Treating everything that the client says with complete confidentiality is absolutely essential for Co-Counseling—or, for that matter, counseling—to work well and persistently. 


Whatever the client says or expresses in any way is in some form an aspect of the client’s thinking, even if it is a rehearsal of distress, which the client’s intelligence is rehearsing in an effort to bring it to the counselor’s attention. 


For most of their life, the client has been under some form of pressure of being told what to think, and this in itself is deeply hurtful to anyone’s intelligence. If the client is making an effort to think in some areas where there has been some distress, this thinking needs to be fully respected and encouraged. 


Any discussion (with anyone except the client) of what the client has said or revealed is a basic invalidation of the client’s safety. Even if the client themself demands the opinion of the counselor about something they have said or revealed, the 
counselor will do well to be interested and enthusiastic about the client’s saying it but try as far as possible to be completely non-committal as far as making any judgment about what the client has said, even if the client “insists.”


Never bring up or share what the client has said in a session (or turn, in a group) outside of the session, or even in the next session, unless, of course, the client requests that you do so and gives permission for you to do so.


The excuse for breaking this confidentiality toward the client when one is oneself the client in a later session, that “the material has been too upsetting and must be talked about,” is just an excuse being offered by a gossip pattern or a gossip compulsion of the one who is doing it. Any upsets can be discharged by contradiction, not by rehearsing the material or by identifying the source.