Am I overly concerned about privacy?

We agree with the other posters, this seems like it should be really basic and obvious.

We don't have a lot of experience at this stuff, but with both our last T and our new one, the waiting room is physically separated from the therapy rooms by more than one door, and they've both had radios going in the waiting area. (The first one had soem very questionable choices of stuff on the radio but that's a nother matter.)

Our first one also had 30-minute gaps between appointments so it was almost impossible for the exiting patient to see anyone in the waiting room. I dunno if the new one does that but I don't think she does.

Anyways, yeah it sounds like your guy has a big blindspot for this stuff, and we agree it totally shouldn't have come out of your paid time to go through all that nonsense trying to set the thing up.

On Wednesday evening I sent him the link to my latest posts about this, and he emailed me yesterday afternoon to say that he's "addressing the issue" and that he understands how I felt about having my time taken up with this.

So, parts that are very quick to forgive wanted to know if he still had our time available for today, and he did, and gave us until 9 am to decide (for a 10:45 appointment, so that's very nice). There was a lot of internal debate about what to do (and a lot of missed sleep over it). I don't want to go into all the details, since this has taken up WAY too much time already, and has overshadowed my actual LIFE where I have decisions to make and things to prepare for, but basically he didn't actually say he was sorry for what happened and all the time it took.

So it feels like if I go, we'll have to deal with all of that, and I have a project that has to be done NOW, before Sunday. It would have been nice to discuss this project with him and get his input, because I have mixed feelings about it, but there are too many feelings about having to deal with HIS issues about this privacy thing and noise machines. I don't even know if he actually HAS something set up yet that solves the problem. So we decided not to go this morning.

He is saving a time for us on Tuesday, so our current plan is to PROBABLY go then, when we're past this other stress.

Aw Gangs, I hope he gets this $#%^ sorted so you can both get past it.

it's a very basic and essential issue for all his clients. he just needs to address it and move on.

dudeman - sorry I called you a turdblossom.. but seriously. get with privacy coverage for your clients. it's basic ethics of treatment. SAFETY AND PRIVACY!!!! fix it and we won't call you names anymore. just put a white noise machine OUTSIDE your door. it's seriously that easy.

BeccaBee wrote:dudeman - sorry I called you a turdblossom.. but seriously. get with privacy coverage for your clients. it's basic ethics of treatment. SAFETY AND PRIVACY!!!! fix it and we won't call you names anymore. just put a white noise machine OUTSIDE your door. it's seriously that easy.

*giggle* BeccaBee is right! And funny.

But seriously - this would bug me too. Big time. I kind of can't believe he's let this become such a big deal (through his own responses; not anything you've done Gang). It's totally common practice. I've never had a therapist not have a radio or white noise or something. My current therapist even has two doorways going into and out of the office so that you can leave without seeing who is waiting (there's kind of a partial wall between). I am SUPER paranoid about someone hearing my secrets. I get a feeling most of us are - I mean, we have developed this way of experiencing and relating to the world because of a need to be able to live a "normal" life (at least for some parts of us). This means going to great lengths to hide abuse, even from ourselves. Secrecy for some of us meant the difference between life and death. We all have very complicated issues with the idea of people knowing what happened to us, as even not all of us (our parts) believe all the other parts. I am very interested and invested in not letting people in to what is going on with me inside. I can't imagine not feeling like I could talk freely with the therapist if I heard someone else come in and knew they could hear things. I'd clam up and never want to talk again.

For us it's not just a need to keep things secret (which is an almost pathological need for us) but an expectation of the worst in others. We learnt very early in our life that people exist who will exploit any weakness or vulnerability and will take pleasure in our suffering. So we would find the situation completely intolerable.

Thanks, BeccaBee, Menagerie, NyxX.

When we sent the text this morning to say we weren't coming, we asked him to reassure the littles that he still cared about us, etc, and told him we were still upset that he didn't even say he was sorry. He texted back in the afternoon (that was a LONG time to wait and it meant that we spent more time being upset), and he responded to each of the things we said, including being sorry that my time there wasn't spent on what was important to ME to talk about.

I asked if I won't need to worry anymore that if someone shows up before the end of my session that they can hear whatever I'm saying and he said, "Correct." So it sounds like he's done SOMETHING to take care of it.

Menagerie wrote: I kind of can't believe he's let this become such a big deal (through his own responses; not anything you've done Gang). It's totally common practice. I've never had a therapist not have a radio or white noise or something. My current therapist even has two doorways going into and out of the office so that you can leave without seeing who is waiting (there's kind of a partial wall between).

Exactly. He just REALLY doesn't like white noise, I guess. And he does computer stuff and most of his phone calls in an area that's essentially part of the waiting room (like an alcove) rather than doing that in his office, so it's just kind of like one big space, but with a thin door between the "office" part of it and the waiting room part. So whatever sound-blocking thing he uses, if he didn't like it he would want to turn it off between clients, I guess, or not use it if he wasn't seeing two people in a row.

It's actually an odd way to use the space, now that I think of it. There could be a way to use it that would solve the problem of people running into each other if he just changed things around. But that's not really my business. As long as he has solved the privacy issue so it's not a problem for ME anymore and I don't have to deal with it, then I'll be fine.