Aside from any criminal/illegal acts you may have committed, are there things which you would absolutely not share with your therapist?
Cybering and female wet dreams. I can talk about them online, to faceless strangers. I would die if it came up irl.
Just so you know, you can feel free to talk to your therapist about crimes. Unless they involve child abuse or harming someone who is considered not able to protect him- or herself, therapists can’t break confidentiality.
Unless it’s about a future crime you plan on committing. Therapists are actually required to break confidentiality to protect the life of someone you intend on hurting; this includes your own. They can get their license revoked if they don’t take the necessary measures to report it.
That said, I guess it would depend on how comfortable I feel speaking to this person. I also sometimes find it easier to speak to complete strangers; this is mostly due to the fact that they don’t personally know the people in my life and have no easy way of finding them. I suppose you could chalk that up to mild paranoia; I am mostly afraid certain people I care deeply about will find out things they aren’t mean to know.
No. I have seen soo many therapist over the years I have told them everything more than twice.
Being molested at 7*, shoplifting at 15 (for food, mother knew about it), sex with strangers in my 20s-30s, my superhero fantasy, my suicide plans, wishing my mother would die, and so on. I thought that being honest would help them help me. In the end, in my case, it didn’t.
*One therapist freaked out about this. IMHO he totally overreacted to what, again IMO was a minor incident. He also freaked out to a much lesser degree when I told him I had sex with a black man. I stop see him shortly after that.
Wait, so if you confess to an unsolved murder they don’t have a right to report you to the police? I admit I don’t have any firsthand experience with therapists, but I saw a documentary once where a patient did just that, and the psychiatrist said “Did you… am I supposed to consider that a confession? Because I have to call the police, if it was.”
Was that just for the camera? I find it hard to believe there are therapists walking around, knowing their patients are murderers, and aren’t able to say anything.
While it is true that doctors and therapists cannot intentionally divulge information about a patient’s care or treatment, a search warrant or a subpoena can force a medical professional to divulge info. So, if you feel that some stuff should stay between you and your doctor, ask him or her to turn off the tape recorder or stop taking notes for a minute or so. (Of course, this won’t work for the legally-required-to-be-reported issues mentioned upthread.)
Seriously? So it’d be a bad idea to say “I could kill… so-an’-so” :eek:
I don’t tell her everything unless I think it’s important. Because I don’t want her to think that by me telling her something that it carries more significance than it does. She has told me she wants to know everything, but I just don’t operate like that. I’ll answer questions honestly, but I won’t offer up extras unless I feel they are important to our work.
Like I didn’t tell when I flew out to visit my family last week. In the past when I have told her about upcoming visits, she has made me go through exercises (like rehearsing what to say if X occurs) that I felt I didn’t really need or enjoy. I think she’s finally understanding that I’m not an anxious person (thank goodness!) and that situations can annoy me without unraveling me. But sometimes she falls back into this pattern where everything must be treated as if I’m anxious or worried about it. Since she’s convinced I’m alexithymic, sometimes she doubts my word when I say I’m fine…so that makes it even more difficult. So there’s no idle chitter-chatter with me. What I bring to her are issues of concern.
Also, as much as I like and respect her, I don’t have the need to share every random thought that crosses my mind. I’m very private like that. Unless it’s a thought that I find bothersome or it’s impeding me in some way (like daydreaming too much at work), I keep my inner-inner-inner stuff to myself and only share the inner or, when pressed, the inner-inner. I have to keep something for me and me alone.
As far as my past goes, I don’t have any skeletons in the closet. I have pretty much disclosed everything that I think is important, and even stupid stuff that probably isn’t. But I do like that we don’t go time-traveling very much.
No, it’s “I plan to kill so-and-so.” To break confidentiality the therapist must have a well-founded suspicion that you will act on your threat. For example, if you have a history of violence against the person or are seriously delusional.
No one is going to report you for saying, “She just makes me so mad! Sometimes I want to strangle her!” without having some other information that makes them think you’re about to get your stranglin’ gloves out.
So not only are you telling them your intention, but you are describing the method as well…
I am a psychologist, and here is how I understand the Tennessee law:
There’s a distinction between past crimes and planned crimes. For example, if someone tells me they plan to hurt someone (and convinces me that this is not fantasy or just anger, but that they intend to do it), I have to report that threat to the intended victim. I would tell my client that I was planning to do that, btw, and probably talk to the police as well. However, if someone tells me about past crimes, confidentiality prevails and I can’t tell anyone (unless the victim is a child or protected adult). The idea is that if the crime can be prevented, you act to do so, but if it is in the past, protecting confidentiality is more important, since without confidentiality, the person doesn’t get treated and may be more likely to continue to commit crimes.
Another distinction arises when there is no victim to warn. For example, I have had clients admit they deal drugs. I could argue that they hurt others, even children, and that this is both a past and planned crime, but there are no identifiable victims, so no report.
Just as a point of interest, I have heard about lots of crimes in the distant past, but they are usually drug-related, or theft. I don’t think anyone has ever confessed to a violent crime to me.
I think it would depend on what I’m seeing the therapist for. If it’s about anxiety over a job interview, a discussion of my adolescent sexual fantasies may be somewhat off-topic.
But in general, I can’t think of any topic I’d shy away from.
One thing you absolutely should not tell a therapist is that you’ve fallen in love, or lust, with her. I never did it, but I once saw a woman in group therapy get sternly warned for saying she thought her therapist was “huggable.”
Romantic or sexual involvement with a patient means a loss of license for the therapist.
Actually, if you have feelings for your therapist, it is best if you tell him or her. We just aren’t allowed to say it back. Generally, therapist and client try to work through those feelings, and understand that they are usually the result of feeling accepted and having such a personal relationship. It sounds like the person who ran your group, AskNott, didn’t handle it well at all. I would have talked to the client outside of group and first ascertained whether or not it was just an innocent remark, and if it wasn’t, work through the feelings with the client. Sometimes, the client has to be referred to someone else to address this, if they can’t continue to work with their original therapist.