Facebook for counsellors?

[Jenny]

So the other week I was looking on facebook and i found a therapist on there who i used to see many years ago... i didn't add her as a friend or anything but it was interesting to see her photo and see who she had as friends!

Would you, as a counsellor, get a facebook account?

I'm split in my thinking about whether a counsellor should.. i mean, as a client i would love to be able to see what my counsellor was doing, who their friends are etc. But that wouldn't exactly be helpful to me in therapy..in fact it could be detrimental. But on the other hand, counsellors are human too (!) so of course they're entitled to do whatever they wish on the web!

I guess if a client did come across their counsellor's facebook page then it would need to be explored in the session.. so maybe what i'm saying is that it is ok for counsellors to have a page, and that if found by a client it would need to be explored?

Any thoughts?

[summer_rain]

Hi Jenny, this happened to me as well whilst searching on facebook and I also thought to myself how adding her as a friend would be inappropriate.

I personally found it quite strange, I think I prefer the idea of her being a counsellor and not a human being (LOL), but ofcourse theres no reason why they shouldn't have facebook pages. I dont think you mentioned if her profile was set to private so I presume that it was, my counsellor's was... I can imagine it would have been alot more odd if id of been able to see her whole profile. :)

[Steve]

That's a really interesting and thought provoking question, Jenny, and I completely agree with Summer Rain's comments.

I have a counselling website and a Facebook account. To avoid any conflict of interest Facebook is my own personal space, and the privacy settings are set to 'friends only' to avoid the situation you describe. When posting to this forum, and my counselling website, my comments are kept as professional as possible to avoid inappropriate self-disclosure.

It would be interesting to get other members' points of view on this important subject.

[Bid]

HI

I agree with steve i have a face book account but am aware that this my personal space totally seperate from my counselling.
but it may feel odd if you see your counseller on there, did it make summer rain and jenny feel uncomfortable?

[Jenny]

I guess i was quite uncomfortable with it and to be honest I'm uncomfortable with the fact that i even searched my ex therapists name on google in the first place! I sometimes even now search my ex therapists (the latest one) on google and part of me wishes i could find out something about her. But what is this need about!?

I agree that counsellors (and teachers, etc.) would need to remain professional as necessary, and set the settings to private, etc. Although it seems that although my ex counsellor's settings were set to private, I could still see who her friends were. I have therefore found out that she has one daughter and a husband! I didn't know that before.. and i guess for me, if i had seen this counsellor for any significant time or became attached or anything, that could have an impact. I guess everyone is different.. for me i would really feel jealous of a counsellor's child. I realise that's silly as counsellors are human and make mistakes too, but in my mind i have this image that counsellors would be great parents, so self aware and able to raise children in a more healthy way than most. Hey, not much to live up to there huh counsellors! :D

Am starting to wonder about this forum now though.. i mean, there is little 'privacy settings' here and the main (only?) way to remain anonymous would be to choose a totally random username. I wonder if you see this forum as a place where you need to remain professional or whether you find it ok to be more personable (is that the word?) because you're using a different name?

[shrinknightmare]

i think go for it, but I think they should just have their facebook page set to private or else they could end up having people stalking them or sending continuous messages.

I have googled the names of counsellors i have seen, because I am just curious, but i wouldn't contact them though over the internet unless they contacted me first.

i think you can remain anonymous I mean who is going to guess who I am from my user name?? Unless I had terrible bad luck of the psych stumbling upon this forum then i would be so embarassed. if someone googled my real name they would get 5,500 hits as my story made world wide news.