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My new friend and colleague, Al Bellg, wrote a thoughtful response to my last post about the differences between committing to confidentiality and honoring privacy when trying to welcome the soul. His powerful questions and insights deserve a wider audience so I thought to share them here. You’ll see another round of my own thoughts after Al’s.
Thanks for your thoughtful discussion of confidentiality, Ted. There are indeed difficulties in maintaining confidentiality, and I personally have experienced times when professional commitments obligated me to violate it and personal issues and mistakes have lead me to violate it as well.
One question I’d ask, though, is: Are there any situations in which a commitment to confidentiality creates such a benefit that it would be worth making, even if in our humanness we might not be able to utterly guarantee it?
An analogous question might be: Are there any relationships in which a commitment to being faithful with our affections and our sexual behavior creates such a benefit that it would be worth making, even if in our humanness we might not be able to utterly guarantee it?
Having just celebrated my 11th wedding anniversary, I would answer the second question with a resounding “Yes!” And having recently experienced the inner security and freedom to “let my soul speak” in a group committed to double confidentiality, I would answer the first question in the same way.
Just as my commitment to being faithful in my marriage – and my success at following through on that commitment – has created the framework for my relationship with my wife to be trusting and loving, the commitment to double confidentiality in that group allowed me to explore my very personal question in a way that I would not have been able to without it. If group members had had the option to talk about what I said with me, with each other or outside the group, it would have had a chilling effect on my willingness to speak what was true for me and on the insights that came from speaking that truth.
This sort of inner exploration is a very delicate process, and for me and many others, it requires a great deal of safety. How do we get that safety in relationships unless we are able to make explicit promises to each other to preserve it – even if there is a slim possibility that despite their best efforts, others might break those promises, “let things slip,” and betray us? Without a firm confidentiality agreement, no relationship or group would be safe enough for such a sensitive exploration.
I would also say that Kessler’s process of “honoring privacy,” although it might be appropriate and even ideal for groups of students learning to be responsible for their behavior within a group, does not provide the high level of safety needed for groups facilitating exploration of our inner wisdom. It would feel very unsafe for a group committed to “honoring privacy” to have the right to discuss the conditions under which they might share my innermost thoughts with others. It would feel equally unsafe if individuals in such a group had the option, even after thoughtful consideration, to discuss my delicate inner exploration with each other or outside the group. I would not mind, however, if someone who was upset by something I said processed it within a confidential counseling or psychotherapy relationship. That might be worth considering as an option within the confidentiality agreement in such a group.
I do agree with your rather different point that those in the position of sharing need to be mindful of what they say in the context of the people and relationships within the group. In the group I was in, one of the members was in a position to influence the decision about whether I would become one of his organization’s facilitators. If I’d had doubts about whether I wanted to become a facilitator, I would not have explored them in a group that he was part of.
Similarly, the limits to confidentiality that my psychotherapy clients explicitly agree to when they sign a “consent to treatment” form gives them the responsibility of whether or not to share information with me that I cannot maintain in confidence. But these examples are not so much to the point of whether confidentiality should ever be asked or given, but about being thoughtful regarding the topics, circumstances and relationships in which the commitment to confidentiality legitimately can or can’t be present.
Being human is often about doing our best and trusting that others will do theirs. Creating and maintaining strong agreements for safety and confidentiality as best we can in specific relationships and groups for purposes such as “letting your soul speak,” engaging in psychotherapy, or enjoying a loving marriage is not more than we can and should ask of each other – and indeed, those agreements are essential to making it possible for us to experience the full range of who we really are.
Thank you, Al, for your eloquent and stirring reflection.
Your mention of committed relationships offers a provocative parallel. As in a confidential circle of trust among adults, the extra strength of a monogamous commitment makes safe space to explore intimacy and vulnerability at much greater depth. We get access to the wisdom of shadows and caves that rarely see light. We hold each other’s tenderness. In both cases, we know that we could do great harm by violating our agreements. We keep those agreements to reap the otherwise unreachable rewards from our investments.
When I ask groups to commit to honoring privacy, I’m requesting a similarly ironclad promise not to share what’s been spoken within the group—except in the rarest of circumstances. The softened language should not convey a willy-nilly disregard for our mutual respect, as in everything’s up for grabs. Gossip or casual mention of what’s been said would never be OK. Nor even would well-intentioned curiosity or advice-giving. What the wording does indicate, though, is that some exceptions do exist and—this is the important part—we need to figure out together and ahead of time where those exceptions lie. Doing so lets everyone participate knowingly, both as speakers and as listeners.
The more I reflect on these questions, the more I realize that, in my own life, I usually default to a strict level of confidence when my friends, family, students, or even acquaintances share something deeper in regular conversation. When I’m in groups like we’re discussing, that commitment ramps up even further. I assume that it would take something extraordinary—like a threat of harm to one’s self or another, like an admission of malice or negligence in a professional setting—to warrant breaking that confidentiality.[1] I also see, however, that most people don’t have such a threshold. For that reason, as you’ve said, the stronger language makes a point. It sends a signal: we’ve stepped out of ordinary conversation. We’ve stepped into different boundaries.
Whatever the words we choose for groups that intend to welcome the soul, I do want explicitly to ramp up responsibility for appropriate participation on both sides of the sharing. Listeners, you commit to keeping what is said within the circle. Speakers, you commit to taking care of your self—and to being kind to your listeners. A promise of confidentiality should never suggest an anything-goes approach to sharing: Oh, I can expose my most shameful secrets without fear of penalty and without worrying about the impact of my words. It’s confidential! No, no, no. If it would make your life truly miserable to have what you’re saying get out in public, don’t share it. If you intend your words to hurt, eat them. Everyone in the circle plays a role in creating the safety we seek.
In the end, I don’t think there’s any magic secret. Even with a commitment to confidentiality, just as in a romantic commitment to fidelity, real trust takes time to develop. That’s another of the lessons that Rachael Kessler taught me about group work. I used to think that good, strong structures—much like the agreements we make in Circles of Trust—could generate positive intensity and intimacy in short order. And often, they can. But they can also create a wispy illusion of closeness. Connections may actually prove more distant than they appear.
In contrast, if we use our commitments to build intimacy over longer stretches of time, we give our vulnerabilities a wider and softer safety net. In slow-developing circles, we prove our trustworthiness with real but smaller intimacies at first, sowing the ground for deeper sharing later on. The track record makes space for the soul’s appearance. In such groups, we do not assume that confidentiality will hold because we’ve said it will. We come to know it will hold because we’ve seen that it has.
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[1] In response to my original post, my Mom offered an interesting distinction between a person’s feeling and their doing. In her formulation, feelings would get the strictest level of confidentiality in such settings—they often come unbidden, we can have multiple and conflicting emotions simultaneously, and they usually move on just as fleetingly as they arrived. Someone’s indication of actually doing something dangerous, however—again to themselves or to others—might indicate the need for promise-breaking.
But here is the thing….about *promise breaking*…what if you simply say…here are the perameters of what *confidentiality* or *privacy* means.. and that if you are legally required reporter in the context to make sure people know that. If you are a teacher, for example, but are in a group not in that role, are you a legally required reporter. Maybe not..but what if a group member is discussing molesting his daughter… what if you need to speak with someone about your feelings? I just think you are raising some very complex and nuanced issues here.
As a teacher, at least at NMH, I would indeed be a mandated reporter. If a student speaks of abuse at home, about breaking school rules, or about intending harm to themselves or others, I’m required to report that. I’m careful to let the students know that up front. Though I will do my utmost to maintain the confidentiality of their papers, journals, and our conversations, that confidentiality has limits.
The other examples you raise–committing a crime or having feelings stirred–both deserve prior consideration as well. Better to have it be known what the plan is under such circumstances. With the latter (having feelings stirred), I don’t think it’s fair to expect group members to have to completely swallow their own human responses to the vulnerability they’ve been witness to. At the same time, there are more respectful ways to process.
I like Al’s suggestion of doing so in another setting where confidentiality can hold, like in a therapist’s office. At minimum, the one processing should always focus on his or her *own* feelings in response and take significant care to preserve at least the *anonymity* of the original speaker. Sometimes even mentioning a concern breaches anonymity too though. As you say, these are complex and nuanced issues..