[SuzyQ12]

Hi there,

I've been seeing the same Psych for over 3 years now with great results. I understand the concept of transference and countertransference but it's something we haven't spoken about in therapy.

I thought I was in love with him at one stage, but the more I educated myself about it, the more I realised it was just an illusion and that infatuation faded; without discussion.

I'm in business and have a premium account on Linkedin that shows me who's viewed my profile. I was surprised to see that my Psych had viewed my profile on New year's day (just recent).

I may be making something out of nothing, but it just seemed odd to me that he was 'looking at me' during holiday time. Should I raise it with him? Is this normal curiousity?

SQ

[brillskep]

It does sound odd. You can ask them if you want to know. I think it's reasonable that you're surprised and want to understand the psychiatrist's position in this therapeutic relationship.

[cinnamon_roll]

I can understand that this is somewhat unsettling.

Still. There are a variety of reasons why he could have clicked on your profile. I'm not sure about linked.in, but in similar social networks they tend to give you suggestions: people you might know or you might be interested in to know...

the algorithms behind those suggestions vary, but one factor could be mutual contact/s, or the fact that you could have been looking for his name a while ago (just searching for his name is enough, without having looked at his profile...)

So could it be possible that he didn't actively look you up, but that your profile was suggested to him for a variety of reasons. Still, he clicked on your profile...

Or does linked.in also tell you the reason why your p-doc landed on your profile (things like searched specifically for [YOUR NAME])? Or could it be possible that he was searching for some service that happens to be part of your professional profile and thus landed on your site?

If it bugs you, I would try to bring it up.

[SuzyQ12]

Originally Posted by cinnamon_roll

I can understand that this is somewhat unsettling.

Still. There are a variety of reasons why he could have clicked on your profile. I'm not sure about linked.in, but in similar social networks they tend to give you suggestions: people you might know or you might be interested in to know...

the algorithms behind those suggestions vary, but one factor could be mutual contact/s, or the fact that you could have been looking for his name a while ago (just searching for his name is enough, without having looked at his profile...)

So could it be possible that he didn't actively look you up, but that your profile was suggested to him for a variety of reasons. Still, he clicked on your profile...

Or does linked.in also tell you the reason why your p-doc landed on your profile (things like searched specifically for [YOUR NAME])? Or could it be possible that he was searching for some service that happens to be part of your professional profile and thus landed on your site?

If it bugs you, I would try to bring it up.

Thanks, yes I can see now we have a mutual connection, so I gather I came up on Linkedin as a suggested contact. The mutual contact is literally just someone I met recently, professionally, via my work, so that's kind of awkward as well. Guess he just clicked on my profile to maybe gauge if it was me. It just all feels a bit close to home!

[Parva]

Or maybe he was thinking about you, hoping you were ok on NY day, which tends to be a difficult time. Therapists do think about us all the time, especially when they know it can be a hard time for the patient. It's possible he needed to feel some connection to a patient he cares about (in a therapeutic way) and this was an innocent, harmless way to do it without violating boundaries. He is human and does he feelings, and after 3 years, is clearly fully invested in your well-being.

If he'd done it a ton of times, yeah, red flag. But once? Nah.

[SuzyQ12]

Good point. I struggle with the idea that men have feelings, so that did not cross my mind until now.

I used to get Linkedin stuff all the time via email until I finally changed settings so I don't get them. No idea why I'd get certain ones. Sometimes it's old students; sometimes it's doctors; sometimes it's church people. I suspect the algorithm picks up the location commonality and sends it randomly to me. Most likely that is all it is. He got a random link via email and opened it.

[cinnamon_roll]

also, if he just joined and allowed linked.in to access his contacts it could be possible that your email adress and/or mobile number just matched, so linked in suggested that he might know you...

this could be quite critical in terms of privacy protection, esp. if he joined linked.in as a p-doc.
Which again could be another reason to bring this up, to make him aware of what the implications of his online actions are. He might not be particularly internet savvy, so he might not have a clue how those things work. I find a lot of my doctors/therapists don't know a lot about internet and privacy and data protection even though they really should know...

[Pennster]

I can understand how it might be disconcerting to have your psychiatrist pop up in your profile views. But like a couple of people have said, profile suggestions often pop up due to email activity or whatever.

If it bothers you I always think it's a good idea to mention it! I would probably be more inclined to look at it as likely to be a harmless thing in the absence of other worrying evidence, however. But I tend to think generally that people look each other up all the time and it never seems a big deal to me - it's just part of how people live and interact today. I know my therapist has read some of what I have online and this does not seem abnormal to me (though I am a writer so I am very intentional about wanting people to read my work).

Originally Posted by cinnamon_roll

also, if he just joined and allowed linked.in to access his contacts it could be possible that your email adress and/or mobile number just matched, so linked in suggested that he might know you...

this could be quite critical in terms of privacy protection, esp. if he joined linked.in as a p-doc.
Which again could be another reason to bring this up, to make him aware of what the implications of his online actions are. He might not be particularly internet savvy, so he might not have a clue how those things work. I find a lot of my doctors/therapists don't know a lot about internet and privacy and data protection even though they really should know...

By the way, I received Linkedin notices even though I have never joined Linkedin, so it may not even be a matter of your pdoc having not his privacy settings right. Linkedin may have just linked to him anyway without him ever having joined.

[LifeInProgress]

If it bothers or concerns you I think it is totally appropriate to bring it up with him the net time you see him. You don't have to be overly confrontational, just mention that you saw he had clicked on your Linked In profile and were wondering what's up.

It is probably completely innocent.

[ruh roh]

This would concern me. It's different than facebook, which does not let you know who viewed your profile. On Linked In you can't view someone's profile without looking them up. Linked In is letting you know that someone looked you up--it's a reporting feature. It's not a notice from Linked In that you might be interested in this person based on shared connections. It means that he entered your name and searched you. It's the one thing I actually like about Linked In.

So, what does it mean? I have no idea. Did you talk to him about your business during an appointment, and is it something he might be interested in for other reasons?

Again, he may have looked at the profile after being sent a random notice by Linkedin. Happens all the time to me. I finally was able to unsubscribe from Linkedin emails so that they stopped coming, but at one point I was getting one or two a week pretty randomly. They were people I knew, but I hadn't searched for them. I have never set up a Linkedin account, so it was coming from the other end.

[ruh roh]

If you haven't had a Linked In account, how can you know what this is about? Sorry, it really bugs me when people speak authoritatively about something without direct experience.

Seems strange to be looking at Linked In on a holiday.

[ruh roh]

I knew this woman once who emailed me to remove her from my Linked In contacts. I had previously received notification that she viewed my profile. That only happens when a member of Linked In is logged on as themselves and searches for/views another profile. People can view a profile without being logged in, in which case Linked In notifies that an annonymous viewer viewed your profile (and then, they don't get to see the whole profile unless they log in).

Anyway, I told this person she is not a contact of mine and that because she viewed my profile, she was now seeing me when she logged in as someone to connect with. She didn't have a clue how Linked In worked. So I told her to stop looking at my profile, and then I blocked her.

I think if you ask your pdoc why he viewed your profile, you will get the best answer as to how he ended up there on New Years Day.

Because I started receiving emails about Linkedin accounts from people I knew, I opened a few profiles before I realized I had no interest in them as I don't have a need for them. I DO have experience in being on the receiving end of Linkedin notifications; that's my point. It may just be he somehow/someway received a notification and opened up her profile. I used to think they were being sent by the people the accounts belonged to, but over time, I realized they were being randomly sent to me apparently due to past associations and the owners of the account probably didn't even know they were sent to me.

[ruh roh]

No. You were viewing annonymously, as a non-user. And you would not be able to view the whole profile unless you have an account, which you said you don't. In that case, the people whose profiles you viewed would only get a notification that annonymous viewed their profile.

Anyway--to the OP: Just ask your pdoc.

[atisketatasket]

Premium accounts on LinkedIn are different from normal accounts. The OP does not say at all she got an email. Rather there should be an analytics section of the site that gives her this info.

[Pennster]

Originally Posted by ruh roh

This would concern me. It's different than facebook, which does not let you know who viewed your profile. On Linked In you can't view someone's profile without looking them up. Linked In is letting you know that someone looked you up--it's a reporting feature. It's not a notice from Linked In that you might be interested in this person based on shared connections. It means that he entered your name and searched you. It's the one thing I actually like about Linked In.

So, what does it mean? I have no idea. Did you talk to him about your business during an appointment, and is it something he might be interested in for other reasons?

I am confused by the idea that you have to search for people to view their profile -I am actually looking at LinkedIn now and it is throwing up many (dozens, and if I kept scrolling I would imagine hundreds) suggestions of people that I know, but I haven't searched for any of them. (It is actually even suggesting I add my dead father by inviting him to join LinkedIn, and this is clearly from a harvest of my emails, as I had set up that email account for a specific purpose and he used it only that once). It is showing a variety of people from all different areas of my life (including I see now, a former therapist I had only met a couple of times). It's clearly harvesting my emails to make some of these suggestions, while presumably using some connection algorithm for others.

I don't think clicking on someone's LinkedIn profile necessarily means anything as deliberate as someone actually searching for you. Actially searching for someone is a feature I rarely use to expand my network on it.

I agree with others saying it may be as simple as him getting a random notification from LinkedIn and just clicking on it. Once I even received an invitation to connect on LinkedIn from my ex-T that was apparently not sent by him and I was also told that people received invitation from me that I definitely did not send.

But I would not be more surprised if a therapist I see looked up info on the web about me - why wouldn't they? It is certainly their interest to know things about their clients and why would the curiosity stop on holidays? He should be more thoughtful about it though if he is indeed looking up clients and set his account to browse anonymously. Maybe he is not aware that the Premium account allows viewing this history if he does not use it.

[MBM17]

This occurence is so interesting! I don't think I've ever heard of a therapist or psychiatrist searching for someone online like we clients do! I'm curious to know what his real motivation was, though I wonder if you'd get the honest answer when you asked him. If you do ask, definitely let us know!

I don't find this very surprising

[Pennster]

Originally Posted by SuzyQ12

Thanks, yes I can see now we have a mutual connection, so I gather I came up on Linkedin as a suggested contact. The mutual contact is literally just someone I met recently, professionally, via my work, so that's kind of awkward as well. Guess he just clicked on my profile to maybe gauge if it was me. It just all feels a bit close to home!

I missed this one earlier- one thing that it could be that you appeared on his suggested contacts, he saw you had a mutual connection, and he clicked to see who it was you had in common.