Secrets Seminar for Addictions &
Behavioral Health Professionals

Secret-Keeping SM -- Helping Clients Break Free From Destructive Secret Habits and Attitudes

Accredited Course for 6 to 7.5 CEUs

Clinicians often sense that they hear only what their clients want to tell them. In many cases, as many as four out of ten, this common phenomenon is due to the intentional withholding of vital information by the client — or what is called secret-keeping SM, ( Based on the book, Stolen Hours, by the workshop presenter, John Howard Prin). In this workshop, participants will explore the many ways clients’ secret-keeping traits confuse the assessment process and complicate treatment or case-management.

Clinicians need information that will help them to determine the presence of secret-keeping traits in a client. What often presents as denial, for example, can really be the clever and consciously calculated strategy by the client to mislead or misinform. Once a diagnosis is made that distinguishes between the unconscious lack of awareness of facts or consequences by one client versus the fully conscious and intentional concealment of facts or consequences by another client, progress can be made.

This workshop is designed to provide clinicians with the insights and techniques that will help them to make this critical determination, leading to improved treatment planning and smoother case management. It explores the relationship between secret-keeping and self-defeating behaviors such as alcohol/drug abuse, compulsive gambling, sexual addictions, and eating disorders. It also contains a “Continuum of Secrets” model and describes the 8 mindsets of persons with secret-keeping habits and attitudes, allowing for a healthier congruence between the client’s inner motivations and outer behavior.

Goals and Objectives

• Participants will become familiar with the key characteristics of clients with secret-keeping traits.
• Participants will learn the eight splintered mindsets of Secret-Keepers SM.
• Participants will be able to differentiate between denial and secret-keeping.
• Participants will study the “Continuum of Secrets” and cite examples of each of the four types of secrets.
• Participants will describe the relationship between secret-keeping and self-defeating behaviors such as alcohol/drug abuse, compulsive gambling, eating and sexual disorders, overspending, etc.
• Participants will name a half dozen “celebrity” Secret Keepers from the news and specify the consequences that developed when their secrets became known.
• Participants will learn to distinguish between privacy and secrecy.
• Participants will practice assessment and treatment planning techniques and critique their efforts.
• Participants will learn the basic strengths and weaknesses of clients who act on Impulse vs. Reason.
• Participants will become familiar with the Five Stages of Breaking Free.

Teaching Methods

The use of large group lecture, small group discussions, movie clips, interactive exercises, and presentation of actual case examples will be employed in this workshop.

Audience

This workshop is intended for social workers, substance abuse treatment counselors, psychiatric nurses, marriage and family therapists, and anyone who is involved in the treatment of persons whose histories include secret-keeping disorders.

Agenda

7:30 Registration

8:00 Introduction and definition of secret-keeping characteristics

Healthy Secrets and Unhealthy Secrets

Distinction between Privacy and Secrecy

News Clips of celebrities and everyday folks who are secret keepers

with discussion of variety of consequences

Duality (split in psyche) and Double Lives, Part 1

10:30 Break

10:45 3-Way Lure of Secret Keeping

Eight Mindsets of a Secret Keeper with clinical case examples

“Continuum of Secrets” — Simple Secrets, Silent Secrets, Secret-keeping, Crime

Assessment tips: separating denial from secret-keeping

12-1:00 LUNCH

1:00 Duality and Double Lives, Part 2

Internal and external conflicts between acting on Impulse and Reason

Assessment Skills Development — small groups exercise

Demonstrating Benefits of Disclosure and Congruence:

Motivating clients to change their attitudes and practice matching behavior

(new habits)

2:30 Break

2:45 Fives Stages of Breaking Free:

Acceptance, Trust, Surrender, Disclosure, Accountability

Treatment Planning Development — small groups exercise

Becoming a Reasonable (a whole, not divided) Person:

Cognitive refusal skills, refusing to intentionally conceal or lie

Affective substitution skills, replacing shame/guilt with honesty/self-esteem

5:00 Evaluation and Termination of workshop