My therapist seems politically opposed to my feminist views

[idontknowhowtodreamyourdreams]

I didn't know where else to post this and could do with a sense check/ideas as to how to deal with this.

I've been seeing a therapist for about a year for a range of issues, including substance misuse and recovering from abuse during my childhood and teens (sexual, violence). We've spoken about some really difficult and personal things that I have never discussed before and I have felt that the therapy has been useful. I thought I trusted him and trust is not an easy thing for me.

I'm a GC feminist. I'm also a lawyer and so I tend to have a legal lens on some of the debates around issues of trans rights and the rights of women and girls. I have talked in therapy about how I have found the tone of the debate around trans rights increasingly upsetting and hostile (on one side) and I had been upset over the discussion re the Supreme Court and the Equality Act. I've talked about both this and how hard it can be to feel like there's no space for women to express certain views without being dismissed or labelled.

My error (I totally accept I shouldn't have looked, but he should have locked down his settings) - I looked and saw a pic on SM of him at a protest. I don't want to out myself or him but he was holding a banner basically slagging off the Supreme Court.

And now I feel . . . the trust has gone. Has he been quietly judging me while I shared some frankly painful stuff? Does he respect my perspective? As I don't know if I can work with someone who doesn't. It's not a difference in political views, I feel like my views on these issues are fundamentally part of who I am as a person.

I know I crossed a boundary and shouldn't have looked, but would appreciate any thoughts as to whether I am being overly sensitive and/or whether it's something I should bring up.

Or maybe I am just wrong to care? Thoughts welcome!

You’re a delight, aren’t you?

You've been with your therapist for a year now. Therapy isn't support to last forever, what progress have you made in the time, what have you achieved what are the goals.
Sounds like the trust is broken anyway, you could discuss the social media snooping and the trust if you chose to.

I’m somewhat conflicted about this. On one hand, it seems you've crossed a boundary by snooping on his profile. While it's natural to feel curious, snooping by definition involves secretly gathering information without someone’s knowledge or consent. It can sometimes serve as a maladaptive coping strategy, driven by anxiety, insecurity, or other difficult emotions. Rather than confronting these feelings directly, people may turn to snooping as a way to feel more in control or reassured.

That said, from your description, it sounds like he offered you a safe and containing therapeutic space, and you didn’t notice anything overtly problematic during your sessions. This suggests he was able to maintain appropriate boundaries and keep his personal views separate from the therapeutic process, which is an essential quality in a good therapist.

Personally, I wouldn’t choose a therapist who holds those views, but if I had discovered them, I don’t think I would have had such a strong reaction because, on this issue, I can tolerate a difference in perspective. Perhaps it’s worth exploring why it feels essential for your therapist to share your views and whether this is about safety, validation, or something else entirely.

Don’t be defensive about looking at his SM. He’s advertised his opinions online for the world to see, that’s on him.

I’d style it out and be entirely unapologetic about looking at it. Loads of people look at people’s SM profiles even if not connected as “friends” - that’s what they are there for!

It would bother me too, OP. If you choose to discuss it with him then you have to mentally prepare yourself to hear that he thinks women’s rights to safety should come second to men’s rights to role play, which may be difficult to hear.

@Lavender14 thank you. For my own sanity, I shouldn't have looked at his social media, for sure. But the more I think about it, I conclude that I didn't cross a boundary or snoop. His profile is public. Anyone with an Instagram account can view it - he set it up like that and so can taken to have consented to the public nature of it. If he didn't want it to be searchable and visible, then it is v easy to use the privacy settings to achieve this (as I do as I don't want any random person seeing my pics!).

How will you vet your next therapist? Genuinely curious

Thanks so much to everyone who has shared insights and views, it's really helpful as I can't really discuss this IRL.

@99bottlesofkombucha @WimbledonWhites thanks. The photo I saw did not include him holding a banner advocating violence. If I had seen that - fuck/kill TERFS, burn TERFs etc - then it would be a no brainer. I would walk away and tell him why, probably in an email cancelling sessions.

No violence - more fuck the Supreme Court. So that leads me to think (obviously I don't know for sure) that he doesn't recognise the need for safe spaces for women and girls and that he has little understanding of the SC decision. The absence of critical thought and suggestion of misogyny is the issue, when I have been talking and need to talk more about the physical and sexual violence I have survived at the hands of men.

In a way, it would be way easier if he had been screaming about killing TERFs.

"I don't want to out myself or him but he was holding a banner basically slagging off the Supreme Court."

I think it's up to you to decide whether his political beliefs are a problem for you, taking into account what you have discussed.

However, I would lose respect for any professional who couldn't distinguish between the job the Supreme Court had to do - interpret the law - and the impact of the law.

@zaxxon no idea tbh. But it's a good point. I really don't need a GC feminist therapist.

@Cassandrasuncapturedcastle your most recent post captures the situation from my perspective really well. And yes, agreed re your comments on the reckoning that may be coming in the therapy field. I hope a reckoning is coming anyway, it's long overdue.

Someone asked up thread about what my goals in therapy were/are and what progress I feel I have made. I started off wanting to address my relationship with alcohol and wine issues in my relationship. I have been really pleased with the work we have done re alcohol and the second is a work in progress.

I didn't start therapy thinking I would open up about the abuse and violence. I thought I had put all that behind me. I was wrong and I found myself opening up about some of it for the first time. So, I didn't choose the therapist due to his particular expertise in this area, but he does have experience of working with clients who have experienced abuse and trauma.

The level of gaslighting against the OP on this thread is off the scale. Let's just clarify a few things:

1. Looking at someone's publicly available social media is not "snooping".
2. Gender ideology is profoundly misogynistic and homophobic. I would no more want a therapist who supported gender ideology than I would want one who was a racist.
3. Moreover, this man has publicly made it clear, both by going on a demonstration, and then posting pictures of himself at the demonstration, where he stands: that he does not believe that women like the OP who have been raped or sexually assaulted should have the right to spaces free of men.
4. This man, despite being in a profession that ought to require some intelligence and sensitivity, is committed to an ideology that is wholly irrational, anti-science and viciously authoritarian in its insistence on silencing anyone who expresses dissenting views.

What the OP decides to do is up to her: perhaps having felt she has made some progress with this man, she wants to continue. I don't personally think that would be wise, but I am not in the OP's shoes and don't have the right to tell her what to do. People who have been berating the OP for her reservations about this man should be ashamed of themselves.

And would a person who has published social media posts about their strong feelings pro- or anti- either of these be acting professionally if they purported to be a safe and non judgemental counselling/therapy service to support someone who is struggling with their own issues and where it becomes relevant and important that the client's beliefs are in direct opposition to their own? The professional thing to do would be that when the client started talking about issues that the therapist couldn't possibly be neutral and non-judgemental about, they should immediately initiate a process to identify a colleague to refer the client on to who has the capacity to provide the service needed.

It's different for the liberal side of the abortion or gay marriage issues though because if you are anti-abortion you simply don't have an abortion and don't need to affect anyone else's rights, and if you are anti-gay-marriage you simply don't marry anyone of the same sex as you. So a therapist or counsellor can campain for abortion to be freely available and for marriage rights to be universal and can still provide a nonjudgemental service to someone who wouldn't choose to do these things themselves. Obviously if a therapist or counsellor was a campaigner for the opposite view and was actively trying to remove rights from other people then the previous paragraph applies as soon as such rights become relevant to the topics under duscussion. The OP's therapist is in the same situation because protesting against the Supreme Court judgement is campaigning to abolish women's rights altogether and it's not possible to campaign against the existence of women's rights and also provide any kind of counselling or therapy to a woman who believes she should be entitled to such rights, when the topics being discussed in their sessions are related to this issue. In the opposite scenario, a therapist or counsellor with strong views in support of sex-based rights would be able to help clients with the opposite beliefs if the topic was something unrelated like helping someone to stop smoking or to understand and overcome an unhealthy attitude to food, and could probably provide neutral and non-judgemental services on most topics to a woman who doesn't believe she is entitled to any sex-based rights, but could find themselves unable to provide their services to some clients if there is too deep a chasm between the underlying beliefs of themselves and the client in an area directly related to the topic being discussed.

I would be changing therapist, smartish. Not only was he on that march, he is proud enough about it to put it on his social media. He's also stupid enough not to have his social media locked down.

As you have found what you have discussed during your therapy changing, now it might be time to find a therapist more specialised in that area. And, personally, I would be choosing a female therapist.

Very nicely put. I agree with all that. OP will make her own decision, but in her shoes I would now be despising him, and changing therapist.

I don't think snooping is the right word , it make it seem as if you are the one who did something wrong . Whereas your therapist is at fault for being public . I could not continue with someone who clearly thinks that women's rights are secondary to men's. As I hate confrontation I'd probably just send him an email telling him his views make it impossible to continue . As you are a lawyer I'm guessing that you are paying him quite a lot for these sessions. The loss of income will hurt him more than your words. I actually feel quite queasy at the thought of you sitting there with him baring your soul whilst he's thinking... I don't know what is he thinking.

What an awful dilemma. OP you have done nothing wrong. Anything in the public domain is fair game and it is not wrong to be curious. I say that as a therapist myself. You could try and discuss it with him and see where it gets you. There could be therapeutic benefit in dealing with a huge rupture like this however he still has the views he has and he has let them be known so it might be a dealbreaker.

I personally think it depends on the context. If you're viewing someone’s professional profiles, I think that’s generally fine. Similarly, if you happen to come across a personal profile online while doing this, that's also understandable. However, actively searching for someone’s personal profile on platforms like Facebook and then looking through their photos, posts, and other content feels different to me. I would classify that as snooping.
I’ve had people look me up in the past, and I found it quite odd. My Facebook is for people who know me not for clients. One of my colleagues even had to move house because her personal details were listed on Companies House, which someone had used to find her address. It raises real concerns about privacy and boundaries.

My Facebook is for people who know me not for clients.

And presumably the settings reflect that and a random client would not be able to see your posts?

You do not have to make your home address public on Companies House if it is not the registered office.

I suspect he'd quite cheerfully say he believes in protecting the rights of women and girls because like most people he hasn't really thought it through. Maybe he's accepted the sort of intersectional feminism which claims trans identified men are a sort of vulnerable woman. I wonder what he would do if you challenged him on it? I'd be tempted to have a session on how you feel about those who have abandoned women and girls on this issue. Let rip about men in women's prisons, rape crisis centres, changing rooms, about the gaslighting of women who protest, about how it makes you feel as an abuse survivor when you hear about people abandoning safeguarding. How telling children they might be born in the wrong body is abuse. You don't even have to tell him you saw his facebook page. Then you can walk away if you want to.

@Lavender14 if one is on social media - anyone. - and one doesn't want posts and photos to be public and searchable then the onus is on the individual to set their privacy settings accordingly. Eg, I don't want people I don't know in real life seeing photos of my kids and/or me, so my settings reflect this. Anyone can look me up but they can't see anything other than my name and a profile pic, which reveals nothing.

"And would those clients be told off by you for ‘snooping’ ?"

@rantznotbantz

Yes. Why would that be any different for any other client?

@Lovelyview in my stronger and braver moments, I would like to do this very much. Very, very much. I also fear I would combust with anger mid session and he'd have to sweep my corpse out the door 🤯

I'm thinking you're responding to the other poster with lavender in their username.

I did agree with you in my post that his profile should have been locked down to avoid this as an issue even if you had snooped. Although I guess at times there's limitations to this such as if you've been tagged by someone with a public profile etc. At times Facebook etc have changed settings without informing users.

@idontknowhowtodreamyourdreams
I made a very neutral observation on page one without telling you my opinion on how I think you should deal with this, because I didn't know what I thought you should do. I've thought about this overnight and now have a firmer view.
I don't think you should lose trust in your therapist. He clearly has strong views on this matter if he's protested this, and yet his way of dealing with it was to steer you away from the topic. If I was his therapist it would have smacked him around the head for his views while saying "whatchu talking about Willis?" ( a Different Strokes meme ), and every time that I could see he was getting over the shock of being head smacked by his therapist, I would have done it again to try and keep him in that shocked state.
The people on this board, myself very much included, have very strong views about gender. The idea women should have to share their private spaces or sports with fetishitic predatory men is a view I find utterly abhorrent and morally absurd to the point of letting myself get very worked up about it. I have other views e.g. I quite like Trump that you'd probably visibly strongly disagree with, but if you met me in real life I would physically stand in front of you, and figuratively stand behind you at every opportunity to protect you from predatory boundary non respecting men I despise with a passion. Women's rights to say "no", and "fuck off you creepy cunt" to seriously damaged men who insist on trying to invade their spaces is a really big deal in my world. I'm a single issue voter on this front. My like of Trump would reverse if he reversed his position on this issue.
That your therapist is what I consider the other side of the issue, and he cares about it enough to protest it, and yet when you bring it up his action is not to react like I would, or to tell you you're wrong, or to try and convice you into believing his point of view, but to steer away from the topic says to me he respects your boundaries as a client. He takes his job and his responsibilites seriously. He is well aware of the ethical boundaries, and he observes them. You say you've built up trust over a year of seeing him. My argument after thinking about this is that your trust in him is well founded. He's proven why you you placed that trust in him.
Don't look him up any more. Give him the respect he gives you. Stay off this one topic. Explore other topics that will help him help you. He's a better more ethical therapist than I would be if you brought up Trump to me. You be in a daze with you ears ringing wondering who the fuck Willis is and why I kept smacking you around the head calling you by that name. He's allowed to have different beliefs to you, in fact it benefits you, if he was exactly the same as you he would be no use to you as a therapist. He actually sounds like a good therapist to me.

I don't think this is fair on OP at all even if she is "staying in an intellectual mindset and pontificating" (and I don't see that she's said anything to suggest that). I've used the counselling space to explore social and political developments, my views and feelings about them and what might be going on behind all of that, and I don't know how you would do that without expressing them.