Ask a Therapist

If you’re in therapy and you’ve discovered something online about your therapist, you may be wondering what to do. So to help you decide, here are a few things to think about.

Firstly, it’s not unusual for clients to search online for information about their therapists. You share intimate things in the therapy space and it’s only natural you might be curious about us. But if whatever you’ve discovered is playing on your mind, if it’s changing the way you feel towards your therapist or causing you to keep quiet about something you would otherwise bring up, then it’s a good idea to talk this through with your therapist.

Talking about what you’ve discovered and the effect it’s having on you gives you both the opportunity to better understand each other. In fact, it’s likely that by having these conversations together, your relationship will ultimately be strengthened. It’s also true that whatever’s caused you to search online in the first place, rather than ask directly, may be a factor in other relationships that you have. So this is actually a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Firstly, to explore with your therapist what you’ve discovered and the effect it’s having on you, but secondly to see what it’s like to speak openly about a significant relationship with the person concerned.

This experience is likely to be really helpful for you in learning how to express yourself in other significant relationships. We therapists recognise it’s now always easy to bring these things up, and so it might help you to know that the ethical guidelines of the organisations that many of us belong to state very clearly that it is our responsibility to think about the things we post online, and how they might impact any clients of ours that might come across them. Hopefully knowing this is helpful for you in deciding to start that conversation with your therapist.