I’m in disbelief this has happened and I am scrolling currently looking for another practice to join.
I am a licensed mental health counselor at a conglomerate of other mental health and wellness individuals. There are 5 practicioners in total, and we focus on whole body care. I love my job and I love my clients. As I am newer to the practice and therapy as a whole, I do have a supervisor who I will call Dr. A- he is a psychologist.
I cannot provide many details as I would never violate the privacy of my clients but last week I had a family therapy session that ended abruptly and cops were called. It was a bit rough on me as well- I am only human- and took the next day off. When I returned the following day, my supervisor made a comment about how “we don’t take mental health days around here”. I said “really? Isn’t that a little counter to our mission statement?” he said “no, of course not,” and I realized that he hadn’t actually been joking when he said it. We were in our break room with 2 of my cows workers as well. I said “Oh, well we should probably work harder to practice what we preach.”
He then got very visibly upset. He turned bright red and stormed off, and I thought “well that was odd but everyone’s entitled to an off day. He has never been passive aggressive or rude in the slightest with me before.
Fast forward to the end of the day, and I get a call from my father. He tells me that he just received a call from Dr. A offering us discounted family therapy services. I was so stunned I could barely speak. First off, my parents and I have a great relationship. We are not in the market for family therapy at this time, and I have never told him that I am. Furthermore, they have never met. And finally, my dad is my emergency contact and that’s truly the only place he could have gotten the information from. I had forgotten that at the time so I was even more creeped out.
My dad asks me essentially “what the hell” and I say I don’t know why he did that, but I am very sorry and I will speak with him directly. Dad asks if I’m okay and I say yes, just angry and very confused and he says “no, Dr. A said you had been through a traumatic event, that you were struggling at work and needed to speak with us? He mentioned you’ve been acting out?”
First off- this is not very forward thinking therapist of me, but what the actual fuck? Secondly, I’m not his patient, and he can’t treat me as such. Third- I do not discuss work with my wife or my family in any manner, and he should know that as a 15 year professional.
I told my father that something hard had happened at work, but I was okay, and I didn’t need to talk about it – plus couldn’t talk about it with him regardless. I assured him I have my own therapist (yes, we need them too lol) and that I would speak with her about what I had witnessed soon. My dad was hesitant to hang up the phone because he was worried about me, and I do not like the feeling of knowing my dad was worried about me over nothing.
I am gearing up to confront my supervisor today regarding this breach of privacy and trust. I wanted to speak with him the day it occurred but between my schedule and just being too angry to speak, I decided to take the weekend to cool off.
I will be speaking with him this evening.
Edit- we do not have a human resource officer per se. Our HR is outsourced as a payroll/onboarding service.