just found out

that my T (male) is expecting a child in a few months

found out b/c i have been on a holiday break, feeling very depressed, and googled his name to try and get to his website, feel connected

and up came baby registry

i feel terrible that i found it
i feel terrible that i'm not happy at all...
wondering how it will affect me
feeling like probably i will be forgotten entirely
wondering if now is the time to just terminate
don't think i can deal with it
don't think i can deal with the sadness
knowing he has all of this 'stuff' in his life i don't...a successful career, friends, a new home, and now a child

how ungrateful i am
i feel like i can't even look at him...

**** i am such a loser.

My main T is going to become a grandfather soon and I'm both thrilled for him and quietly jealous of his family.

Sharing the love is hard but a good skill to learn.

I completely understand you and I would be scared to that the T would leave. As he most likely will take some time off to be with his child, even if it´s most often during a shorter time than for a female T having a child, I would bring the question up more or less directly. If I wasn´t able to ask him in a session, I would e-mail or text him and explain that him getting a child makes me upset and worried about how therapy will look like, time off and so on.

I don´t know for how long you´ve seen this T but if you think you could and want to find a new T, I would consider looking for a new T if my T told me he would be away for several months and perhaps during several periods of time to take care of his child.

I agree with Paula and also completely understand why you feel the way you feel. There is nothing to be ashamed of about it. Therapy situation is unusual and the therapist-client relationship is condensed with many intense dynamics that no other relationship has. Therefore, one can't expect to have the feeling people usually have when they find out about the addition to the family of their friend, relative or co-worker. It's perfectly normal that this is an upsetting discovery for you.

I would talk to your T about what you found out and how it makes you feel. His reaction and how he decided to deal with it would tell you a lot about him and his competence as a therapist. It's a scary thing to do, but not to do it makes no sense because if you are not open with the therapist, it negates the whole purpose of therapy. It's scary to think what he would think of you, but if he is a decent person and a competent professional, he will not only not think badly of you but will appreciate your honesty. There is nothing in what you did to be ashamed of. You didn't do anything illegal by googling his name. You just wanted to feel the connection. It's not a crime. You are certainly not a loser.

It might help to check the facts. We don't really have paternity leave in the US, so if he's self-employed then he probably can't afford to take too much time off. If he works for an agency he might have vacation time - few families can afford both the husband and wife to take FMLA (assuming his wife works).

While certainly he will have a new little person in his life, it doesn't mean you don't still matter. My husband isn't a T but works in a job where he works with people on a personal level and caring about his family doesn't mean he doesn't care about them.

I'd encourage you to talk to him. Just say you were looking for a way to contact him, came across this info, and wanted to discuss what that was going to look like for your therapy. And, even if you're not feeling good about it, offer a congratulations. Sometimes acting opposite to the emotion can move us in a more effective direction.

thanks, all, for your kind and understanding replies

i ended up calling him today to leave a message and give him a heads up that i had something to tell him and i just wanted to let him know and that he might be angry, but if he could try not to be that would help (we meet tomorrow)

he called back (which i didn't expect) and i - with way more drama than was at all necessary - told him

he wasn't angry or disappointed (though i did sense some annoyance that i had found the info. as the first thing he said was, "well, it wasn't a good idea for you to go looking for information about me, but we can talk about that")

and he said that our work together wouldn't end because of this. he promised. (which, frankly, i think is naive of him - he doesn't know what might happen) and he kind of told me this happens, people find out.

i was not very charitable or socially correct. i hope it will be easier to offer him a congratulations when i see him. i was too afraid he'd be angry to say it and mean it this time around and just forgot as we were only on the phone eight minutes.

the main question i have to face is just whether i need it to end because of this - because of the things inside me it kicks up. confronting my crap from childhood through his actual, real life seems unfair to him.

but all i feel is kind of a sense that he is perfect, and i'm some kind of broken disease.

i'd even been having a fantasy lately (which i'd shared) that there is a "me" in a hospital bed that he's talking to, looking out at a couple with an infant. in that fantasy, i'm some kind of disease and if i can get rid of myself - the couple and the infant will be happier in their life, particularly the mother. sometimes the couple was me and my husband; sometimes it was T and who i imagine his wife to be...

at the time i wondered if it had to do with my being hospitalized as a child and left there in illness, while my parents stayed with my younger brother.

now i have to wonder - when Ts *don't* disclose major things, when we're doing deeper work over several years - how can that *not* affect therapy?


I'm sure he'll tell me his plans for paternity leave. I think he has enough of a 'cushion' that he can afford to take several weeks, if not a few months. The rational me hopes he does take the time, bond with baby, have special moments, etc.

of course, the emotional me feels like a three year old who has just been told she wasn't very important to begin with, and now she's being replaced with something more amazing and important than she can ever be...

thanks again for the understanding replies. my T is a good one, and I feel bad if I've crossed some boundary - but, I kind of do think that anything someone puts online is food for thought. My employer can Google me anytime, look at my Facebook, or run a background check...and I'd better be prepared for the consequences. I'm not sure why a T would expect any different.

Looking the guy up is not wrong and in my opinion, you did nothing wrong. You don't have to be socially acceptable when dealing with a therapist. Even if the therapist disagrees, it does not make him right and you wrong. Public info is public info and if it is openly on the web, they have no reason to complain in my opinion.

I don't understand therapists who have an issue with this. They ought to know this stuff is public. My therapist let me know that my picture showed up in something online, and I was oh s*** and changed the image to something else (she wasn't searching for me--it was something I'd sent). And, she's had clients refer to something they saw about her online. It's how life is now. Unless you live in a hole. And there are some who do.

I would look at it as, the universe just handed you a present. You went looking, and the universe rewarded you for your effort. Thats how it works, imo. Thats how you know youre doing the right thing, when the universe responds like that. Look at all the stuff this situation is bringing up for you - its a psycholohical gold mine. It doesnt come from nowhere - that is unprocessed stuff inside of you. Is it earth-shattering, the most important shite in the world? Who cares?? Start where you are.

He may have been saying it wasn't good for YOU to go looking for information about him since clearly it upset you. His concern may be more about when you go seeking out information (or whatever), you have to be prepared for whatever you find. Kind of the you get what you asked for kind of thing. If a person knows they have the potential to be upset if they find information about someone, then perhaps they need to stop that urge to look before they do so.

In other words, his concern may not be about his privacy. His concern is that you set yourself up to find something that would be upsetting perhaps and sure enough it did. There are people on this forum who know delving into their T's personal information is upsetting to them even before they do it, but they do it anyway. Perhaps your T has seen you set yourself up this way before in other ways? Just a thought.

I agree with SD, LicketySplit and Hankster. Public info is public.

My T told me she might tell me things about herself if I ask, but she wouldn't like for me to look things up. Later, she told me she has been stalked before...and not in the "I want to strengthen my connection with my T" way.

And we also have to know ourselves. For instance, if I know watching Law and Order: SVU upset me because it deals with sexual assault in every episode, but I go ahead watch an SVU marathon anyway, I have sort of set myself up for whatever upset that causes me. I have to take better self-care than that.

I have no idea if the OP knows she gets easily upset by things or not; I don't know if the OP is dealing with transference issues that might be easily stirred up by new information about her T. But it that is a possibility, staying away from digging up new information that might set that kind of upset off would just be good self care.

Sometimes just because we can do something doesn't mean it is the best thing for us to do personally. Some people can look at information about their T all day and not be at all phased by it. Others may need to think ahead before they leap. My guess is the therapist is more concerned about the effect this had on the OP than on his privacy.

I get what you're saying, lolagrace, but isn't it also a good opportunity to work on something with such an emotional charge and then find a way to defuse whatever it is that was set off? I guess I see those kinds of things as really good, with a therapist who knows how to work with it without shaming the individual. I'm not saying the OP's therapist did any shaming, but some would.

It didn't sound like her T did any shaming, but the OP was incredibly distraught over what she found, to the point of thinking she has to terminate therapy, etc. Yes, she needs to work on the underlying issues, but these issues are probably not new and not unknown already and could have been handled more slowly without the intensity that was so destabilizing. The "crisis" here wasn't necessary in order to work on the underlying issues.

I didn't google: "therapist name" baby registry personal stuff

I googled: "therapist name" - which usually takes me to therapist website

This time, under therapist website on list, there was baby registry...

I don't get easily upset by random personal information. I had no way of knowing that when I googled name this would come up. I have searched for info. on him in the past, and found stuff that didn't upset me quite this much (though, I admit, it wasn't healthy.)

In this case, I think it was just as much of "stumbling upon" something as it gets in terms of the digital universe...

To be fair, yeah - I probably shouldn't have and probably shouldn't try and look at his website when I feel super depressed. Not a good recipe.

That said, it happened. Blaming me isn't really all that supportive.

Not blaming you. Just pointing out that we all have to be careful with our own well-being. People assume your T is mad at you for looking. I'm just saying that he's probably more concerned about how this affected you.

Just to clarify: I brought up the word shaming, but made it clear (I thought) that I didn't think the OP's therapist was shaming, but that other therapists might do that. Also, I think other commenters have said to wait and see what the therapist said, so it all sounds pretty reasonable. I'm sorry I brought the shaming word into it. It was not aimed at the OP's therapist, but at other therapists who do shame clients with things like this (even my former, not very good therapist, called it shaming).

So...sorry!

Interesting update Scallion..

First off, you didn't cross any boundary by looking at public information. Secondly, we live in the age of the Internet when virtual life is an integral part of our everyday life, and whenever the society undergoes some drastic change, our moral standards also tend to change. What would be considered inappropriate in 50-s nowadays is a common behavior, which makes is socially acceptable. We all google whoever we want and whatever we want. That's one of the reasons search engines were invented.

I wouldn't worry about how your T is feeling about your discovery, because, once again, you didn't do anything wrong, and so it's his job to take care of his feelings and to turn your discovery into a therapeutic experience for you. I think, it's great that this incident made you recall your childhood experience of being neglected because of the arrival of your little brother. This is a grist for the mill and a great opportunity for your therapist to do some good work with you around this issue. If anything, as a professional, he should be glad to see the new material for exploration.

I don't want to speculate on what he meant by saying that it was not a good idea for you to do the search on him. This wasn't necessarily a wrong thing to say, but to me this is not the best response for a T to give in this situation. If I were him, I'd say something like "Thank you for telling me. We'll talk about it in session." That's all.

Now, the next session will show his competence. How he chooses to deal with this will show the level of his professionalism.

I think it is fine to google your T. I think it is usual. This is the internet age, I think out of interest it is natural to google a T. I have.

*TW - small discussion of past SI*

an update:

went to session and T said we had lots to talk about, and that we'd get to the phone call, but that he wanted to start out with a lot of other stuff first

that he's concerned about me
he knows i'm having a really, really hard time
he's committed to working with me
wrt a possible Pdoc visit: he wants to help, but doesn't want me to think he's 'getting rid' of me or won't do therapy any longer
he thinks things have gotten hard and we need a plan to help me
he cares about me
he wants me to keep trying, keep working, even though its really hard

he mentioned how he didn't want to be like someone in my childhood who, when i used to SI as a teen, drove me to the drugstore for me to buy sutures/bandages and left it to me to figure it out (my T then (different T, 15+ years ago!) ended up hospitalizing me as a result, saying this person was just enabling me)

and we didn't talk about the phone call, boundaries, or his life at all
he made it all about me...which is what he keeps saying therapy is about

all in all, this "sounds good" as i write it on paper. it feels so confusing and strange. i don't know what to make of it.

all through the session there was this sense in my mind (voice in my head?) that kept telling me he's going to hurt me somehow, he's tricking me, he has to tell me these things, and that he can't say, of course, that he's hoping to refer me out to a psychiatrist so that he can spend all his time with his new family soon - but that sure would be a relief to him, wouldn't it? wouldn't it decrease the pressure on him, decrease any risks that my being 'difficult case' brings up?

part of me thinks it's almost my obligation to 'play nice' and go to Pdoc, get medicated, be quiet, and leave him alone so he can be happy. i have a long history w/ being over-medicated as a teen (4 psychiatric meds for a 15 year old who was dealing w/ a truly dysfunctional family) and taken out of public school - basically couldn't keep my eyes open, gained over 100 lbs in 6 months...just what every 15 y/o girl needs, lol! so getting meds is a really scary step for me anyway, now it's all overlaid with this sense of being a burden to him and him wanting to 'quiet me down' with whatever.

i know that's all coming from inside me and i'm just projecting it out or whatever. but it's really confusing to always hear "trust your experience" or "share your experience" and then my experience - which is what i just wrote - is always so far off the mark, "but understandable, given your past." how can i trust myself when the alarms go off for every little thing?

Go back to checking the facts.

He's going to want to spend time with his family. That's a given. And yet, he's also going to want to make sure he can pay his mortgage/rent, buy food, and care for this family he's got. Usually having a baby makes people more worried about finances not less

I know we don't like to think of the "business" aspect, but that's exactly what's going to help validate his promise to you. You know he needs to pay the bills and so he can't just up and leave you to go spend all his time with his wife and baby because otherwise they'll be living in a cardboard box by the side of the road.

The other fact is that you're the one in control of what happens with regards to the Pdoc. You don't have to go if you don't want to. In fact, I think it's worth discussing in therapy why you don't want to and expressing these doubts you have. I've done that with my T. He once mentioned me seeing another T briefly to get another perspective. I asked him if he was pawning me off and it took a few times for me to feel comfortable believing him. I didn't go see the other T btw. I decided it wasn't worth it and he hasn't brought it up again.

(To add to that, while some Pdocs still do therapy, many don't. So your T can't prescribe meds and that means he has to send you to a doctor if he thinks it might be helpful).

A client has no obligation to play nice with a therapist and no obligation to do what they suggest, in my opinion.

About the meds part: An ex-Pdoc put me on Zyprexa when I was 19...I gained 50lbs. in just a few months. The Pdoc said it was my fault. So I get the fear of side effects. If/when you do see a Pdoc, inform them that you don't want to take meds with the weight gain side effect. It's not just important to your physical health, but your mental health simce both are intertwined.

I also can relate to the feeling of being pushed away because of a suggestion of additional treatment. I just chose to trust that my T and Pdoc do care, and hope that neither abandon me.

You did absolutely nothing wrong by looking him up and I'm surprised he was annoyed. Ts are so naive about this stuff. Still it's great you told him and hopefully he can help you through this.

Try to think about the reality for most new parents who have careers a little bit. You might be surprised but it may be reassuring. The fact is that as a male it's highly unlikely he will take months off. It's just not the culture in the US for fathers to do this - mostly because mom will need it more than him and someone needs to get paid. Exceptions aside, many employers don't offer paid paternity leave. Even paid maternity leave is not something employers are legally required to provide. Most of the time new moms are on ST disability leave which is 6 weeks. After that, it's vacation and then it's all unpaid. So while your T will undoubtably take some vacation time off, I'm confident that it won't be too much. I'll bet that's why he was so adamant that he won't be leaving you - with a new baby he will probably work more, not less. Especially if he's in private practice. So while you'd think it might take him away from you it's just the reality for most working people.

As for his suggestion that you see a pdoc, whether to go or not is totally up to you. Your T was merely suggesting it because he is clearly concerned. Your anxiety level is very high so maybe your T thinks meds might be helpful. Regardless of his intentions and what you decide to do, a pdoc would only be to supplement to your therapy, not a replacement.