Do You Read Your T's Notes?

Where I live, we as patients can have full rights and access to our therapist's notes.

Here lies my question: Do you ever read your therapist's notes or do you refuse to ever look?

Here my personal answer: No. Never and not planning on ever doing it. The reason why is because I feel as though it would hurt. I'd rather blindly be able to trust my T than have to micromanage my psyche. I feel like it would hurt me more than help, especially considering that I really don't want to know the entirety of what's going on in my mind.

I don't because I don't think there would be anything surprising. I would actually like to see my notes from my hospitalization, however horrific that would be.

My CBT psychiatrist actually would photocopy her notes - and ask me to read them every day between sessions.

ive seen many hospital records and dr. notes. with my current T i have not seen them. i asked him about it once, he said yes i could look at them. then i decided not to. he has told me they are as generic as possible

I didn't know that. Thanks for saying.

I feel like the only way this could be useful was if you saw the same therapist for a significant period of time and they could offer their notes as a sort of tangible proof of change/progress. Like where you were and look where you are now, you know?

No, I don't see them. There probably wouldn't be much to them lately.

Seeing as though more insight would have actually helped me. I had someone insult my intelligence probably because you just don't get that question everyday also because they went on to help without our permission. Had I been more diligent and in the know this would have a been a great idea to maintain my functioning with a creative more conscious involved patient approach like myself . In general though it would be hurtful and counter productive. It is just that I lost my career and am still hurting from that intervention. Hindsight, you can go back and study your own self and get some of this correct reading research helps with that....Debilitating anxiety presents with such and such self state switch etc is totally unaware might need a re parenting approach. Is she spiritual unchurched reminds me of my druggy days? Is she still being abused.....reminds me of myself in ways....Just from personal experience

So i got a copy of my T records because I thought I would need them for something and I read a few pages and felt completely betrayed by my old T. I just didn't like how she spoke about me and it made me feel as if the whole time we interacted with each other she was being fake. I stopped a few pages in because I didn't want to get more upset and eventually read what my new T said because I'm sure I'd feel the same way and I didn't want to have to change T's again. I don't want to go in the first place but I have to go to keep my pdoc.

I've seen them. Nothing in them I didn't know already. They aren't full of juicy tidbits. They are pretty generic and clinical, no great detail or anything.

I'd be more interested in reading my hospital notes/pdoc notes.

I don't read mine because I have really bad anxiety and I'm positive reading the notes would just make it worse.

Absolutely not. That's the last thing I'd ever want to read. I was actually given a couple paper copies of my psych records today, just two, to take back into the room with my psychiatrist. I was kind of tempted for half a second but I didn't read anything on them. I really don't need to see what people think of me and my crazy *** psych problems. lol

I wouldn't have much interest in reading therapy notes. I once read the notes on my medical records from an IP stay (when I was 23) and they were surprisingly boring. I remember the first 2 sentences: 'The patient presents as an attractive young woman with curly hair. She complains of anxiety.' And so on. Basically, just facts.

I remember thinking it was funny that the therapist noted my hair as 'curly.'

I only ever look at them after I finish seeing that person, otherwise I feel it makes me disconnect from them, which doesn't exactly help with therapy. I find it interesting, actually - generally the notes from people I've got along with very well are very accurate, and the notes from people I struggled to connect with are way off what was actually going on.