Unethical?

I have a friend I spoke to today and we hadn't spoken in a bit.

I told her about being busy with school, my upcoming layoff and the work I'm doing in therapy.

I told her about my inability to commit and how I can't put my life on the right path because I can't make a decision as to which way to go.

When I was discussing this I had mentioned how I had to explain to my therapist that school is my 2nd choice. On my list of life goals, I really want to start this non-profit. School is sort of a back up plan. In my mind it lends credibility to me where my experience in the field is lacking.

At the time when I was trying to figure out which way my life should go - when I was talking about how miserable I was at work, my therapist had said that once I got back into the swing of school I would be able to reap the rewards or something to that effect.

She went BALLISTIC. She said he was out of line, he's not supposed to be telling me what to do etc. I was explaining that he wasn't TELLING me what to do and then she told me to stop sticking up for him. She said something about him not following the basic tenets of being a therapist and that if he can't do that much he shouldn't be talking to people.

She got IRATE. This is a woman who has a passion for MH. She jumped off a bridge and survived. She's on the board of the local NAMI organization.

Does this sound like the most heinous thing to anybody else? I thought she overreacted and she thought I was minimizing just how horrible this was. What do you think?

What she didn't want to hear when I tried to tell her was that he's relatively new at this. He's still an intern technically but I feel like he has helped me more than any therapist I ever had before. I feel like that thing was a mistake, she thinks he's incompetent.

Your input is appreciated.

Sounds like jumping off of bridges is your friend's go-to plan!

I think ts in general encourage education - its a pretty safe bet. Its not like you were saying you wanted to go into deep debt to get a phd in popsicle stick building or stg and he was encouraging THAT.

Unaluna, we think alike. I was going to say the friend seemed to jump off the deep end.

I see absolutely nothing wrong in what your T said.

I've read somewhere that a therapist recommending a client NOT go to school is a red flag (cause that's what my t recommended to me!). With that, I concur with Una and Lola. Your friend seems to have gone off the deep end.

It doesn't sound like your friend was really listening to what you were saying but rather she jumped to making a judgement for whatever reason and it got the best of her. Maybe you just caught her in a bad moment.

From what you say here it just sounds like your T was saying a generic encouraging thing about the benefit of school rather than telling you what to do.

Generally a therapist shouldn't tell you what to do--but that isn't what sounds like transpired. It sounds like your T was suggesting an alternate way of looking at your choices--and proposing the very useful idea that attending school, even though it's not your first priority right now, could be a more effective way to achieve your long term goals.

it doesn't sound heinous. but, at the same time, he's sharing his opinion. some people (maybe not you, but some people) are people pleasers and will be swayed by hearing an authority figure's opinion, particularly if somehow they say 'well my therapist recommended it, so maybe it will help.' rather than listening to their own desires in life.

maybe this was an issue for your friend, maybe she had people in her life that she felt she 'had to' comply with or couldn't locate her own self/experience if there was another person's in the mix. i personally struggle with that. i had things like teacher tell me 'oh, XYZ would be great," and i ended up doing XYZ because "so and so said it would be good," and i was looking for approval.

it would have been better for me if i had people encouraging me to understand myself. it sounds like maybe you have that ability to stay with yourself and not kind of 'lose yourself' in the other person. so, maybe not an issue for your therapy. my T is very careful about this. he doesn't want me to do 'the right thing,' but to be able to understand what the right thing is for me on my own. that's particular to me.

i too would worry a little if i heard just the bits you shared. just a little worried that you might end up changing your opinions without realizing it after talking to him. like, that he will have an influence just by virtue of expressing his opinion. there's power in being a therapist and even simple things can influence how we think or consider situations.

not saying that will happen, just that it happens to some ppl so those of us who are like that have to be extra cautious...or we end up trying to be who the therapist wants...rather than our real self.

Thanks everyone.

You'd have to know this woman to know that she is a real go-getter. Very together. That was a million moons ago around her divorce. She is honestly an AMAZING woman - I don't know how she keeps so many balls in the air and I respect her immensely, but I honestly couldn't figure out what I said that got her off on a bender.

As far as people pleasers - it's funny b/c she mentioned that she thinks I always put other people first and she was using my defending him as an example. One of my character flaws in my opinion is that I am too selfish. I pretty much put NO ONE above me, however, I did have an experience with a therapist once before.

It had to do with my marriage. My husband and I were separated and toying with reconciliation but I moved 2 hours from where we lived and he wasn't coming to visit me. I'd go to him. Meanwhile I was crazy attracted to this guy I had just met. My therapist at that time told me that it looked like i was doing all the work and that he didn't seem like he was interested in reconciling. Because of how I was feeling about the next guy I just agreed with her and started moving on but i regretted that.

I just feel like he is the first therapist that I'm making headway with and i don't want to feel like I'm the ahole for sticking up for him.

The degree to which a T shares their opinion, gives advice or direction is often very influenced by the modality they were trained in. Some traditional psychodynamic people are very "blank screen" and wouldn't give you anything back, person centred people tend to be a bit more warm and personable and CBT people will teach skills and give direction. That's a very broad brush summary but it does mean that your T could be entirely appropriate and ethical in sharing their opinion.

I don't think anything that you've reported about this therapist sounds at all over the top or concerning. He appears to be more of a sounding board--you bounce ideas off him and he responds with a solid view. As others have said, school is an area that's hard to go wrong with, sort of like being supportive of an athlete who is considering taking something to the next level by getting a trainer. It's not an either or situation, which seems to be how your friend sees it.

Maybe there is something more going on that your friend is picking up on, but I don't see it as a red flag that a therapist is being encouraging of getting a good education to pursue professional goals that require higher education (thinking of grant applications where you have to submit the qualifications of staff and organization).

Kind of sounds like your friend was triggered by something you said; perhaps she had a past experience with a therapist that this triggered in her? Who knows?

It sounds like he steered you. I don't know if that's a therapy no-no.

I wish my last T had steered me away from a terrible choice I made. I laid it all out for him and asked him if he thought what I wanted to do sounded sane and like a good thing to do, and he said it sounded sane and good-- but it wasn't. Looking back on it I see it wasn't. I wish he had pointed out the truth to me. I am actually pretty upset that he encouraged me to do something so stupid.

I think this is basically it. You talk to me long enough and you know I CAN be rather impressionable. I’m actually extremely stubborn and hard headed as well, lol. But if I respect you - if I believe that you’re on my intellectual level or better and I believe you care about me, my brain can be putty in your hands. I have a few people in my life that I defer to like this and she is one of them. People at work NEVER get to see this because I pretty much believe that I work with a bunch of idiots. That’s not to say that some of them aren’t smarter than me - maybe they are, but they have never proven that to me. I guess management feels like they don’t have to but that’s also why they don’t have my respect. But all of that is another story. I don’t think she liked anyone in a position of power molding me.

Going back to what I just said about molding, I’d say yes. I don’t know that it necessarily had anything to do with something that happened to her PERSONALLY, but one of the things she had said was, “People who don’t know what they’re doing who are telling people what to do are getting people killed.” This I understand. I volunteered with a domestic violence program YEARS ago and if there was ONE thing that hit home above all else, it was that you NEVER tell them what to do. She said, “They know how to survive their relationship and you don’t. Telling them what to do can get them killed.” Women are more likely to be killed when they make that attempt to leave so I took all of that to heart. I’m guessing she learned that lesson along the way somewhere too.

I had a therapist that I think steered me to a terrible choice. Didn’t really steer me, but basically watered a thought in my head that I really hadn’t thought through. I was too much of a mess to honestly be making decisions so to put something in my head to make it seem like a good idea - that is something I can’t forgive myself for and I’m FURIOUS with her. I can’t even remember her name - that’s how few times I’d seen her.