Privacy & Honesty
We put our therapists’ privacy first (actually)
A reason why something like therapisting may not exist is because of therapists’ concerns over privacy and self-disclosure. Many therapists are rightly concerned with how much they share publicly on the internet because their current or prospective clients may read it. This is a tale as old as the internet. (And self-disclosure in general is a tale as old as psychotherapy itself.)
Some therapists are comfortable sharing some details about themselves online, but not the most personal stuff. Others prefer full anonymization and pseudonyms if they decide to share their experiences. Many refrain from sharing anything at all out of an abundance of caution. While these stances are a matter of personal preference, they collectively result in the same outcome: very little publicly-available information on the stories, lives, and innermost perspectives of practicing therapists. (And most of what is out there is on Reddit, which oscillates between decent and terrible.)
At therapisting, we design our interviews in a way that simultaneously protects privacy and enables honesty. We’ve created a spectrum of interview anonymization that meets our interviewees where they’re at and gives them full control over their online presence.
Protecting the privacy of the therapists who share their perspectives and stories through therapisting is my number one priority. There is no honesty without being completely in-line with our interviewees’ comfort level, and honesty and depth are our goals.
Our privacy-first interview process
We have a few different ways of editing and sharing interviews that give our therapists full control over their public profile. Our approach gives our therapists confidence to be as honest and detailed as possible with our readers because our therapists know they have the final say in what and how their experiences gets shared.
We feature three kinds of interviews on therapisting:
Open interviews feature the therapist under their full name (and headshot);
Anonymized interviews feature the therapist under a pseudonym (no headshot);
Collections posts takes some excluded portions of individual interviews, anonymizes them, and aggregates them in a pool of other answers from a large group of interviewees (minimum 10 people).
Open and anonymized interviews are relatively intuitive, but collections posts are where things could really get interesting. Collections posts allow for a therapist to share a deeply-personal insight or story in their interview that gets shared in a completely separate post not connected to them. This is another layer of privacy for our therapists in order to give them confidence to share their full stories. Our first collections post won’t happen until we interview at least 10 therapists, so our interviewees can be sure that their private stories and insights stay private.
Here’s how our process works for all three types of posts:
For Open & Anonymized interviews
First, the therapist conducts their interview. They don’t have to worry about sharing too much because they’ll be able to edit and control what gets put out later.
Second, the therapist goes through their first draft interview and marks two things: a) what they want cut out of their interview completely, and b) what they want cut out of their interview and put into a collections posts.
Next, the therapist decides if they want what remains in their post to be open or anonymized.
Fourth, the therapist reviews the final draft of the interview. Before article is posted, the therapist will have the opportunity to offer any final adjustments.
Last, the post is published! Even after the article is posted, the interviewee can always ask for any portion of their interview deleted at any time.
For Collections posts
Once we’ve interviewed at least 10 therapists and gather up enough insights that were excluded from peoples’ initial interviews, we will draft a collections post. All of the answers included in the collections post will have already been approved by interviewees. As with open and anonymized posts, the interviewee can always ask for their answer to be taken off a collections post.
Our interviewees have full control at all times
Unlike most publications, therapisting allows interviewees to have the final say about what and how things go live. I will not post anything without my interviewee’s full approval and I will take anything down in the future should my interviewee want me to. (Not like the rest of the internet where after you publish something, it lives there forever.) Honesty and privacy don’t have to be mutually exclusive; we can have them both.
— Sean
The information provided on this mental health blog is for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. therapisting is not a healthcare provider and does not offer medical or psychological services. Use of this blog does not establish a therapist-patient relationship. For any questions and/or mental health guidance, please consult a licensed mental health professional.