googling your therapist, now i'm jealous of her life

i am and IT professional and I work on search engine optimization, so i'm really familiar with how to search on the web. One time last month when i was felling really down and totally dependent on my psychiatrist with MAJOR transference, I googled her. and googled her. I thought for sure as a pych. she would have nothing out there. but little pieces of info piled up and soon enough i am looking at sixth grade yearbook pics and interiors of her home (which was on the market). I now know that she is from a life of extreme priviliage. This made me jealous and I'm feeling like I wish I didn't know all this and want things back the way they were. In sessions I still feel like I used to, but when I think of her out of sessions i picture this wonderful life she has, and it makes me feel jealous. Any thoughts?

Maybe instead of jealousy, could you use the feeling and translate it into something positive, like a drive or determination to better your own life. My Pdoc is a martial artist, which is something I only found out when I was googling info for my husband, and accidentally stumbled across all this info. It made me respect him even more, because he has this whole work, life, health balance thing going on and I really want to try and emulate that. Since I found that stuff out about him (he knows, I told him) it's made me pay more attention in therapy and really work at the stuff he's telling me and the homework he's set, because I look at him and see a place I want to be as well (I don't mean a place with him, I don't have those sorts of feelings for my Pdoc, I just meant a place in my life where things are in harmony and balanced).

thank you for your reply. I am trying to do just that, emulate her..But its just harder now.. Just from looking at her degrees (top medical school, residency and fellowships) I should have known a lot of this stuff already & if i can get rid of this guilt about snooping i might feel a lot better. Maybe some day I'll own yachts and go to regattas too!!! or at least race them in bathtub

Also the funny thing now is i've always had a fear that her practice will go under and i'll be left with no one to help me. It perplexed me how she doesn't take new patients but i never actually SEE another patient. Also she gives me extra time every week. So the flip side of her being loaded is that she probably doesn't need her practice to be a cash cow and I will benefit from that.

renie

I had a similar reaction when I stumbled across info on my Pdoc. I mean I knew he was the lead clinician at the Government clinic where I see him, and I'd already sussed out he was a good Pdoc as well, but then I'm finding out he's also a senior clinical lecturer, and he sits on the board that sets the University Curriculum for the next lot of trainee Doctors coming through, and he's a residency Supervisor, etc, etc. It was like 'oh wow, I've landed myself a freakin' awesome Pdoc with bucketloads of qualifications. *immediate panic* And when's it all going to fall apart, and I'll be left with noone to help me, again.

It took a while, and just mostly a lot of him being there and being consistent, but I got over that fear of 'This is too good to be true, when's it all going to end on me'.

Wow that is hard. My first T is very successful and I too envy her. She has two practices, three girls and a husband. I envy her so much but aspire to be like her.

Wow, that must be a strange feeling...

I had the opposite, I googled my therapist and actually it just made me more attached, it just reminded me of the same type of people I grew up with as a child even though she's 10 years older. Same type of family life that those people had... old memories... no wonder there is transference. We are both from similar areas and living in a very different type of area now.

my T has not very much on google, apart from her university thesis and stuff like that. I do wonder what sort of life she has though, and I am jealous of her.

This can happen, I can remember that when I saw pictures of a new dinning room table that was made for a former Group Therapist of mine being jealous of how great of a life I think she has with her husband and 2 young children.

Those are all very superficial things. She may have been in emotional turmoil her whole life for all you know.

you are right I never thought of that. i don't wish her any badness though. i have been researching jealousy/envy and it has its roots early on so this may be yet another transference issue.

It's worth bringing up with her.. good luck.

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When I was at the height of my transference issues, I did the same thing. Cept it wasn't him I went looking for information on, or photos, or the likes, it was his wife, who is also a psychotherapist. This has to be the moment when I decided my transference was interfering so deeply in my life, that I just...shut it down. And btw...you CAN shut it down. You have to remember something. Your T? Not real. That's right. That person, who seems so devoted to you for 50 minutes, is not real. Anyway, I came across my T's wife's Flickr page, loaded up with photos, which for some reason stop at 2009, but there they were, vacation photos, photos of this woman doing yoga, and it was then that I realized, as sexy and gorgeous and hot as my T is? He's NOT the man I think he is when I'm sitting there in the office for 50 minutes with him, and if he IS flirting with me? I think I might know why. Firstly, I think he's just...naturally a flirt, but, I have to be the polar opposite of his wife. I mean I have to be almost ****ing perpendicular to her. The only thing we have in common is that we have boobies and a hoo hah and we breathe oxygen. Well that, and she dyed her hair red, and I'm a redhead. She is flat chested, very athletic body, she is a triathlete, no curves, very natural, very outdoorsy, artsy craftsy, and frankly? Very plain. This is a no makeup, not into clothes girl. She reminds me of the salutatorian from my high school, they have a very similar look, and much like my salutatorian, who ran track, and was really into athletics (and of course was so brilliant she wound up graduating summa cum laude from Georgetown, did her Masters at Yale and then a PhD overseas, and now works as a translator for the UN!!!!), it's clear that this is a girl who focused on brain and healthy body. Me? I'm all curves, very big boobs, there's muscle tone in my abs, and now my arms, but I've got a big round booty, my idea of arts and crafts usually involves modifying my jeans in some way, like patch-working them, studding them, tearing them, I'd die if I attempted a triathlon. We...are on other sides of the world. She's about healthy living, and I'm only starting to get healthy with a love of vice that pretty much wears on my sleeve. She's all bout plain jane. I'm all bout grungy glam rock peacock. She wears ugly shoes, horrible sexless clothes, that don't really show off her extremely fit physique. I wear tight jeans, perennial kickers. Her hair is very short. My hair is long and shaggy with heavy bangs that go over my eyebrows. We...are nothing alike. He seems into her, and therefore, I am the OPPOSITE of what he goes for.

And there he was, my T, my gorgeous sexy T, in clothes that made me do a double take. He lives in a B's cap. Not exactly sartorial. In other words? I think they're meant to be together, and seemed happy, well at least until 2009 when the pictures ended.

But here's what happened. Once I realized what I was doing, I got mad. At MYSELF. I felt like a stupid, infantile, jealous, insane person. I felt like I was becoming unhinged. And once I realized that my T, as gorgeous and ****able (and I'd still, if I could transplant us into an alternate reality would like to do absolutely filthy things to him), as he is, is in fact NOT this "punk rock alterna-boy" that I thought he was, it changed me. Moreover, I was so turned off by myself, that I just STOPPED. I just STOPPED.

I return to Therapy next Thursday. If you recall my last session was the one where all the good things happened to me, and he stopped being nice, or even remotely friendly. Decided to take a week off from therapy. I'm coming back on Thurs, after my weekend in NYC to celebrate my birthday, and I have a LOT to celebrate.

It's important to remember, that our therapists aren't real. They are real people. They have real lives. But you? You're not a part of that life, nor they are a part of yours, nor should they be.

I feel I just have to keep this one secret from her (not the other parts of the transference but the googling). I mean I saw a picture of her BED (from a real estate listing, a simple google on her addresss), all her yearbook photos, and her yachts (yes, more than one). I feel I have violated her privacy. Even though i envy her now, she has become even more idealized than before. My life was full of neglect and want for everything. I feel also we have this deep connection because we are exactly the same age and both went to Episcopal churches (yes, i know a lot). I picture her doing all the same rituals at the same time. It is a nice feeling but something I can't share with her because she'd know I was snooping. Also even though she seemed to be very priviliged growning up - she seems to be a lovely person, not a snobbish bone in her body.

Thank you to everyone for all the replies, helped me analyze this in a healthy way and so glad I'm not the only one who has done this

I did the exact same thing and you are so spot on here. Well said!

Reading these, it's clear why therapists don't share their personal lives. Their patients turn it into more fodder for their own neuroses!!

I hope you don't take this personally renie1022, but that word "privilege" was tagged in my mind when you said it. I get jealous like the rest and look at what they got and what I ain't got--no fair. But if you think about "privilege" that word is all too easily used to get ourselves off the hook of responsibility. Most people who have and exercise wealth have it because they worked their asses off. Some because someone like a parent worked their *** off, but for most that isn't the case. All therapists have to work really hard to get where they are going, and pdocs work a lot harder.

That's encouraging to me now. Because I am in my crappy circumstances partly because stuff happened to me (like it does to us all) but it combined with choices I made. And I can make new choices. :-)

I don't take it personally at all I am happy whenever I get a reply to my thread!! I didn't mean to say she doesn't deserve that life. She is the best, smartest person I have ever met. She texts me, calls me, and even keeps me double time without charging me. I know now she does that because she doesn't need the money, and that makes me like her even more. I just am also Jealous and I hate that I feel that way. I don't want to take what she has, I just feel that I wish I had it too...yet another feeling I can not control, and really wish I could.

Renie, that makes more sense to me. Thanks for clarifying. But I have good news!--that feeling of "jealousy" you have is based in something that is working very rightly within you. You see what she has, and you want it too! Any normal, healthy person would want those kinds of things. That is not wrong of you to feel that. It only becomes a problem when you put others down because of what they have (which you're not) or you tell yourself you can't have those things or shouldn't have them (which sounds like maybe you are doing.) this is the truth: you ARE worthy of those things and earning that kind of life. You're worth it. It takes hard work, but don't believe it's just "not for you." Don't feel bad for wanting more for yourself. That is a healthy thing that will help you fight your way out of depression. Depression tries to kill that--don't let it.

I have googled my T but there really isn't anything out there. When I was in the process of looking and buying our house she was also doing the same and we were both looking to move into the same town her office is...so we talked a lot about the houses...in fact she checked out our house before we did. Now she has sessions in her new home. One of my biggest struggles is that I work in psych and I have these issues...she told me that when her husband divorced her she went to see a therapist. If I am struggling with something and she has something that relates to it one of they way she empathizes with me is to tell me about her experiences.

I always think that my Therapist has a great life, especially around holiday times when I think in my head that my Therapist is having a great time with her family while I am either at home alone or struggling just to say hello to my family members (most of whom I do not like at all).