Apparently Ts do look us up on social media

Isn't this exactly what I said several times? I said more than once that stalking is a regular appearance near someone's place of living and staying there for no other purpose than staring. As far as I know, "regular" refers to a PATTERN. Don't pretend that my argument was something it never was. It's a "straw man" logical fallacy and generally used (as any logical fallacy) to manipulate the conversation.

Where I live, if you do what I described above and get caught you can easily be served a restraining order and I know of cases when it happened.

I am not using legal definitions here. I am not a lawyer and I don't give a crap about how stalking is defined legally either in my state or any other jurisdiction. In my layman terms the above description qualifies as stalking and warrants calling the cops on the one who does that. If someone starts appearing near my home regularly and it looks to me like they stay on the street with the intention to stare at the house and they do it regularly (should I say
"regularly" ten more times?) I am going to call the police because I define this as stalking and this creeps me out. How everyone else thinks of it is of no concern to me.

If a therapist believes that a client has been stalking them for some time and decides to terminate the work for that reason, they have the legal and ethical right to do so as long as they document all instances of stalking in their records. No one expects a therapist to put up with any crap from a client and no therapist will get in trouble for terminating therapy if they were stalked. Everyone can have their own opinion about that. You can agree with that reality or disagree with it but it is a reality and your opinion will not change it.

What is the point of facebook if not to have others look you up?

You are welcome.

Thanks. This made me laugh. Before facebook, there was the phonebook. It amuses me to think of a debate about pouring over a therapist's listing in the phonebook and being called a stalker. "My client has been reading the phonebook about me! How dare they invade my public posting!" I know that's not exactly the same, and that people can go farther with it, but still. It's all intended to be public. I see the big exception being those who set up an account in a different name (say, first and middle or maiden) and lock it all down. But curiosity on either side does not seem creepy or concerning to me.

I agree with this ..

When i say some may be creeped out if a therapist lurks on their sites, I'm thinking of similarities in how a teenager wouldn't want their mother, grandfather, or school teachers hanging out on their page. It can seem creepy or awkward or uncomfortable.

For me, it is quite odd to compare looking up someone's public social media with driving by someone's house intentionally just to be there. Maybe it would be a valid comparison if someone looked at the social media sites repeatedly, not with the reason to have information but other motives that are more obsessional. I would be slightly disturbed knowing that my therapist looks me up on the web repeatedly, all the time - not because I think it's unethical but because I would find a T becoming obsessed with me simply disturbing and repulsive. But the thing is, why would anyone share that? It's not my concern how people look at my public info as long as they do not misuse the information or even use it in any form without my consent. I don't care how much anyone looks at my online info as long as they don't do those things or even want to discuss their private behaviors with me. Driving at someone's house, on the other hand, cannot have the same motive as looking up online media for the sake of information. Maybe one can say they are curious where the T lives and that's it, but reading posts where people report doing it, it does not sound like it's simple curiosity and it is not as discreet as looking on the internet.

What I really struggle to understand is when someone intentionally puts info on social media and makes it public, why is it concerning when people look at it? If it is intended to friends and family, why not make it private and share only with those select people? It is a very easy way to protect one's privacy unless we are talking high level security operations / spying which, I think, is not the case here.

Of course there can be info on the internet that was not intended/put there by the person concerned, like criminal histories, rumors such as on celebrities and other well-known people, but these are also consequences of one's own life choices. For example, most of the info on me on the internet is academic stuff. I usually do not put them there myself but I decide to publish in various journals, give talks at conferences etc etc. These specific publications have nothing to do with what I would want to address in therapy but a T could read a lot of them if they wanted to. One of mine actually looked at some of it and brought it up in session. I did not mind but had no intention to discuss it with the T in detail in spite of their curiosity. They already knew well enough that there were strong links between my personal interests/ issues and the professional fields I chose for work, that was discussed many times appropriately. To me, what is inappropriate in regard to therapy is if a T brings up info they gathered by themselves indirectly and tries to use it as arguments or anything. But privately looking and keeping it to themselves, to me, is just their own private matter. I also think there should be a discrimination between something being personally disturbing and generally wrong.

I don't use facebook, so maybe I'm out of the loop but the nature of it is public-how do people find you to friend you if you are blocked? I'm not sure if you have kids or teenagers, but I wouldn't go looking for information on my 14 year old's sites (unless I had a safety concern) to respect her privacy and need to be independent from me. When they get older, my kids have asked me to use Facebook as they like to share.

Having been stalked before, I am not on Facebook at all, worried i'd miss a small privacy glitch or something and be found by him. I was thinking of signing up but what's the point if I can't use it freely as a social media site, worried he'd find me?

People seem to look up therapists online all the time out of obsession-wanting to be closer, including googling the therapist's children. If the therapist does this, I don't think it's different and often worse since imo crosses a line if a therapist is overly interested in me. It would cause trust issues.

I personally don't know how people can distinguish being curious and googling to find out information from a client's personal posts = ok from being curious enough to see where someone lives = not ok. In my opinion it's just not cut and dry as people make it. Overall, since writing this post, I think I am just sick of the judgment about this issue where one boundary 'crossing' is justified and another isn't.

Oh yeah-my mother used to rifle through my clothing drawers. Not out of concern but out of some odd control to see things I didn't wish for her to see. She has the right to look through them, but I don't think she should do that. Maybe it's true, that it always comes down to the mother.

@Xynestesia You've made your point very eloquently, thank you.

I am getting sick of this topic already and this will be my last comment.

I just want to make it clear that I personally, as a therapist, never googled clients for a very simple reason that might seem "shocking" to some people. I never googled clients because I never cared enough about their personal lives to google them. Simple as that. I didn't think whether my online search would "benefit" them or not. I didn't google them not out of "respect" for their choice of how much they want to tell me in sessions. I didn't google them because for me they belonged to the area of my work, not my life. I always did my best to separate my work from my personal life and, once the work day was over and I got out of the building where I practiced, I did everything I could to get all my clients and their stories out of my head. The last thing I wanted is to continue to think about them after my business hours, so searching them online didn't even cross my mind. I wasn't interested in doing it because I cared about my emotional health and nothing else. Yeah.. pretty selfish, I know..

That said, I reserve the right to search anyone online, client or not, whenever I want because I don't believe this activity to be unethical or immoral. That's all from me on this topic.

Complete disinterest from those people has always been my stance.