Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My teen son had done three sessions with a therapist that he said he liked. The therapist told us that he felt he could no longer treat DS because he discovered that he (the therapist) is in a gardening club with my mother, and feels uncomfortable about treating my son in light of this. The gardening club meets twice a month, and there are more than 20 people in it. This seems ridiculous .... but i am not sure what I can do (probably nothing). Do you perceive any ethical conflict here?

n

nonono. The littler secret amongst all therapists is that they pick their own clients. If they don't like someone or are bored they come up with an excuse and shove them of. That's why at the first point a therapist says "ok evaulation and teting" I say "but I want YOU to treat her - i have come to YOU because of your reputation!" Generally they will shove off problem clients to a less experieced therapist. You need to be assertive.

Oh, I’m sure this makes the therapist want to keep you as a client!

Therapist here, again.

This is really just not the case, at all, at least among therapists that practice with a shred of ethics.

Are you quite young? If one is in private practice, it is not unethical to sever ties with a client who is so aggressive, abusive, or toxic that they might prevent you from serving your other clients effectively. Self-care and self-preservation are important in this field, or else you are no good to anyone. Someone who yelled at me in this manner as their selected means of communication, not because they were experiencing a psychiatric emergency, might not be welcome back.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only problem is if your mom realized and was talking to him/referring to her grandson at garden club.

I also think this is likely the issue. If you really like the therapist can your mom find a different garden club?

This is your only way to keep the therapist.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My teen son had done three sessions with a therapist that he said he liked. The therapist told us that he felt he could no longer treat DS because he discovered that he (the therapist) is in a gardening club with my mother, and feels uncomfortable about treating my son in light of this. The gardening club meets twice a month, and there are more than 20 people in it. This seems ridiculous .... but i am not sure what I can do (probably nothing). Do you perceive any ethical conflict here?

n

nonono. The littler secret amongst all therapists is that they pick their own clients. If they don't like someone or are bored they come up with an excuse and shove them of. That's why at the first point a therapist says "ok evaulation and teting" I say "but I want YOU to treat her - i have come to YOU because of your reputation!" Generally they will shove off problem clients to a less experieced therapist. You need to be assertive.

Oh, I’m sure this makes the therapist want to keep you as a client!

Therapist here, again.

This is really just not the case, at all, at least among therapists that practice with a shred of ethics.

Therapist here.

Your son's therapist's approach might seem unnecessarily conservative, but I can understand his perspective.

It's not so much what's being discussed at the garden club. It's the potential for grandma to cross boundaries with the therapist, to then get a negative impression of the therapist in some way, and for that to potentially negatively affect the client's relationship with the therapist. It's a small likelihood BUT it happens more often than you'd think, unfortunately.

We do our best to protect the therapeutic relationship and it seems this is what he was trying to do, here.

Anonymous wrote:

It was actually an offhand mention of DS's fairly long term girlfriend (over a year) - she plays a sport that not many women/girls play, and also an esoteric instrument. Once my mom mentioned her, he connected it.


If the therapist can make the connection through an offhand mention, imagine what else could come out when deep into therapy? It’s for your son’s confidentiality. It would be inappropriate for grandma to tell the therapist at garden club, my grandson loves you, thank you, or to tell others about the connection

NP here. Obviously, I don't know what exactly was said. But to me there is a HUGE difference between making small talk about your grandson's girlfriend playing rugby and taking tuba lessons vs. thanking a therapist and telling him that your grandson loves him. The former is harmless.

yes but the therapist doesn't know what's going to come out of Grandma's mouth next, so he's acting now to prevent a bad situation.

Grandma sounds pretty chatty if she's giving an aquaintance details about the hobbies of her grandson's girlfriend. Who knows what's coming next week.

I once had a therapist tell me she couldn’t treat me anyone because we were becoming friends. We had same fashion style and it came up in meetings. She had her own therapist mentor (and a lot do) and she had talked about her situation with me and the advice was that it was getting in the way of treatment. We were both sad but I understood. You therapist may have talked to their mentor and got similar feedback. I would ask for a reference and move on.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My teen son had done three sessions with a therapist that he said he liked. The therapist told us that he felt he could no longer treat DS because he discovered that he (the therapist) is in a gardening club with my mother, and feels uncomfortable about treating my son in light of this. The gardening club meets twice a month, and there are more than 20 people in it. This seems ridiculous .... but i am not sure what I can do (probably nothing). Do you perceive any ethical conflict here?

n

nonono. The littler secret amongst all therapists is that they pick their own clients. If they don't like someone or are bored they come up with an excuse and shove them of. That's why at the first point a therapist says "ok evaulation and teting" I say "but I want YOU to treat her - i have come to YOU because of your reputation!" Generally they will shove off problem clients to a less experieced therapist. You need to be assertive.

Oh, I’m sure this makes the therapist want to keep you as a client!

Anonymous wrote:My teen son had done three sessions with a therapist that he said he liked. The therapist told us that he felt he could no longer treat DS because he discovered that he (the therapist) is in a gardening club with my mother, and feels uncomfortable about treating my son in light of this. The gardening club meets twice a month, and there are more than 20 people in it. This seems ridiculous .... but i am not sure what I can do (probably nothing). Do you perceive any ethical conflict here?

n

nonono. The littler secret amongst all therapists is that they pick their own clients. If they don't like someone or are bored they come up with an excuse and shove them of. That's why at the first point a therapist says "ok evaulation and teting" I say "but I want YOU to treat her - i have come to YOU because of your reputation!" Generally they will shove off problem clients to a less experieced therapist. You need to be assertive.

Anonymous wrote:

Weirdly entitled that so many people are pissed about the therapist following ethics rules… and expecting that therapists should just get over their own personal qualms because of how hard it is for their clients to find a good match

No, the issue is that people don't understand what ethics rule is being implicated by this casual garden club acquaintance of a non-immediate family member.

The PP who recommended asking the therapist is correct.

I don’t think there needs to be an ethics rules violation. If one party doesn’t want to continue, for whatever reason, it’s over.

Weirdly entitled that so many people are pissed about the therapist following ethics rules… and expecting that therapists should just get over their own personal qualms because of how hard it is for their clients to find a good match

No, the issue is that people don't understand what ethics rule is being implicated by this casual garden club acquaintance of a non-immediate family member.

The PP who recommended asking the therapist is correct.