What if your T started dating one of your best friends?

A friend who is a therapist themselves referred a therapist to you from their counseling center. Then they become closer and closer friends with your therapist until they are in a serious relationship together.

How soon would you want to be informed about this situation?

Who would you prefer to hear it from?

Any other thoughts/feelings?

That would be a tough situation. I’m not even sure what the protocol is for that. If it were me i’f want to know right away.

Unprofessional.

I'd say bye to both of them.

I would not call it unprofessional. If I understood correctly, they already knew each other before and just became better friends. That is life and they have every right to be friends or even lovers. But it is totally up to the client, if it is a problem. I myself would like to be informed to make a decision how to deal with it. If I thought the T was good and ethical and kept my stuff confidential, I would probably be ok with it. If not, I'd find another T. I would probably want to hear it from my friend first, not my T.

I wouldn't refer one of my best friends to a counselling centre I worked at and I'd be wary of anyone that did. There's obvious potential for dual relationships that is easily avoidable.

UNPROFESSIONAL. Period. No ands ifs or buts about it.

I think I would feel awkward about it at first, and I would want to hear from T that there would be no way, no matter what, that they would say anything about me or my therapy to my friend. And I would want them to tell friend that as well, so that friend would not be wondering every time T said something if T was referring to me.

I'm not sure who I would want to tell me. Probably T because then I could throw a fit (if needed) or process with T before talking to friend about it.

But I don't think it is unethical for a friend to refer you, nor for the friend to become romantically involved with the person they referred you to.And I think it is totally possible for a professional to say absolutely nothing about a client. I am a clergyperson and I hear stuff from people that they want to keep private. I have no problem doing so, even with my H who is also a clergy person.

There is absolutely no way I could ever handle my T dating someone in my friend or family group. No way. And, it feels entirely unethical somehow.

I would be cutting both out.

I don't think there is anything unprofessional in this situation. I think your friend tried to help you by referring you and maybe she didn't know herself how things would happen with your therapist. As to who should tell you first, I think your friend could let you know if she wants to, but I don't see why your therapist should talk about his private life. If he treats you well and if the fact that he's dating a friend of yours doesn't keep him from doing his job correctly and offering you the help you need, I don't see the problem.

This is why it's not a good idea to be referred to a T by one's friend. In this scenario it would have been better to ask the GP for a referral or refer oneself to a different counselling centre.

There is all kinds of potential here for the client to be hurt. They might have some transference or other kinds of strong feelings that would be brought up in therapy. They might have a fight with their friend and need to talk about it in therapy. Or many other problems.

Really, if the friend is a T, they should have known better than to refer their friend to someone who they know both personally and professionally, and them to start dating the person. I agree that it's unprofessional and they should be trained to know better than this.

If I found myself in the situation, I would start looking around for a new T straight away, one from a different place. And if I found it too hard to leave the first T straight away then I would start working with the second T who might be able to help to clarify the situation and make the transition.

I don’t think it’s unprofessional, as the referral happened before the relationship.

But I would expect that I’d be spending some time socially with a best friend’s partner. I’d want to figure out with t how to handle the social piece and find a new t.

I once changed vets because my vet started dating a friend of mine. Lol. So it goes without saying I would switch therapists. It wouldn't matter who told me, but I wouldn't be comfortable with it.

I don't think anyone is doing anything unethical. It's just a thing that happened. Just the same I'd ask for a referral to a different therapist. What I object to about this reply, though, is the claim that it's not a good idea to find a therapist through a friend at all. I would trust a friend more than a GP, who is unlikely to know a therapist's work personally. I found my first (wonderful) therapist through a friend, and I only wish I had a friend to recommend to me a new therapist instead of all the substitutes I have to rely on to guess who might be good.

The OP's question is not whether it is ok for a friend to recommend a T to their friend. The OP's question is about a scenario where someone who IS a T has a friend in need of therapy, and they refer that friend to someone who works in the same practice as them (the friend-T), AND with whom the T-friend is friendly socially. Then after the client has started therapy, the T-friend begins a romantic relationship with their friend's T.

Therapists, at least qualified psychologists in the UK which is what I know about, have to adhere to a code of ethics. They would be taught exactly why, in detail, during their doctoral course. there is no way they could qualify without knowing about this. These kinds of dual relationships are in fact a breach of professional ethics, and for good reason. If you look online you can see published notes from hearings of the Healthcare Professional Council and the Royal College of Psychologists which will illustrate firstly that this is clearly against the rules of the profession, secondly unfortunately it will show a wide range of the kinds of things that can go wrong in therapy when professional boundaries are breached and the kind of harm that can result.

Great that it turned out really well for you being recommended by a friend. I hope you can find another good T.

I really hope the situation the OP wrote about doesn't happen to someone with serious attachment difficulties, trauma history, a lot of transference and the like. The risk to them would be like playing with fire. It's understandable that they might not realise it before they begin therapy, but the T really has no excuse for taking such risks, in my opinion.

That would be really weird especially cause I don't even have friends. I was telling my T I need a roommate and he said his wife's ex husband is looking for somewhere to live. I said are you for real right now

The ethical thing to do would be for the therapist to refer the client out. There's a great potential, if not a certainty, of boundary confusion and dual relationships. It's just no good. Asking who I would prefer to hear it from is a moot point - because the friend and the therapist couldn't discuss me without violating my privacy. Just because a friend gave the referral wouldn't mean she has any more right to even inquire of my therapist if I am still a client. I think if the friend thought it was necessary to tell me, I would wonder what made her think I needed to know - like is she talking about me? If the T told me, I wouldn't be as concerned, I think, because the purpose of the disclosure would seem clearer.

The referral itself is a little suspect, although on the other hand a friend who knows therapists personally would know that a therapist would mesh well with me, so I understand recommending someone from your same clinic.
If I were the client in this situation I would expect both my friend and my T to be upfront and honest with me immediately. I would want to discuss with my T what this would mean for our therapy relationship. I wouldn't drop my T necessarily, but I would be extremely wary -- looking out for things my friend might know about me that they would only know about me because my T told them (or vice versa). One sniff of breach of confidentiality and I'm out.
If it made me uncomfortable, I would leave, but wish no ill will upon my friend or therapist (assuming no confidentiality was broken of course). Even if it's inconvenient for me, who am I to be angry that two people have found love?

I think the term dual relationships refers to a therapist having two kinds of relationships with the same person, such as client and student, or client and co-author on a book, or client and realtor.

For a T to have relationships with two people who know each other, such as two clients who are close friends or family members, or in this case a client and a colleague who are friends, is not a dual relationship as I understand it, and is not necessarily a problem. Certainly in the US having clients who know each other very well is not unethical. Some T's avoid this because it's true, one has to be very careful about confidentiality, and yes, complicated ethical situations could arise. But a good T practicing in the same town for many years will end up with business which is mostly by referral, and will have many clients who know other clients. My T is like this, and he is very careful, and professional and consistent, and I don't think it's a problem for him. Not just having rosy-colored glasses here, I've really thought about it and I think he handles it very well.

So the bigger problem I would anticipate is not confidentiality -- because that should be strict whether we're talking about the T's other clients or the T's friends or romantic partners. Confidentiality is confidentiality, period. The bigger problem would be seeing T in social situations I think. If the relationship continues between the friend and T, it may simply be too weird to manage the social encounters. It sounds like a very unfortunate development and I agree it would have been nice if the friend had thought about this possibility before making the referral. But on the other hand, I imagine that this friend holds the T in very high regard, and meant well in making a referral (which at the time was far less complicated), and is probably worrying about how to handle this too.

Also-- I think this news should probably come from the friend. The T is there to address the issues you bring to session, not to anticipate weirdness in your friendships which may or may not actually manifest.

Yes, I realise that they are not in a dual relationship right off the bat when the T and the friend-T start dating, although it would be almost a dual-relationship-by-proxy I would say - how many days is it likely to be before the T heard the friend talking about the client as a friend, calling them, including them in an invitation etc. They would be in a dual relationship from the first time that e.g. they were at the same party. The dual relationship thing seems unavoidable in this scenario IMO.

Of course it *may* be fine but it *may* also cause a very great deal of harm to the client. What if they had been actively suicidal, andvthis T was the first person with whom they had started to stabilise. Or this T is the only person they allow themself to become close to and trust a little, perhaps they disclose some kind of abuse for the first time with this T. The potential for harm when T is included into this person's social circle is huge. Also we may be talking about a sociable person with many friends and acquaintances, or we may be talking about this friend-T being the person's only friend. If things go wrong with the therapy, I doubt the friendship would survive.
These are unknown factors and would probably be unknown to the T on the day of the first session, but that's the point of ethical guidelines. It's up to the T to know how potentially vulnerable a client may be, in terms of the potential vulnerability of their mental health and their life in general, it's up to the T to understand about transference, attachment, and other strong feelings that can come up during therapy, it's ultimately up to the T to know about how important boundaries are in therapy and to be clear from the outset and not take these kinds of risks. The friend-T in this scenario should have known all this as well.