I’ve been in and out of therapy for most of my life, and I’ve always been under the assumption that therapy sessions are pretty much all confidential, bound by HIPAA, except for in a few circumstances like preventing harm to the client or others.
One of my family members is a family therapist and over the holidays she was sharing stories from her and her colleagues’ clients. I was kind of put off by this but didn’t want to start anything. None of the information made the clients identifiable, so I thought maybe this was the loophole but that still doesn’t sound right to me. Is this normal?
Doctors can share the details of your genial warts as well as long as it doesn’t become painfully clear they were taking about you. The same logic applies to therapists. They can share your story but not the fact that it is yours. And if they have a lot of patients they have a certain level of obscurity. And if they’re clever they change a couple of things about the story to make it less obvious.
The distinction I would make here is the intent behind sharing the story. If it’s a function of venting with other professionals, I get it. They’re only human too. If it’s meant as a sort of teachable moment to others present, I think that’s alright. If it’s a “get a load of this shit” story telling and I found out, I would change therapists.