Therapist Googling Client

It definitely would bother me if i found out my T was Googling me. Not because of anything she could find, but it feels intrusive. I agree with you, MM.

Don’t think it matters whether it’s legal or ethical or whether people do it. What matters is its effect on the therapy, whether the client knows about it or not.

Say a therapist sees a client who has a daughter. Client says they have a great relationship, no problems there. Therapist googles client for some reason, finds daughter’s blog. Client, according to daughter, was a bad mother, maybe abusive, is still. Can you imagine how that affects the therapeutic relationship, whether or not the therapist confessed? Therapy should be what the client brings to the therapy room.

Bottom line is, the client needs to trust the therapist for therapy to work (according to every therapist I’ve ever seen). The therapist does not need to trust the client. Googling the client as in the above scenario does not lead to trust.

It is not morally reprehensible to google anyone. If clients are entitled to google Ts, then the reverse ought to apply. It works both ways. As to whether some Ts choose to do so, is another thing. Clients also have the option (as do Ts) to tighten their privacy online.

I also strongly disagree that the therapy relationship is one-way. Therapy is not done *at* clients. Two humans come together for a specific purpose - i.e. to provide a specialised service to another. Clients do not chat with a wall. This is a relational, two-way relationship, with boundaries set in place in order to work on that specific purpose. Equal sharing would only confuse roles and purpose of this transaction. Hence why the focus remains on the client. That doesn't make it one-way.

I think therapists do it all the time, but most deny it and don't tell the client. They tend to like to portray themselves as better than others when they really are not. It wouldn't matter to me, but I think the profession needs to be more honest with clients. I also think when they don't do it it is not for some noble higher reason, but more because they really just don't care enough to bother doing it.
I do not see it as hypocrisy at all - the therapist sets themselves out as other and clients are encouraged to rely on it. So a client gets to do all sorts of stuff the therapist cannot or is not supposed to do. They set the game up that way - not clients.

The providers that I've been to are way too busy to look people up on the internet..

I worked with a psychiatrist who used to do it to clients whom he felt were lying to him, stealing from him or hiding his stuff.

It would be creepy to know that a therapist looks up a patient for no reason. Just like many therapists would feel uncomfortable with that happening to them. They may not say it to the patient, but I'm sure they feel uncomfortable. After all, they are human and want their privacy.

Oh, nope, no, nope, and NO!!!!! I am all too eager to give the benefit of the doubt but for me that just put the last nail in the coffin. I would be looking elsewhere. I adore my T and he is far from perfect, we talked about that yesterday, he has made mistakes with me... lots of them! He LISTENS to my ranting forever! He ASKS clarifying questions about what upset me and what we need to differently, he gives me space... never in a million years would he tell me “but I did this one thing right doesn’t that count?” OMG are we back in JR high?

Yep, that hit a button.

Therapists and mds are not busier than anyone else. Everyone thinks they are busy and everyone makes time for the things they want to make time for. Therapists are absolutely not too busy to look up a client. They may not be interested in it, but it is not due to busyness.

In this context, I really believe we are. The internet is everyone's playground and the beauty of it is that we can privately choose whatever. We can vicariously live and act out our curiosities and fantasies, at times easily beyond what morals (including our own morals and broader) suggest, easily even in the context of highly ambivalent and sometimes unethical beliefs and endeavors.

I like the analogy of high school dynamic, because alls sorts of individual wishes (isn't high school age when people usually try to become really independent first?) are often expressed in using the internet, especially social media. Maybe there is some self-knowledge material for those who like to work with the inner child (teenager?) or similar concepts... But I think, in many ways, even the most sophisticated and complex adult relationships/communities will have those diverse developmental elements sometimes, and no one is ultimately superior/grown-up. I personally had a very strong resistance to this kind of thinking, was claiming nothing child-like about me at this point, but I must say I was wrong.

I am not sure if establishing mental hierarchy about people and relationships is immature, but I know I do it all the time in mind... and I consider myself quite self-aware and mature (for my age, 45). In fact, this developmental dynamic is a primary mechanism of how I try to understand others and navigate relationships relative to me. But, again, I don't think a T should express this natural inner dialogue and developmental shift in their sessions, with their paid clients.

we must work with very different psychiatrists.

Should Ts google clients no I dont think so. do I think some do, absolutely they probably dont tell clients though.

Now if T was goodling just the last name in order to find the ethnicity I would have no problem. Is very french and my maiden name is very German. I would have no problem if she were to look up the origin of the names.

However if she were looking up say my hometown that would require more than my last name which means she lied to me which is a much bigger issue than her googling me.

Mine googled me. there is plenty on the internet about me. i didnt mind. people look me up all the time. she told me to google her to learn more about her. we are friends on facebook. not a big deal.

I don't work with any psychiatrist. I do have to go to court to represent my clients against their psychiatrists and I do see them in hospitals when I go visit my clients or when I have deposed them. But they are not busier than any other professional. I agree they like to think they are more important than anyone else. But I don't think their belief matters and I know it is not true. One time we had one md actually tell the judge that he wanted the courthouse to provide mds special parking places and that would make it easier for him to come to court. To his credit, the judge waited until the md left the courtroom to burst out laughing at him.

Good grief I wasn't singling them out. I can think of a few engineers that are busier than Ph.Ds or MDs.

I am just saying that the few that I have been to ARE WAY too busy because of the kind of commitments they have. Not all MDs/DOs and Ph.Ds are in academic positions. However, the ones that I have seen are. I am talking about me.

By the way, many people avoid certain careers because they want to be able to do the things they want to do.

Never had a T google me but had my PDoc do it. At first I was offended and a bit hurt but then I got over it and realized why she did it.

Nope - it happened. The mds don't like to come to court when they file for the statutory involuntary commitments.

@Omer: According to the therapist, she said that because she was trying to expand my view because I was focused on the bad.

Help me understand why Googling my last name to find out where I'm from is not the same as Googling my full name. The therapist insists that she didn't Google something specific about me and that if she came across something specific to me on the Internet, she would close the browser.

I'm not understanding her logic. My last name IS something specific about me. Moreover, her intention look it up was because she wanted to know where I am from - something specific about me. Whether she looked up my full name or only my last name, she was looked me up to find out personal information about me.

Why didn't she just ask me directly? She knew that I wasn't ready to disclose that information to her. Pure curiosity is not a reason to look it up. As a therapist, she should wait, be patient, and hold it until trust, safety, and connection are built in our relationship and work and I eventually, naturally share it with her.

I don't think I would care much if my therapist googled me. I might even be a little flattered that she was interested enough to be honest. To me a quick google search to see something like where my last name originated is pretty different than something like trying to look for posts tagged on my friends' facebook pages. That would be too interested and a little creepy. But as far as posting an online journal such as a couple people have mentioned, I think that if a person is doing something like that under their own name, they should just consider that to be public knowledge. I'd be much more worried about an employer finding something like that than my therapist. But then again if I want to post personal stuff on the internet I do it anonymously.

I don’t think the double standard is a constructive argument. As a client who did google her therapist, I may not be the most qualified to respond to this thread, but for what it’s worth, I think many clients naturally struggle with the boundaries of the therapeutic dynamic. At least I did. I think googling is a breach of a boundary on some level, but just because the client struggles with the boundary, doesn’t mean the therapist should cross it either.

Also I’d be really confused as to why the therapist googled me. My attachment feelings would probably get triggered and I’d question whether my therapist had some underlying infatuation with me that led her to seek out more information beyond what I shared with her.

My T is far to busy the bother finding me or anyone on the internet

Personally I would not care. All he would find on my Facebook is sarcastic humor memes and of course that damn woman yelling at a white cat LOL

Our work revolves around what trouble I’m having in X area of my life.

It is a double standard. A therapist can't check you out but you can have access to the names of her children and where she lives? That's just wrong. In my opinion no one should Google anyone in a therapeutic relationship. It's a breech of boundaries. If I were a therapist and I found out a client was looking for personal information about me and my family, I'd fire the client and depending on the client get a restraining order. It's a safety issue among other concerns. Likewise, therapists shouldn't Google clients. If a client wants a therapist to know something the client will tell the therapist. Anything else is private.

I think it is okay if it is a two sided agreed upon practice. Being friends on social media is accepting they are going to know Bout what I put out there. I would also have bo problem being FB friends with my Ts, because I was consenting to it

like everything else there are bad ones out there. I however work with many. They often put in12 houses a day or more in the office, often go home to do electronic chatting, are on call over night walkabout one week a month (often receiving many calls a night) and are the on duty doctor one weekend a month. Oh and they are often the lower paid doctors in the hospital.

well, here where I live, they dont actually go to court. We set up a teleconference call with the court house. The DA and lawyer come to our facility. We have a large conference room set up.

This seems like a very extreme view regarding firing the client and possibly getting a restraining order. If T's fired all their clients who googled them, I doubt they'd have too many clients left... I think it's natural to be curious about someone to whom you tell your deepest, darkest secrets. Sure, many, possibly even most, clients might not care, but others do. I don't think they should automatically be punished for that curiosity unless they cross a major line.

I've googled quite a bit about my T (he knows much of it, and he's said some bothers him a little bit, but he certainly hasn't fired me for it), but I don't feel I pose any sort of threat to him, and he seems to agree. I think it's a natural curiosity. I'm not going to figure out where he lives and then show up at his house and spy on him (incidentally, many T's work out of their homes, though mine doesn't). I'm not going to figure out where his wife works or his son goes to school and then show up there.

I think if a client talks about Googling their T (beyond, say, checking their license or CV/resume), then that should just lead to a conversation about why the client felt the desire to Google. And if they wanted to talk about anything they found, ask questions (of course the T is not obligated to answer). Maybe some discussion about boundaries, like, "I understand your desire to google me, and that's OK, but I ask you not to look up anything about my spouse or children because I want to protect their privacy." I also think it's a T's responsibility to lock down any social media they have (like if they have a Facebook page, keeping it private) to the best they can, if they don't want any clients seeing it.

[climbs down off of soapbox]

But I still don't think T's should Google their clients.

I don’t get the double standard argument. By that same logic, you go to the doctor and tell them you have symptoms x y z and man my back is killing me. Doctor listens to you then tells you she has pains a b c and oh boy these knees of mine are a mess. So when I go to therapy to talk about my abusive ex, the therapist should also talk about hers.

By the way, here’s what the American Psychological Association thinks of the whole thing:

“How about Googling clients — should you?

In certain circumstances, there may be a good reason to do a search of a client — there may be an issue of safety, for example. In certain kinds of assessments, it might be a matter of confirming information. But again, we always need to think about how this fits into the professional relationship, and what type of informed consent we’ve obtained. Curiosity about a client is not a clinically appropriate reason to do an Internet search. Let’s put it this way: If you know that your client plays in a soccer league, it would be a little odd if on Saturday afternoon you drove by the game to see how your client is doing. In the same way, if you’re doing a search, thinking, “What can I find out about this person?” that raises questions about the psychologist’s motives.”

The Internet’s ethical challenges

They maintain that stance elsewhere on their website.

So the OP’s concern seems completely valid to me and the therapist’s poor response also seems reason for concern.