- Design a comprehensive pre, post and during disclosure self-care plan for each of the clients involved.
- Create a plan for repair and healing for the couple post-disclosure that includes an impact statement and an emotional restitution letter process.
Benefits
- Takes the mystery out of the Disclosure process decreasing anxiety arising from uncertainty about exactly when and how the process will unfold and your role in preparing each client.
- Outlines a three-stage process providing detailed instructions for each of the three critical stages: 1) Preparing for Disclosure; 2) Giving and receiving Disclosure; 3) Self-care, repair, and healing after Disclosure.
- Provides clear guidance assessing clients for readiness, establishing clinical best practices and policies around Disclosure, and outlining potential contraindications for Disclosure.
- Equips you and your client with clear guidelines for the Disclosure document providing a sample Disclosure and documents full of tips and information about what to include, what to omit and frequent mistakes to avoid in preparing the Disclosure document.
- Empowers you to thoroughly prepare your client for the Disclosure process ensuring that both the betraying partner and the betrayed partner are grounded, supported, regulated and confident in their ability to successfully move through Disclosure.
- Gives clients a clear path toward healing post-Disclosure outlining the process for completing Disclosure, and providing a pivot point that moves the couple fully into the next stage: repair and healing of attachment injuries.
- Places Disclosure within a context of hope and healing separating Disclosure from the traumatic discovery events that couples experienced when the betrayal was first uncovered.
- Disclosure is viewed as the beginning of repair helping the couple to see Disclosure as a pivotal turning point it the relationship, moving them toward repair and healing of the attachment injuries they have suffered.
What’s Included
1. Relational Recovery Disclosure Prep Manual
This document serves several different purposes, including:
- A step-by step overview of the Relational Recovery Disclosure Model: Providing an in-depth and detailed overview of the steps involved in preparing and taking clients through the Disclosure process.
- A training tool for clinicians new to the Disclosure process: Serving as a training and guidance tool for clinicians learning how to do Disclosures, providing an enormous amount of information, support, resources, and tools as you move through the steps.
- A policy manual for clinics, private practices, and counseling centers: Providing a policy and procedure manual for clinics, counseling centers, or agencies overseeing staff who facilitate Disclosures.
2. Client Preparation Worksheets (for the disclosing partner and the betrayed partner):
These detailed worksheets walk your client through the process of thoroughly preparing for Disclosure. From a list of helpful questions to think through in anticipation of the event, to lists of helpful tips for what to include and omit in the Disclosure document, to prep for the polygraph process (if included), to exercises in self-care planning pre-, post and during Disclosure. These worksheets will give you the guidance and confidence you need to fully prepare your client.
3. Sample Disclosure:
Nothing is quite so helpful as seeing an example. The sample Disclosure document provides you and your clients with a model for an appropriate Disclosure document, giving the addicted client a guide to follow and helping the betrayed partner know more fully what to expect.
The Relational Recovery Disclosure Prep Manual is being offered in the hope that it will positively impact your practice and your clients, building your confidence to feel thoroughly equipped and supported as you guide your clients through the process of Disclosure.
Presenter
Michelle Mays
LPC, CSAT-S
Michelle Mays is a Licensed Professional Counselor and expert in treating sexual betrayal and trauma. She is the author of the new book The Betrayal Bind: How to Heal When the Person You Love the Most Has Hurt You the Worst and she is the founder of the Center for Relational Recovery in Northern Virginia outside of DC. Michelle has created The Attachment-Focused Partner Betrayal Model™ to address the devastating dilemma that betrayed partners face when their significant other is unsafe to connect to, yet connection is the key to healing.
Michelle is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Supervisor in both Virginia and Washington DC, and a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist and Supervisor. She was trained by Pia Mellody in the Post Induction Therapy model for treating developmental trauma and is currently completing her PhD in Clinical Sexology.
