Secret Keepers: Beyond the Partitions and Notepads

How do Catholic priests and therapists cope with listening to myriad troubles

The physical spaces of confession and counseling are sealed in a stained glass mosaic of flowers and vines. These rooms contain intimate thoughts, feelings and secrets.

Story and photos by Eli Voorhies

It’s been a difficult day at work for Jason Chug. Others might turn to their friends, family or partner to rant, but it's different for him. He is not allowed to.

That’s because Chug is a licensed mental health counselor. Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), he is legally obligated to keep everything private that his clients share during sessions, except if they are a threat to themselves or others, when he must report that to authorities. Not to mention, it's good ethics.

Comparing himself to a vessel and traumas to liquid, Chug only has so much of a threshold before the liquid “can overwhelm and leak out into the rest of life.” Still, he is unable to share the flood with other containers.

Like Chug, the Very Reverend Jeffrey Moore also hears things that he can’t shake; things he will take to the grave. These secrets come in the form of sin.

As the pastor for all the Catholic churches in Whatcom County, Moore’s community depends on him and other priests to absolve their sins in confession. Every week he listens to penitents — people who repent their sins — in a confessional, two adjoining booths separated by a partition, ensuring anonymity.

Catholic priests are sworn to secrecy and are not allowed to share anything that was said in confession, even if the pope or president came knocking.

“I cannot ever reveal anybody's sins, lest I be excommunicated from the church,” Moore said.

If it weren’t for these rules, HIPAA and the vow of secrecy, it’s doubtful that patients and penitents would spill their guts to therapists and priests — total strangers. In order to maintain a safe space, therapists and priests become vaults of secrets.

That begs the question, how do therapists and priests cope with listening to and stowing away troubles all the time?

Chug, whose private practice is based out of the Seattle area, has a method to deal with those sessions that cling to his mind like thorny blackberry bushes to a fence. Settling into his white Lexus 300 Hybrid, Chug puts on his favorite lo-fi hip-hop artist Nujabes and cruises around Bellevue and Interstate 405, his car vibrating with every pothole in the road — or maybe that’s just the music.

“I stop at the stoplight. I’m just dancing in my seat, grooving. On the off chance that somebody is watching, I’ll smile over at them ‘Yeah, I’m having a good time,’” Chug said. After a final song “hits the spot” he knows the escapade is over and it’s time to head home.

Chug got his masters in existential phenomenology and mixes this background into his therapy practice. He defines existentialism as a practical approach.

“The cards you've been dealt, not your fault. But the truth is you and you alone are responsible for the decisions that you make. If you choose to not make a decision, that is, itself, a decision,” Chug said.

This existential mindset also helps him cope with the more disheartening sessions. He has a mantra: “I signed up for this. I know why I’m doing this… I want to support those who need support; I want to be the person who I didn’t have back then.” Through his mantra, Chug reminds himself of his purpose, dispelling doubts about pack-muling traumas.

Sins can be a different beast altogether, as they carry spiritual weight for members of the Catholic faith. Sins are direct offenses to God and, if not absolved, bar one from entering Heaven.

“When you go into confession, it's much higher stakes because you're talking about the state of your soul and eternity,” said Erin Godwin, a senior at Western Washington University and a member of Viking Catholic — Western’s campus ministry.

Tongue in cheek, Father Moore says that the majority of sins are “boring,” which is to say that humans make everyday mistakes. He has no issue keeping those secrets. Other times, the sins can be intense. That’s when Father Moore is tested.

“Infrequently, I will hear about sexual abuse of somebody, and if anybody were ever to tell me that outside of the confessional, I would immediately go through the mandatory reporting requirements,” Father Moore said. “But in the confessional, I'm stuck with that. I can't tell anybody, I can't protect the [survivors] that they're confessing about.”

Immediately after hearing something disturbing, Father Moore fixes his gaze on the silver crucifix draped on a wall of the confessional, ruffles the sleeves of his charcoal black cassock as he gathers his hands together in prayer, and turns to the Lord for guidance. As the next penitent enters the chamber, his heart is still tormented, but he is able to redirect his attention — there are others to be redeemed.

Father Tyler Johnson, the chaplain for Viking Catholic, has a strategy for motoring through everyday sins. It’s called a “mind dump.”

Father Johnson compares it to a university student cramming for exam week. When a student completes their first exam, they erase the information to make room for new material. Then they take the second exam, the third and so forth. In the context of confession, Father Johnson regularly takes a dozen exams in one sitting — certainly a lot to keep track of. At the end of this marathon, there really are no secrets to keep; he doesn’t remember the sins.

While this is more of an automated process, Father Johnson is no machine — he still deals with an emotional side.

“I do feel empathy for these people because they just pour out their heart and soul, and you, just naturally as a human being, feel bad,” Father Johnson said. “But then God, who loves you, forgives it all. It’s actually a very joyful, positive place.”

Acting as conduits of God, priests pass on advice and cleanse confessors of their sin through a formal prayer. This concrete outcome of God’s forgiveness consoles Father Moore’s internal struggles.

“The reason I put myself in this existential danger of having to keep a secret I could never reveal is because 99% of the time the grace that I see and the power that I see and the way in which the Lord works is incredible,” Father Moore said. “I would never trade it for anything.”

Some therapists also derive a certain catharsis from sessions, lifting the weight of the secret-keeping, as is the case with Cole Van Anrooy, a psychology intern training to be a licensed therapist at Western’s Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC).

“I consider myself kind of a neurotic person. It feels good to know that other people have experienced something similar,” Van Anrooy said. “It feels like a safe space to kind of just be my neurotic self… get into the mess with somebody else.”

One of the hardest things for Van Anrooy is when a patient presents a trauma that relates to his own experiences. Not missing a beat, he takes a mental bookmark of the emotions that were coaxed out, compartmentalizes the response and attends to the client.

Later on, Van Anrooy consults his supervisors, with whom he can legally speak under the informed consent agreement that CWC patients sign.

“It's really helpful to be able to just brainstorm with somebody, I think clinically, but also [to] share your emotional experience of what's happening in therapy too,” Van Anrooy said.

Rebecca Coates-Finke, a school counselor who works at a Washington middle school, is also lucky to have the support of supervisors. Therapists in private practice do not have that support.

When Coates-Finke has a tough session, she’ll sometimes go home with a nagging feeling, frustrated that she didn’t solve a tricky problem during work hours.

“It can be tough to hear how even kids with a lot of resources and support can experience such terrible things at such a young age,” she said.

Coates-Finke specializes in drama therapy, which holds that some things can be dealt with through embodied knowledge and not everything can be solved through frank conversations. In some cases, she’ll ask students to express themselves through heavy metaphors. A student might say, “It feels like there’s a big boulder crushing my chest.” Coates-Finke would respond “Did the boulder land there?” or “Did someone put it there?” and “What would the boulder say if it could talk?”

“Trauma teaches us that there's only one solution or one door,” Coates-Finke said. “Creativity shows us all of the windows.”

Coates-Finke has discovered that sometimes she doesn’t give herself time to process a particularly affecting session she just had with a child. She found a solution that aligns with drama therapy. After ushering students out of her tiny classroom, which radiates warm, tranquil light from the multitude of lamps she thrifted, she passes by the cushioned meeting chairs, sits at a desk in the corner and pulls out the secret ingredients: a notebook and colored pencils from a blue mug her friend made. Red, blue, purple, yellow — whatever colors appeal to her — greet the white canvas.

“I don’t usually have a thing I am trying to draw. I’m just thinking about what just happened,” she said.

Doodling allows Coates-Finke to find space and take extra time to feel the sessions.

All the therapists felt haunted by secrets unless they dealt with them through their preferred avenues of expression. They exorcized those ghosts through music-filled car drives, drawing, discussion with supervisors, existentialism or drama therapy.

On the other hand, the priests Father Johnson and Moore felt that confession yielded such a positive outcome that their misgivings were remedied on the spot, except in the most extreme cases for Father Moore.

The two occupations have some significant differences that might contribute to this disparity.

For one, therapists engage with their patients’ traumas day in and day out, while priests might only hold confession for a couple of hours each week.

Godwin, who has been consistently attending confession for three years and therapy for the past four, pointed out there is an inherent difference in the intentions of therapy versus confession. One is geared to work through and solve mental and emotional problems, usually with a science-based method, while the other is for spiritual release.

Additionally, the counselor and patient regularly meet for longer, face-to-face therapy sessions. A relationship, albeit professional, can be fostered.

“[Therapy] is very personalized and individualized,” said Godwin. “They get to know you, your backstory, how that affects you and how to interact with you.”

In confession, the relationship begins once the penitent shuts the door behind them and ends minutes later when it is reopened. The priest never sees the penitent’s face or learns their identity.

The relationships between therapist-client contrast priest-penitent, helping to explain why these therapists have to take an extra step to cope with secrets.

At the end of the day, therapists and priests were confident in their roles as secret keepers. No matter how burdensome, creating a safe space for people to open up and heal makes it well worth it.

“We keep things bottled up into ourselves and that gives it so much power. But when you verbalize those things, it takes away the power,” Godwin said. “I think that's a big similarity between therapy and confession.”