My curiosity and urges are making me waste my time

This is making me think of something else my MC said about the googling. I clearly felt guilty about it and worried that MC/T would be mad, reject me, etc. (yet I somehow couldn't *not* tell them). I told MC I did it in part to feel closer to him, because I'd been feeling disconnected that night and didn't want to bother him with a text/e-mail. So he asked if it did make me feel more connected, and I said not really. He asked if, in the past, I'd done something to feel more connected to someone, then ended up feeling bad about myself and/or less connected. And of course the answer was yes (he knows me entirely too well...). So it made me think about more constructive ways to connect to people, whether him, T, H. friends, etc. Like, say, just contacting them.

Rainbow, do you think any of this could be connected to your trying to not e-mail your T that much? Like maybe you're using this to try to feel more of a connection?

I appreciate all the thoughtful responses and suggestions. Hopefully I'll answer each one. I tried to search but can't seem to find the person who fits the criteria. At least not on PsychologyToday. I feel a little better doing it rather bthan just thinking about doing it. I don't know if I will say anything to my T or not. Yes, I am conflicted about the whole situation. We're supposed to a mindfulness exercise with a raisin on Wednesday! I want to be able to switch gears but I may discover I'm angry with T and will have to discuss it. She's so good at noticing my feelins. I can't hide them from her. I'm unsettled about these issues.

Good you are exploring these issues. Cut yourself a break with the guilt if you can. Coming here and constantly being told you are not respecting boundaries, i think, can be an attempt on your part to resolve the conflict (take one side) as both sides have tremendous pull. Maybe if you do t look at it as inacceptable, the need could lessen because the OC circle would break.

In my case, attempts to be closer to my therapist always leave me feeling rejected, even though rationally, he cant reciprocate. Those are transference reenactments as my mother was unavailable physically, emotionally, even mentally.

Adding-i think has absolutrly nothing to with boundaries. As Unaluna might say-it always comes back to your mother.

And what WAS available, was painful. My t said my mother related thru pain. I could have creepiness, or i could have nothing.

If a mother relates through pain, does that mean the child will internalize that and relate through pain too?

This is a really good question and I think it shows that the issue isn't just curiosity or wanting the information. It's about the relationship with the therapist, so the therapist has to know about the searching and stuff and react to it, otherwise it's not satisfying. At least that's my impression.

The reason I felt I needed to tell my T when I ended up sat outside her house one night was because I felt that for me, I had gone a step further than I had wanted to. I had told myself that I would do my best not to do this with this person. I had told my T that I would do my best. I did do my best but I still ended up there and I wanted to tell her because it didn't feel right to keep this information to myself. That and the fact that by telling her she could more easily see how bad things were for me that night.

The googling though, I have not divulged and at present I have no plans to.

You have to do what feels right for you.

For me, it's wanting someone to know I've done something potentially bad, but accepting me anyway. My parents were hard on me when I made mistakes, so I saw them as this thing that forever changed who I was, that tarnished my image forever in that person's eyes. So I think with this, I do something like the Googling, and then I need to know if I still accepted and forgiven. And to feel that it won't change how I'm viewed. MC has said in the past that it's "testing," which kids/teens do to their parents. Like for a toddler, "Will you still love me if I throw my food across the room?" For a teen, it's more like, "If I tell you I hate you, will you still accept and love me?" Hope that makes sense.

Maybe because it isn't about looking for the information at all. If one were simply curious, one could find out what one wanted to know and be satisfied.

I think therapists, especially the ones who terminate over this sort of thing, don't do it because their client has a human curiosity. They do it because when the client has to let them know that they know, it's a power grab, one with potentially dark undertones.

It's not really so much a 'confession' as it is a moment where the client makes the therapist feel vulnerable. Perhaps, even threatened. "You didn't tell me this, so I found out for myself and now I'm telling you I know, because I want you to know." And the undertone to that message is "I don't really care about treating you in a respectful, healthy manner. I care about myself and my feelings and I can justify anything I do as long as I really want to do it, so watch out."

People can do as they please, but if you google your therapists family and then tell them you've done it, I don't think you should be surprised if /when they terminate you. These aren't therapeutic boundaries, they're social ones.

Unmet childhood needs aren't an excuse to invade your therapist's life.

There's a big difference between a confession as a power/control thing and one over guilt. At least for me, there certainly is. And I'm generally harder on myself than anyone else could ever be.

ETA: Oh, wait, you were the one who totally trashed me and acted like I was this awful evil person in another thread. Like you were the expert on me and my life, despite not knowing me and having only been on this site for a few months. So...yeah, I know there's no point in arguing with you.

I completely disagree with everything here.
I think clients get to have power and I don't see looking up therapists as a power grab.

I agree with this. There is no excuse to stalk your T or cross their boundaries.

However, I don't think googling your T is invading a T's life. Like my fiance always tells me: information on the internet is public knowledge.

On the other hand, searching your T's family and friends, and stalking behavior ARE invading your T's life.

I've googled my T, ex-T, Pdoc, Primary, etc. When I initially did it, I wanted to learn more about them. Not EVERYTHING; just wanted to see a glimpse of who they were in real life. Now that my relationships with them are stable, I don't research them anymore. I do, however, still look at their fb profile pictures. I can't picture people's faces in my mind, so I have to look at pictures to remember and connect while outside of session.

I admitted to my T that I researched her. She was surprised, but not shocked. She said she's had other clients do it too. I told her about not remembering people's faces, and she understood. I admitted to looking at her picture more often when my attachment gets intense, or my fears. We made a deal that come termination, she would give me a letter and a transitional object if I promised not to look her up anymore after termination. She told me to save a few pictures of her (without her family or friends in them), and look at those when I need to.

OP: I don't understand why you obsess so much over your T. Are you addressing this in therapy? I know we don't share everything about our therapy here, but it also struck me that when your husband was dying/died, you were more focused on your T. Have you started to grieved yet? Or could you be avoiding grieving by focusing on your T? It's just the level of obsession is unhealthy. And like others pointed out, you seem to not even care about T's feelings. How can you say you care about someone and yet break their boundaries on purpose? To satify your own wants and desires? It's mean!

As someone who just finished grad school to be a therapist, I can say this is a much debated topic amongst therapists themselves. In my experience the majority of potential Ts agree with stopdog: internet searching is a fact of modern life and does not constitute any kind of boundary violation (a therapist snooping on a client, however, may be). The internet is public and the info found for free online should be treated as such. The only problem here is the need to tell your T as other posters have already said. I get it, I've been there before and agonized over telling them before finally deciding not to. I wanted to tell because I felt guilty and was afraid he knew and was upset with me. He did know and wasn't upset but that was all that came of my knowing. Nothing was said beyond don't worry about it since he's not allowed to discuss her personal life - that would have been the boundary violation. Try to remember that and maybe the issue will be deflated a bit. You don't need to be so hard on yourself since it's human nature to be curious about people. Especially when you know the information is so easily available with the click of a mouse.

I've found that my internet searching is fueled by boredom and the accessibility of looking up an endless array of topics online, people included. It's a new pastime and a huge time killer. It's also very common. When I am too busy to engage in internet searching I honestly feel a lot better emotionally and otherwise. Maybe your T can help you find ways to control your impulses so you can direct your energy toward something that causes less distress. That's the only reason to stop though- you are not hurting you T. Therapists who demand clients not google them or other people baffle me since it is a ridiculous request. It should be assumed that people google each other and professionals should take appropriate measures to maintain privacy. If you can find a lot of info about your Ts private life on social media then that is on the T to control, not the client. What is in your control is how you use any information you find and what you focus on in session.

I wonder why you even post on this forum. I really do. It's been said a million times: anything that's online is PUBLIC INFORMATION. If therapists don't want people to find out stuff about them, it's their job to remove online information. If therapists can't handle clients googling them, then they shouldn't be therapists.

Hm, I wonder if more people told their T's that they googled them, then maybe it wouldn't be such a weird thing? I mean, as I told my T, I also googled my primary care doctor, potential new psychiatrists (found that one had a lawsuit against him), etc. Like, it's just something I do. Like due diligence. (Yes, my googling T and MC had more meaning behind it, but still...if you looked at my search log, I look up an excessive number of people/things on a daily basis!)

I wonder, too, if there's a difference in how older vs. younger T's view it? My T is my mom's age, so the Internet has only been around for like a third of her life. MC is between our ages, but his main work is with teens (plus his kids are teens), so he's probably more in tune with current technology (he's also more responsive to texts/e-mails than T). I know that's a huge generalization, but just a thought... (I mean, part of why I rejected a potential new psychiatrist is that he didn't have an Internet connection in his office--not just wifi, not even dial-up or anything--in his office, and he seemed almost proud of it. Said his receptionist only used computers for billing. So it made me wonder how current he was on the latest psychiatric medications...)

I see a lot of good and reasonable discussion here, and I can understand why it's a topic for discussion even among therapists.

I do think though that it is wise to keep this in context: ie, that you've (rainbow) worked a lot on attachment issues with your therapist and specifically she refused to give the requested information about her boyfriend, setting a boundary, and sort of shut you down from talking fully about what impact that had on you. And now you are dealing with a compulsion or obsession surrounding finding information about him. It was not just an idle curiosity that this particular wanting to research therapist's boyfriend but was in direct relation to what went on in those sessions and after the therapist declined to provide the information. This sounds like a lot of "old stuff" getting dragged up just imho. Do you struggle with feeling shut out of your family, or something similar?

I hope that you're able to find what it is you're really looking for, because something tells me it's not just a picture of her boyfriend.

My t keeps trying to go there, and i keep getting nauseated a la Sartre.

I don't really see this as an issue about googling her therapist. I see this as an issue about respecting another person's reasonable boundaries. Rainbow, you directly asked for information about your T's boyfriend (not your T), and your T declined to give you that information very directly.
This isn't about your T. It is about a private citizen associated with your T that you feel you should for some reason have right to information about. Your T has a right to protect the privacy of friends and family.

I personally don't think any of us have a right to invade the privacy of therapist's private associations, and it is rude to say the therapist has responsibility to protect not only their own information but also the information of anyone associated with them. Who can honestly really do that? In this case, the therapist is trying to do exactly that and is still being criticized.

I've seen people here who have gotten info by pretending to be someone else, by going through friends and relatives and children . . . At some point, a sense of basic respect for others' privacy should prevail over primal curiosity and sense of entitlement to know all -- a sense of basic manners and respect of boundaries should kick in rather than excusing all lack of respect for others under the excuse that everybody does it or if it is out there it is fair game.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Rainbow, you already know that or you wouldn't have made the original post. Use your sense of right and wrong here. That is the respectful and adult way to approach this.

Same here. I started to wonder if it was THAT common.

But mostly wondered if it was a blind spot of his, or trying to put things in a mold, or maybe an issue of his own that results in him seeing it more often than he would.

Because if you think about it, nearly everything can be framed that way, including Rainbow's situation here. It's just too simplistic.

My long-term therapists are both about 70 and use email, texts, and never had a problem with my searching them online. Current therapist said he doesn't own the information on the internet.

I wonder if it's more about the therapist's insecurities and/or control issues.

People keep saying that--but the therapist's boundary was not to show Rainbow a picture of her husband in session (i initially said name in a prior post but meant picture). She could have done that for therapeutic reasons (I am guessing she did). I did not see anything written to the contrary. The 'theme' being she would avoid Rainbow's indirect steering the therapy to details of the therapist's personal life, which moves the therapy away from Rainbow's issues. Doing vs. discussing doing. If things are done, acted upon, it can become anti-therapeutic and pull the therapy in a new direction.

If Rainbow's therapist tries to censor Rainbow's online searching outside of the session, which I saw no evidence of here but don't know, it seems her therapist would be the one crossing boundaries by being controlling; also disrespectful of Rainbow by impinging on her autonomy.

Her therapist has done no such thing though that I am aware of. All her therapist did was decline to show her a picture of her boyfriend. All the worry about googling, etc. and conjecture about it, etc. has only been right here on this thread so far as I can tell which is why I don't see this as being about googling. This is about respect for boundaries and impulse control.

Rainbow isn't trying to control the therapist at all. The boundary for me exists only in the therapist's space: office or other space, like her home. Maybe excessive texting, emailing, calling could also invade that space.

But the therapist has no right to constrict or even try to constrict what rainbow does outside of session.

Re-explaining. The boundary is for the therapist to not share details of her personal life with Rainbow in their sessions. The effect on Rainbow is the content of the therapy, her heartache, feeling excluded, rejected, etc. How is Rainbow not respecting the boundary by going along with the therapeutic action, working on the issue with her therapist (and here)?

Which rainbows brother had none of, and STILL mom liked him best! Wth!

I've Googled my therapists but never found anything terribly interesting.

In my last session, I asked current T a bunch of questions --
- Whether she believes in God
- If she likes her middle name more than her first name
- To explain her fascination for Sodastream
- Whether all the books in the bookshelf were hers or she shared them with the T who shares her office.

In the midst of this questioning (she answered it all), I have no idea how or why (I can't remember what we were talking about now) but she volunteered that she got married at 23 and has been happily married for 20+ years (I didn't ask her -- I have weird views about marriage and monogamy and so I don't bring it up with anyone). But, since she brought up the topic of her marriage, I asked her the only question that I'd been dying to ask her -- why did she change her last name on getting married (it's one of my bugbears when women do it, I admit).

In all this, I kid you not, the only question that really seemed to irritate her was my harping on (okay, actually mocking) her preference for Sodastream.

So, I think privacy / intrusiveness etc is a matter of perception (based on my sample size of one T).