The only live person I fully identified to my current therapist is my previous T. I did not want to at first but he asked and I disclosed in the moment. But then did not regret as my former T has a lot of stuff about him online that current T checked out so now he has a more independent perception in addition to my reports. I sometimes feel guilty about this though as they are sort of colleagues after all.

I identified my parents in a sense that I showed my therapist pictures of them and about my father, a magazine article. But both of them are dead now and lived on a different continent.

I rarely use names for other people I talk about except first names for those that come up frequently. This is similar in my everyday life, I tend to talk about people using qualitative and informative descriptions more than names. Example: my friend who does X, or my student who has issues Y... I would not share more identifying information about them. Sometimes my therapists asked what their names were and then I either say a first name or that it is irrelevant.

Yes I am sure that many people's brains work quite differently relative to each-other when it comes to information processing. My former T and I often had hard time understanding each-other for this very reason, I think. Current T and I are much more similar and there is definitely less misunderstanding.

Even when I identify people, I definitely don't do so that the therapist could find or report them or contact them. In fact, I would be very pissed if they ever attempted this and I found out. I prefer to bring things and people into my therapy for the sake of discussion and not for the therapist to interfere with my life in any other form.