Sure.

Like you, I google to know more about my T. My T believes anything she puts on the internet is public information, so she takes appropriate safeguards as she sees fit.

She thinks googling is OK and was rather flattered (her words...apparently I'm the first client to tell her I googled her), and understood my curiosity. I'd also told her I'd Goggled all my past therapists.

I did feel guilty and ashamed of my curiosity. She understood and saw it as a desire to connect with her.

Also I explained that it's also to even out power dynamics for me: People in my family used my vulnerabilities and secrets to hurt me, get me beaten, so I felt not knowing anything about her to be very scary.

I told her that if she said she didn't want me to look at her social media, I would stop immediately.

I voluntarily told her what I found AND how I found it, because I felt guilty, and also because it was easy to find and therefore anyone with basic internet knowledge would be able to find it.

Things I've found via googling and simply using basic search functions on social media sites: Her public Flickr, her private Facebook, her two instagram accounts (One public which she is OK with me viewing, another once public which is now private.)

I actually found her public instagram because I found her "then-public, now private" instagram. She turned personal instagram private even though she mostly posts on her public instagram. She feels it's OK for me to look at her public instagram, because it's a thing she shares freely and she understands my desire to get a glimpse of her life outside her work. When she turned her personal instagram from public to private, she also blocked then unblocked me to undo my follow. I respected that boundary and didn't ask her why she prevented me from following it.

Her facebook was also locked down but I could see some posts, interests, likes even though we aren't and will never be Facebook friends. I typed up a guide with screenshots and printed it out so she would know how to it lock down quite well. Example, most people know profile pictures are public BUT don't know you can hide the description, who liked it and comments on it. And not many know that quite a lot of sections in your profile is set to public by default.

Why she said she self discloses more to me... I don't really know. I know she has said it's a clinical decision relevant to my treatment. I think it's because she sees me as a "trauma from prolonged child abuse survivor who is still being abused as an adult" and apparently a lot of clinical literature I've read writes that clients with complex trauma perceive neutrality as negative and don't benefit from a rigidly blank state therapist.

I haven't asked her much about herself despite:
» Being very, very curious about her thoughts, feelings, life
» Her saying I can ask ANY question, and she will answer unless it's too personal.

I also regularly worry that I'm pushing or crossing her boundaries, especially since I yearn for connection with her (which is embarrassing for me as I was very guarded and suspicious of her for a long time). I'm afraid that in my desire for emotional connection, I will cross her personal boundaries. Having had to learn that I am entitled to boundaries (since I was regularly beaten and had parents who are very invasive about everything in my life, including punishing me for "thought crime", invading privacy, parents feeling entitled to demand answers to extremely personal things), I'm afraid of inducing that same "violated" feeling in anyone. She has told me several times, very firmly, that I am "not a boundary pusher".

Yet...she won't tell me what SOME of her boundaries are, specifically, while she'll state SOME of her boundaries... Example, she won't say something like "you can send max X messages" only that "We'll discuss if you're messaging too much", and "My boundary is that I won't reply." She says that's because I always want to know "the rules" so I can ensure I never cross them.