Is it ethical for a counsellor to publish a blog?

This is a question I’ve been thinking about for a while. I love writing my blog and sharing my thoughts and experiences with others. But I’ve also been very aware of the potential ethical considerations relating to my work as a counsellor…

I’m choosing to write this today, because this month’s ‘Therapy Today’ (The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy ‘s magazine for members) discusses the ethical dilemma of inappropriate self-disclosure.

The article discusses the dilemma of a client becoming upset by a photograph in the counsellor’s home of the counsellor and her children, which the client felt to be an inappropriate self-disclosure regarding the counsellor’s life. It also makes mention of a discussion I was at a couple of years ago at the BACP annual conference by a professional indemnity insurance company. The company talked about complaints being filed with them by clients relating to inappropriate self-disclosure as a result of photographs being on show in the counsellor’s home. Any personal photographs or objects we display leave us open to complaint.

This is an especially pertinent issue for counsellors who, like myself, counsel from home. I’m careful in my counselling room, not to have any personal photos or intimate mementoes of my life. Although really, the whole room is a self-disclosure … everything in that room was chosen by me and potentially says a lot about me. My problem comes if clients need to use the bathroom; in which case I have to take them through more of my home. During this journey, it’s possible that they may catch sight of photographs and other personal clues about me and my life.

In our training, or certainly during my training, we were cautioned against any kind of self-disclosure, unless we could justify it in terms of its being beneficial to the client. In the counselling room with clients, I rarely feel the need for self-disclosure, and so the client knows very little about me, other than the me I present in the counselling relationship … in our training, this is how we are told it should be. With clients who come to me with eating disorders, they very often ask me what experience I have of working with eating disorders and if I have any personal experience. In these situations, I always tell the truth. I feel it’s important to be transparent and honest with clients. And for many, they are instantly reassured to know that I have had personal experience of the condition that brings them to me. I don’t tell them much else, other than that I am now recovered, which again gives them hope for their own recovery. I also find that clients don’t ask for any more … they’ve come to counselling to make sense of their own issues, they’re not interested in my story.

But this still leaves me with the dilemma of my blog. Everything I write in here is a self-disclosure. I own everything I write and although many of the entries are triggered by experiences I have or things people say to me, I’m always very careful to ensure that no one else is ever identifiable in my writing (unless I have their explicit permission). However, the very public nature of blogs means that past, present and potential clients may very well be reading this. Am I giving too much of myself away? If potential clients have read it before contacting me, is this setting up expectations within them of who I am? Does it lead to the counselling relationship beginning on an unbalanced foundation … in this case, the client knows more about me that I do them. Clients who haven’t read my blog don’t have that knowledge or those preconceptions. And from a purist ethical perspective, that’s the way it probably should be.

But I enjoy writing my blog. And I do know that clients read it … I’ve had a number of comments from them stating that they like what, and how I write, and that it makes them trust me more, but the conversation relating to my blog has never gone further than that. I’ve never discussed the content of a blog with a client … and I don’t think I ever will. What I choose to write on here is personal, but at the same time, I’m always very aware of the public nature of blogs and so am careful to ensure I never put anything on here that I don’t want people to know. My blog is me being transparent, honest and congruent with myself and anyone who chooses to read it … but only about those things I’m willing to share and have known.

I do though, think blog writing by counsellors is something that needs discussing from an ethical perspective….