I never felt that I wanted/needed to hide being in therapy - for me it was not much different than my many other different interests/explorations in my life. But I definitely do not advertise it either. I had in depth discussions with some friends that also experienced it and had their own opinions, discussions and criticisms like here on PC. With other people, I just mentioned and if they did not show an interest, I dropped the subject. It never occurred to me that there could be a form of competition between friends and a therapist, but now that I read this post, it is interesting as one of my main conclusions from my therapy experiences is that I can easily use friends for the same (the way I used therapy), for free, and the effect is much better. My best friends tend to be people interested and willing to dissect psychological things together, even the ones that go on between us, and doing their own investigations. I actually found Ts superficial in comparison.