I was just having this discussion with someone! We both prefer therapist who do not disclose. We both feel like if a therapist discloses too much, that they could be trying to “charm” us, that they are trying to be liked, and it hurts the trust.
It seems, sadly that the horse has left the barn. New 'therapists' of all stripes are being urged to become 'influencers' on social media, plying their trade, selling their 'courses', detailing their personal experiences with trauma, addictions, family estrangements, and their own therapy... explaining 'therapy', modalities, monitizing their 'expertise'.
Twenty-three years with the same analyst, and I still know almost nothing about her life. What she gave me instead was room. Every question she declined to answer became space for something of mine to appear.
My own clinical work often runs in the other direction. I work with children and families, where the therapist cannot be a blank screen. A child reads your face, body, and rhythm before you say a word. The discipline there is not abstinence but awareness: knowing what your presence is doing in the room, moment to moment, so that your visibility serves the family’s process rather than your own comfort.
Both traditions are answering the same question: whose needs are being centered?
Abstinence can serve the patient or protect the therapist. Disclosure can serve the patient or gratify the therapist. The technique matters less than the honesty about who it is for.
I find disclosure helpful, WHEN it's helpful. Both as a therapist and from my own therapist. Less is always more ... thank you for this piece allowing us to revisit the boundaries and the need for them.
This is such a well thought out a nuanced, essay and topic. I'm a clinical psychologist of 17 years, and I wrestle with this, particularly as I have taken up writing and sharing my own stories. I write anonymously for this very reason, but I'm not sure how long I will be anonymous on here. Thank you for giving me much to think about.
This is such a comprehensive and thoughtful piece, Lisa. I have been having this conversation recently with other therapists who write here on Substack. It's a tricky line to walk, and how we choose to navigate those boundaries in the writing space sometimes conflicts with what we do in the therapy room. My supervisor framed it like this: 'Within the therapy hour, you centre the client's story, but outside of that hour, you are allowed to have a three-dimensional life'. For me, that three-dimensional life includes writing pieces that are sometimes quite personal and sharing them here online. Inevitably, this comes into the therapy room at times. I try to treat it as grist for the mill, something to work through and be curious about in the relational space. It's complex though, and continually evolving, as the online world is a very different place from the context in which I trained 25 years ago. In many ways, we're learning and adapting as we go.
Yes! One of the reasons I am thinking about this and wanting to write about it is because I do occasionally share some personal stories in my essays or on my podcast. I’m aware that my online presence probably does contaminate my work in some way. There is certainly a tension there. I like your supervisor’s framing. Thanks for that!
There’s nothing about this trend to be unboundaried and casually self-disclose a whole host of information ranging from birth trauma to neurodivergence, to sexual preferences, that I find even remotely “refreshing”.
Interesting how non-disclosure of a therapist's politics is neutral for you. From my perspective, refusing to disclose one's political values is itself a political position—one that I associate with conservatism. Of the kind that the Global Majority are exhausted by.
This kind of non-disclosure often actively harms us because we risk falling into harmful traps. I would not go anywhere near a therapist who doesn't come out clean about their political beliefs because that usually signals an unwillingness to acknowledge structural oppression—racism, ableism, queer phobia, colonialism, and other systems of power—that impact us deeply and are the reason why many of us seek support in the first place! It helps us to identify our therapists' based on their political beliefs and sexuality. Because people in denial of our oppression won't help us.
The demand for a supposedly "clean slate" that leaves out politics is itself a position of White privilege. It asks those of us who live with structural oppression to leave our reality at the door, while allowing those insulated from it to remain unexamined.
There is a big difference between therapist "abstinence" (i.e., the refusal to comfort, soothe, or even offer a Kleenex) and therapist over-disclosure. If I needed a robot as a therapist, I'm sure I could find an AI robot that would do just fine instead--and be a lot less expensive. But I am a person who does not want to know much about my therapist at all. If a disclosure does not serve my needs, I don't want to hear about it, period. I'm there for my therapist to take care of me--at $180 an hour. If my therapist spends even 5 minutes sharing stuff not relevant to my needs, $15 of that fee has been used to take care of her! Clients pay their therapists by the minute. Whenever my therapist discloses too much, I just end up spending my time and money taking care of her. And the useful disclosures are limited to only what I need to know to be helpful in a given situation.
Here's an example. My mother had severe psoriasis--in the days when those biologic medications did not exist. She was one of the trial patients out of Duke University to use methotrexate (which changed her life). Before that, the treatments she had to do were awful--tar on her legs wrapped in saran wrap, sun lamp, make-up on her legs to cover the plaques at work, etc etc etc. My therapist had known that she had psoriasis, but I had never talked about what it was like for ME as a child to see my mother hurting like that (not to mention being so sick she was flown to NC from GA for treatment for a month at a time). When I started to talk about that, my therapist said, "My father had that kind of psoriasis too, and I remember those treatments." That was all she said. And I didn't need to spend time describing the treatments and could focus on my response to the whole thing from the perspective of a child who loved her mother and was unable to help her be better.
I'm totally in the knowing less camp. I struggle to understand why knowing anything beyond the professional skills a therapist can share with me has any therapeutic benefit. I have heart disease and remain uninterested in my cardiologist's sexuality or politics, but deeply interested in his knowledge and understanding of the cardiovascular system.
This is a great post of the intricacies involved in being a therapist online. It feels like a constant navigation of writing what I want to write and protecting the therapeutic space. It's hard!
I was just having this discussion with someone! We both prefer therapist who do not disclose. We both feel like if a therapist discloses too much, that they could be trying to “charm” us, that they are trying to be liked, and it hurts the trust.
Ah, if you’d told me you were leaving, I would have ‘dumped’ you first. That would have been our last session.
Yes, you guessed: insecure attachment 🤣
No one gets to leave me, I leave them.
It seems, sadly that the horse has left the barn. New 'therapists' of all stripes are being urged to become 'influencers' on social media, plying their trade, selling their 'courses', detailing their personal experiences with trauma, addictions, family estrangements, and their own therapy... explaining 'therapy', modalities, monitizing their 'expertise'.
Twenty-three years with the same analyst, and I still know almost nothing about her life. What she gave me instead was room. Every question she declined to answer became space for something of mine to appear.
My own clinical work often runs in the other direction. I work with children and families, where the therapist cannot be a blank screen. A child reads your face, body, and rhythm before you say a word. The discipline there is not abstinence but awareness: knowing what your presence is doing in the room, moment to moment, so that your visibility serves the family’s process rather than your own comfort.
Both traditions are answering the same question: whose needs are being centered?
Abstinence can serve the patient or protect the therapist. Disclosure can serve the patient or gratify the therapist. The technique matters less than the honesty about who it is for.
I find disclosure helpful, WHEN it's helpful. Both as a therapist and from my own therapist. Less is always more ... thank you for this piece allowing us to revisit the boundaries and the need for them.
This is such a well thought out a nuanced, essay and topic. I'm a clinical psychologist of 17 years, and I wrestle with this, particularly as I have taken up writing and sharing my own stories. I write anonymously for this very reason, but I'm not sure how long I will be anonymous on here. Thank you for giving me much to think about.
This is such a comprehensive and thoughtful piece, Lisa. I have been having this conversation recently with other therapists who write here on Substack. It's a tricky line to walk, and how we choose to navigate those boundaries in the writing space sometimes conflicts with what we do in the therapy room. My supervisor framed it like this: 'Within the therapy hour, you centre the client's story, but outside of that hour, you are allowed to have a three-dimensional life'. For me, that three-dimensional life includes writing pieces that are sometimes quite personal and sharing them here online. Inevitably, this comes into the therapy room at times. I try to treat it as grist for the mill, something to work through and be curious about in the relational space. It's complex though, and continually evolving, as the online world is a very different place from the context in which I trained 25 years ago. In many ways, we're learning and adapting as we go.
Yes! One of the reasons I am thinking about this and wanting to write about it is because I do occasionally share some personal stories in my essays or on my podcast. I’m aware that my online presence probably does contaminate my work in some way. There is certainly a tension there. I like your supervisor’s framing. Thanks for that!
It's really interesting to read the different perspectives on your piece in these comments. Here's one more, in the form of an essay. https://undergroundtransmissions.substack.com/p/everything-a-google-search-reveals
We must maintain professionalism. May I interview you for a livestream or recorded podcast soon? I’m a trauma therapist.
Sure. I’d love to talk more about this.
There’s nothing about this trend to be unboundaried and casually self-disclose a whole host of information ranging from birth trauma to neurodivergence, to sexual preferences, that I find even remotely “refreshing”.
I am both the client who knows everything and who is able to put my thoughts and feelings into words.
Interesting how non-disclosure of a therapist's politics is neutral for you. From my perspective, refusing to disclose one's political values is itself a political position—one that I associate with conservatism. Of the kind that the Global Majority are exhausted by.
This kind of non-disclosure often actively harms us because we risk falling into harmful traps. I would not go anywhere near a therapist who doesn't come out clean about their political beliefs because that usually signals an unwillingness to acknowledge structural oppression—racism, ableism, queer phobia, colonialism, and other systems of power—that impact us deeply and are the reason why many of us seek support in the first place! It helps us to identify our therapists' based on their political beliefs and sexuality. Because people in denial of our oppression won't help us.
The demand for a supposedly "clean slate" that leaves out politics is itself a position of White privilege. It asks those of us who live with structural oppression to leave our reality at the door, while allowing those insulated from it to remain unexamined.
C C C C C V V
There is a big difference between therapist "abstinence" (i.e., the refusal to comfort, soothe, or even offer a Kleenex) and therapist over-disclosure. If I needed a robot as a therapist, I'm sure I could find an AI robot that would do just fine instead--and be a lot less expensive. But I am a person who does not want to know much about my therapist at all. If a disclosure does not serve my needs, I don't want to hear about it, period. I'm there for my therapist to take care of me--at $180 an hour. If my therapist spends even 5 minutes sharing stuff not relevant to my needs, $15 of that fee has been used to take care of her! Clients pay their therapists by the minute. Whenever my therapist discloses too much, I just end up spending my time and money taking care of her. And the useful disclosures are limited to only what I need to know to be helpful in a given situation.
Here's an example. My mother had severe psoriasis--in the days when those biologic medications did not exist. She was one of the trial patients out of Duke University to use methotrexate (which changed her life). Before that, the treatments she had to do were awful--tar on her legs wrapped in saran wrap, sun lamp, make-up on her legs to cover the plaques at work, etc etc etc. My therapist had known that she had psoriasis, but I had never talked about what it was like for ME as a child to see my mother hurting like that (not to mention being so sick she was flown to NC from GA for treatment for a month at a time). When I started to talk about that, my therapist said, "My father had that kind of psoriasis too, and I remember those treatments." That was all she said. And I didn't need to spend time describing the treatments and could focus on my response to the whole thing from the perspective of a child who loved her mother and was unable to help her be better.
THAT's appropriate self disclosure.
I'm totally in the knowing less camp. I struggle to understand why knowing anything beyond the professional skills a therapist can share with me has any therapeutic benefit. I have heart disease and remain uninterested in my cardiologist's sexuality or politics, but deeply interested in his knowledge and understanding of the cardiovascular system.
This is a great post of the intricacies involved in being a therapist online. It feels like a constant navigation of writing what I want to write and protecting the therapeutic space. It's hard!