An Essay for Practitioners: Disclosure Is a Family Event

Abstract

Donald S. Williamson* The research findings collated and reported in the SavinWilliams and Dube article call into question the option that there are predictable in family emotional responses to homosexual orientation disclosure by a family member, located in a process of parental grief and mourning. This is interesting, but probably of minimum relevance to therapists. It would probably be difficult to find a practicing therapist who makes such an assumption, and even more difficult to find one whose clinical behaviors are significantly influenced by such an assumption, even if holding it. Young therapists may, of course, use the memory of theory at times to manage fear and uncertainty in dealing with challenging client situations. Similarly, therapists excessively driven by ideology, perhaps also belonging in the high anxiety group, might too be organized by theoretical assumptions, as might therapists caught in an acute kind of counter-transference, which over-determines their judgments and comments. However, few therapists work from any assumptions about stages in emotional reactions to disclosure either about homosexuality or being HIV-positive on the part of family members. Therefore, they will not be much affected by the conclusion that there probably is not a predictable, normal sequence of such stages. However, there is much other information in both of these articles which, taken together, is of great interest and potential usefulness to therapists, and should be influential on therapists' behaviors. To begin with, therapists should note that family emotional reactions vary widely to both forms of disclosure, and so nothing should be taken for granted. However, as will be noted in more detail below, certain variables are predicted of the most likely responses by family members. Secondly, the highlighted emotional responses, previously identified as stages, are probably the most common response to occur on the part of family members, namely denial, anger, bargaining, depression, arid acceptance. But they do not occur in any necessary order, not all may occur, and two or more may occur simultaneously. By contrast, Serovich and Kimberly, in analyzing their research data, create six categories of response from family members to disclosure of HIV-positive information, of which only one is emotional. (The others are intellectual-cognitive, physical, spiritual, relational, and instrumental.) They do note that what they identify as emotional responses are the most common, namely 51% of the total responses. These six distinctions are probably not particularly useful distinctions from a therapist's perspective, since most if not all of the reactions placed in any one of these six categories express, or at least include, an emotional component, and certainly most are generated by emotion. The most critical factor from a therapist's point of view is to be able to identify, understand, and then attend to the emotional responses of clients. (That is not to deny that a therapist may pay sustained attention to a client's cognitive processes, because of the power of constituted meaning to select particular emotional responses.) While Serovich and Kimberly distinguish twelve types of emotional response to HIV disclosure, therapists will probably recognize and respond to one or more of five dominant patterns of emotional response, which can be received, acknowledged, and attended to in therapy conversations These are: shock/disbelief/embarrassment, anger/rejection, fear/worry/anxiety, sadness/sorrow, hopefulness/love/acceptance. Moments of each of these possible responses may show up at different points in the chaotic family emotional process, more than one may occur at the same time, and they occur in no necessary order. However, shock and disbelief are the most common first responses, and we are told they occur in half or more of the situations where there is disclosure either of a homosexual orientation of HIV-positive status. …