Dating for Therapists
How do we negotiate our roles as human beings in the world and ethically consider our practice? As therapists, how do we date?
A few years ago I was newly single after nearly a decade long relationship and ready to try dating. In my time away however, dating had changed. Dating was not just online but on our phones. I was a bit hesitant at first it all felt very strange to me like a game but with real people. The immediacy of the interactions was intimidating and a bit intrusive. After many conversations with friends which included me being allowed to “swipe” for them I was convinced. This was 2013 and dating apps had quickly become the way people met. There should have been no real issue here, many many people date online, in fact, almost 50 million have. The Statistic Brain Research Institute reports that of the 54.4 million single Americans 49.7 million have tried online dating.
The problem was I am a therapist in private practice and my clients are also on dating apps. Nervous, I consulted a knowledgeable source for the “rules” of how to handle this dilemma, meaning I googled it, and to my surprise there was very little information out there. I scoured the ethics codes from the licensing boards, the therapist message boards and blog posts (I even went to reddit). Feeling like I might be the only therapist who’s tried tinder but that I wasn’t participating in anything clearly unethical I went ahead.
I joined a few popular sites fairly quickly and carried on with my busy life occasionally dating people I met on the apps. My experience was largely positive. Until it happened I swiped and up popped a client, and then in a few minutes another one, and then another one. Terrified I deleted my account.
But, how else do you meet people when you are busy and you live in a huge city? My solution didn’t and does not hold up today. I went back on. Yes I’m a therapist but I’m also a person. My life is both very private and also quite public in the way that many of our lives are.
How do we negotiate our roles as human beings in the world and ethically consider our practice? As therapists, how do we date?
Therapists are fearful of exposing too much of themselves on the internet. Understandably so since we have been trained to uphold clear boundaries; to not reveal too much of our private selves in order to allow the transference to emerge. This is getting less and less possible. The nature of our culture now is to reveal so much about ourselves everyday. Even as a careful person who is mindful of privacy settings I can’t completely control what of me gets out there.
When I was in graduate school from 2005-2007 the advice given to us was simple, “Don’t get a Facebook account, Don’t start a blog, you have a responsibility to uphold the values of our field”. Of course that sounds ludicrous today. In fact, I have both of those things currently for the sole purpose of promoting my practice. What are the “rules” today? What do our codes of ethics say when it comes to our personal lives?
I went back to the licensing boards including my own, LCAT, and the APA to look for some guidance within their codes of ethics. What I found was strongly worded and scary but still vague. I was particularly hung up on a few basics that I saw across all of the ethical codes, words such as “integrity” as in,
“Art therapists are accountable at all times for their behavior. They must be aware that all actions and behaviors of the art therapist reflect on professional integrity and, when inappropriate, can damage the public trust in the art therapy profession.”
But what exactly compromises the integrity of a profession? The code goes on to state,
“To protect public confidence in the art therapy profession, art therapists avoid behavior that is clearly in violation of accepted moral and legal standards.”
It’s clear to me what legal standards are, but who’s moral standards are we going by? And can you give me some examples? Do you see what I mean by scary but vague? Of the APA’s Principle Ethics, the first principle is beneficence and nonmaleficence, which basically means doing good and not causing harm. Could a client seeing me on tinder cause harm though? All of the codes of conduct and ethical standards I read basically said the same thing, have integrity, do no harm, try not to have dual relationships or personal disclosure. I needed more information because it is no longer possible to avoid all disclosure or dual relationships online.
What I found the most helpful was the concept of small world ethical thinking. When considering joining any social networking sites, especially ones that are as revealing as online dating, therapists may want to consider looking at “small world ethics”. I think we still have some work to do in terms of researching the effects of this digital age we live in but at least this is a start.
Small world ethical thinking refers to a psychologist's heightened awareness that his or her environment will likely produce ethical dilemmas surrounding boundary violations related to online realities such as greater transparency, increased self-disclosure and unavoidable multiple relationships. In rural settings, completely avoiding self-disclosures and multiple relationships is not always possible (Brownlee, 1996; Campbell & Gordon, 2003; Roberts et al., 1999; Zur, 2006). Nevertheless, rural practice has demonstrated that certain boundary violations can be managed or prevented (Faulkner & Faulkner, 1997).
Where am I now with my dating? After a recent breakup I am back again on the apps. I decided that I would be careful to only post things that felt aligned with my value system as a therapist and a human. Left out any bikini pics and I am trying to present myself as I am. A person who is dedicated to her career and clients, a person who can be playful as well as serious, a person who sometimes takes selfies in good lighting and a person who for right now is single...and looking.