Hidden Stories: Navigating Shame, Secrets, and Disclosure

Live online professional development for counsellors, psychologists and relationship therapists.

Shame and secrecy shape more of the therapeutic process than most clients, or therapists, realise.

Clients arrive with carefully managed narratives, unspoken fears and untold histories that quietly determine what they can reveal, how they connect and where they get stuck. The challenge for clinicians is recognising the difference between resistance and protection, and learning how to invite truth without overwhelming the client or the relationship.

Hidden Stories is a 60-minute training with a 30 minute Q & A, live, online training for therapists who want a deeper, clearer map of the inner forces that keep clients silent, especially in work involving affairs, hidden behaviour and relational betrayal.

Who this training is for:

• Therapists who sense “something isn’t being said” and want to understand why
• Couples and relationship clinicians navigating high-stakes emotional territory
• Practitioners working with affairs, hidden behaviour or fractured trust
• Clinicians seeking a grounded, non-pathologising approach to shame
• Anyone wanting to strengthen safety, depth and honesty in the therapeutic space

If you’ve ever felt a client pulling back just as things deepen, this training is for you.

What you’ll learn in this 60-minute training:

• How shame organises behaviour and limits what clients feel allowed to disclose
• Why secrecy forms and why it is usually about protection, not manipulation
• Signals that tell you shame is driving the session, even when clients appear “fine”
• How to reduce threat in the room so clients can risk genuine honesty
• Practical strategies for navigating partial disclosure, emotional shutdown and defensiveness, particularly in couples work and betrayal recovery

This is not a moral debate or a pathology-based model. It’s a clinical, relational and trauma-informed look at how people hide—and how therapists can meet them with precision and care.

What’s included:

• 60-minute live online training via Zoom with 30 minute Q&A

• Practical interventions you can use immediately in your work
• Time for Q&A with the presenter
• Access to a replay recording (time-limited; details provided after registration)
• Downloadable handout summarising key concepts and interventions

Date, time and format:

• Format: Live online via Zoom
• Duration: 90 minutes
• Investment: $25 
• When: 2 April, 2025 (12 Noon NZ time/10 AM Sydney time)

• Where: Online (Zoom link will be emailed April 1, prior to the training)

About the presenter:

Steven Dromgool is the Clinical Director of Relate and a specialist in infidelity, relational betrayal and couples therapy. Over more than fifteen years, he has worked extensively with high-shame material, complex relational trauma and disclosure processes. He integrates attachment theory, relational neuroscience and practical intervention design to offer trainings that are clinically rigorous, deeply humane and immediately applicable in practice.

Why this matters:

More clients are entering therapy carrying unspoken stories about identity, intimacy, sexuality, betrayal and unresolved trauma. When shame goes unnamed, therapy stalls. When secrecy is misunderstood, therapists can inadvertently reinforce it.

Clinicians who thrive in this landscape are not the ones who push harder for disclosure they are the ones who understand how to create the conditions where truth becomes possible.

Join us for Hidden Stories and deepen your ability to work where real change actually happens.