If you’ve internally winced at how much you said after opening your mouth without thinking, same. I’m going to do my best not to overshare about myself in this post as I warn you to not overshare (and internally admonish myself as I write this).
Here’s some hypotheticals: Maybe you are under a lot of stress. Maybe you feel like no one is listening and you feel the need to tell people problems you are having. Maybe you receive bad advice and you think you’re right even if you’ve been misguided. Maybe you have read books or seen a documentary/Ted Talk by Brené Brown that inspired you to finally feel open and trusting enough to embrace vulnerability and be open with people.
With any or all of these potential factors in mind, it would absolutely make sense to disclose information [just-in-case translation: to share information with people]. Here is why you should consider (perhaps not only for legal reasons but also for your well-being) telling that to a private diary/journal noting what you plan to tell a licensed therapist in confidence instead of telling people and systems about your life.
Regardless of if you have a diagnosed mental illness or just have a lot of stuff floating around in your brain, I mean a licensed therapist who has agreed to see you and you are actively in a therapist session with them, not that therapist’s voicemail or email inbox. Not a medical doctor, not a boss, not your family, not your friends, and not your Google search engine or a therapy messaging/mood tracking app, because those systems will share your data with whoever wants to exploit your secrets and insecurities to make money on you.
This sounds like a 1984 Orwellian conspiracy theory and I hate that it does, but I’m not joking. Long story short is that third parties, including your favorite search engine even when you’re in incognito mode, are already catching medical history that would otherwise be protected with HIPAA (TL;DR it keeps medical records private) laws from a traditional source and using it to target ads and convince you that you need their good/service.
If you think I’m lying and you think you don’t care about what systems know about you, go ahead and request your file from Facebook/Twitter/etc. on what data an app has collected from you, or what your dating app of choice has collected about your swipes and messages. These apps are free for a reason, and Europe’s GDPR has cracked down on this while the United States has not — or at least it might do that soon.
Did you request your file? Let me know what you find.
I say to trust a therapist because I am going to assume that you, dear sweet innocent-until-proven-guilty reader, are not actively planning to self-harm or kill/injure someone else, which are the only instances a therapist is by law required to contact authorities to prevent that from happening.
Here is the model of not talking: If you do X, don’t talk to [insert person or entity here] because you will complicate your life as a result, either legally or otherwise.
For example, if you commit a crime or someone else thinks you committed a crime, don’t talk to cops. And don’t talk to anyone else in your life about it except a lawyer, whether that’s a public defender or a private attorney that you hire, because a friend, family member etc. might catch a charge and also get in trouble if they feel compelled to help you in an emergency situation because they love you.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE: If you need accommodations at work or a day off, you don’t need to over-explain your condition. You might not even need to formally request accommodations if you can manage your needs yourself. Don’t open your mouth or typy-type on your little keyboard except to divulge something like “I am taking a sick day.” They don’t need to know more unless they’re requesting a doctor’s note, which only lasts a sentence or (gasp!) two sentences.
YET ANOTHER HYPOTHETICAL EXAMPLE: If you are injured at work or while working outside of the location where you work, report it to your supervisor and then someone from HR. Who, what, where, when, why and how — stick to a paragraph if you can while including any and all large and small pains. Then shut up, even if an HR person invites you to say more if you think of anything else.
Oh, you think you need to open a worker’s compensation claim? You don’t have to, especially if you have decent private insurance, but if you do enter that process, don’t disclose anything to anyone from your employer’s worker’s compensation claim insurance company. They will be so so nice because they want the injured party to think they are helping. They are not helping. They want to minimize health issues to save the employer money. They will send patients to a doctor to record their symptoms, and that doctor records the symptoms so the insurance company can downplay those symptoms and save the employer money.
Do you have another example? Click the button.
Anyway — just because accidental disclosure DOES happen, provide bare minimum details when you are setting up ANY KIND of initial consultation with any kind of professional via voicemail, call or email. This is why I don’t record on-background conversations in any way. I’m a reporter, but I don’t snitch on whistleblowers.
Here’s a rare worst-case scenario that actually happened in Missouri: After paper medical records had been stuffed in a plastic bag to be disposed of, the plastic bag tore and those records — with names, addresses, contact info, HIPAA-protected medical history — blew across the urban area that the medical facility served. It was a giant info breach with matching settlement consequences for the hospital.
Like I said, it’s a worst-case scenario. Less bad but still not great: People are human, and sometimes they forget to redact stuff that should be redacted. So keep your voicemails and emails short, because that’s a record that doesn’t always stay where it should.
None of this is legal advice, and I know this is hard anyway. The tea is always hot, and the need to over-explain yourself can be compelling and even overpowering even when you don’t need to.
Let’s all know less about each other. Cheers.
Some people have too much confidence. Others have debilitating imposter syndrome. Either way, if you have any doubt about something, don’t open your mouth about it! And take time to re-examine what’s going on before you do say something.
While it is important to ask questions about a process, otherwise, don’t say a thing and wait for (hopefully) good things to come to you.
Apparently when people ask how you are, they rarely want to know exactly how you are. Whether you are doing perhaps too good or too bad for their liking, they will get uncomfortable if you inform them with too much detail. And usually, it doesn’t even feel good to overshare. It’s like you’re a deflating balloon.
Also, where is the enigma that people are dying to discover about you if you tell them what they say they want to know? Don’t you want to be the dapper mystique, the femme fatale, the tall-dark-handsome man who appears to have everything? Be mysterious. Don’t tell people your problems (unless you need help, you trust them and it will not get you in legal/etc. trouble). Be mysterious.
You can bet I have more to say about disclosure. Let me know what else you want to hear.