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Poll Sexual abuse survivors: Would you want to know if your therapist is also a sexual abuse survivor?

For sexual abuse survivors: would you want to know if your therapist is a sexual abuse survivor?

  • I am FEMALE and I WOULD want to know

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • I am FEMALE and I WOULD NOT want to know

    Votes: 8 38.1%
  • I am MALE and I WOULD want to know

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • I am MALE and I WOULD NOT want to know

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • I am NONBINARY and I WOULD want to know

    Votes: 1 4.8%
  • I am NONBINARY and WOULD NOT want to know

    Votes: 2 9.5%
  • I honestly do not care

    Votes: 5 23.8%

  • Total voters
    21
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It has no bearing, for me, on the work I am doing. It does not change their effectiveness or competency as my therapist.

I can understand why some would want to know, and likewise wouldn't.
 
I don't need to know. I have decided my T isn't, but she hasn't said either way. I just decided as twice she said "my trauma clients" , so from that I decided she wasn't. But who knows?
But, no, for me a sense of familiarity and connection comes more from her explicitly saying she works with LGBTQ+ clients (and me deciding she is gay, although again she has never said), and her being female.
 
Pretty much all the counseling literature says "don't ever disclose" and there are many, many good reasons for that. However, all of the peer-reviewed evidence I've read about disclosure solely focused on female survivors. I've heard from many therapists who work with male survivors that men often ask the question "are you a survivor" at the very beginning of therapy and many seem to want or need some kind of answer before they can feel safe with the therapist.

I was talking with a therapist and she conjectured that it may be due to the fact that girls and women are socialized to be nurturing, and boys and men are not. For example, if a T discloses to a female client, that client may worry about their T in a way that a male client probably wouldn't.

Personally, I'm not going to ask my T because it is really none of my business. But my really effective Ts have talked about enough trauma-adjacent things that I can totally make some assumptions. I do not think I would feel safe or work well with a T that hasn't shared some of that part of my experience.
 
I identify as non-binary but have been socialized as a woman, it’s quite tricky to make an intersection. With friends, I’d prefer to have that sense of empathy and knowing what’s been on and eventually share around it, because it isn’t the same kind of relationship (this if they’re comfortable sharing it so). But with my T I think it’s already been so tricky just to come up with things I have no mental space left for taking their experience into account and I do tend to want to be comforting and the focus would be on the wrong person, therapy-wise.

That said, I can understand that for male patients knowing that another male has suffered the same things and having some sense of normalization might be more significant and soothing since it’s not something much spoken about. While with being female-bodied, awfully it’s kinda taken for granted that there is a huge possibility it’s the case. (With males too but the social perception is different). But it would be very difficult to gauge who would be okay and who wouldn’t by advance. I guess this is more the space of specific trauma groups?
 
i am female.
the time therapists have disclosed such facts of their lives have helped earn my trust. my authority issues are such that i tend to mistrust socially distant experts. how would you know, my spurty one? do you and i even navigate the same world? socially distant kingpins were some of the meanest of the kiddie whorehouse patrons. just mask it all, my cultural icon of hypocrisy.
 
girls and women are socialized to be nurturing, and boys and men are not. For example, if a T discloses to a female client, that client may worry about their T in a way that a male client probably wouldn't.
This is sticking with me for some reason. I like to believe that boys and men are socialized to be nurturing. And I hadn’t thought about the connection between worry and nurture. And the thought that men in general aren’t socialized to do those things in Western society… is… uncomfortable… but also illuminating. I still think they are socialized to be protectors. Which leads me to wonder about protecting without nurturing… what that looks like, sounds like, feels like.

Please ignore if this is hijacking the thread.
 
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