Ah the Internet. It gives so much to us in terms of support, connection, and the ability to obtain and absorb information.

And then, in an instant, it can also take so much away: feelings of pain, jealousy, feeling left out, or trying to interpret messages from pixels on the screen.

The Internet makes it easy to communicate without having to talk to people like some of us digital immigrants did in “the old days.” Don’t forget that the human relationships you most value do require some direct, face-to-face communication sometimes as part of their regular care and feeding.

Since so many of us are living our lives online these days, here are my six pointers for avoiding injury to yourself and others on email and social media.

1. Be careful of “heat of the moment” posting.

It’s so easy to impulsively respond to an email or a tweet or a wall posting when you’re feeling hurt or angry. But if you find yourself composing something when you’re feeling angry or shaken, try making it into a draft and giving yourself at least a 24 hour cooling period before clicking send.

If you have a trusted friend who you know to be a careful and balanced thinker or communicator, perhaps run your posting by him or her.

If you goof, and post something that maybe you shouldn’t have, you can still self-correct and delete it later. An apology may sometimes be a step towards a better interaction, as well.

2. Don’t use status updates as a passive-aggressive way to communicate something to just one person.

If you know you are really posting that tweet or status update for an audience of one, and it’s an indirect way to get something off your chest, try a direct message to the person you’re trying to to reach instead. Or better yet, send an email (or – gasp! – pick up the phone and call) and see if they are available to talk in the near future.

Don’t use vaguebooking or passive-aggressive posts to try to get attention. You may irritate people, and you may find that it doesn’t really wind up getting you what you want. Of course, private jokes or sweet messages can sometimes become a status update. But beware if you are using your twitterstream or Facebook Wall or G+ account as a way to beat around the bush.

3. Never unfollow or unfriend someone out of retaliation just because they unfollowed you.

Yes, it stings to find out that someone has stopped following your tweets or is suddenly showing up as a recommended Facebook friend when you know you were connected just a week ago.

If it’s a close relationship, you can always send a note and say you’ve noticed they stopped following you and ask why they did so. Don’t do this unless you are prepared to hear their answer.

But if you are still following them on Twitter and you like their tweets, don’t unfollow them to “get even.” Try giving it 30 days or so to see if they are still providing valuable content to you. If it’s still bugging you, and the relationship is close enough, you can ask why they took you off their Follow list.

If what follows is a “difficult conversation,” see my blog post on how to have difficult conversations.

And try those off of the Internet! Oh wait, that’s item #5!

4. Don’t obsessively Facebook, Google, or Twitter-stalk your ex (or the person your ex is now dating).

Of course, it’s tempting to find out what has happened in someone’s life when you’re no longer in it, and the Internet has made it ridiculously easy to browse photos, news, and updates on the lives of people who are no longer in our lives. In the old days (yes, this is a phrase I am now old enough to use), people might drive by an ex’s house in a moment of longing or self-loathing. But now we can just sit home in our pajamas and look at their social media profiles to find out what’s new with them.

But this has become a new form of self-injury for many people. Sometimes, it can feel like a compulsion and it can be hard to stop. If you find you are doing this, consider employing some harm-reduction strategies such as using the “block” function or imposing time periods during which you’ll stay away from the offending profiles.

Try 14 days of not looking. Then try 30 days. You may find that not looking helps you move forward and helps stabilize your mood.

If it helps, enlist a friend whom you can call when you have a weak moment. Ask your friend to help support you in choosing something healthier to do rather than checking these profiles.

Chances are good that the profile will still be there to peek at once you’ve had 30 days of sobriety from checking your ex’s profile.

5. Try to keep important and difficult conversations offline.

The online disinhibition effect can lead people to sometimes get closer online and share more than they would offline with positive effects. But it can also lead some folks to say things that are more cruel and toxic than what they would say if they were chatting face-to-face, looking into someone’s eyes and seeing how their words land. This can be problematic, if you want to process hard things in a friendship.

One of the worst things you can do is tell someone that something should happen in an offline chat, but then dump your side of the conversation into an email. That’s unfair and it only makes sense that a person would want to respond to that email.

So do both of yourselves a favor: if you think something warrants a face-to-face conversation, don’t start it over email. Send an email and say, “Let’s get together and chat, I’ve got some stuff I wanna talk to you about.” Or pick up the phone and do the same.

Unless you’ve got a proven track record with someone who also likes to process things over email, don’t assume this is the best way “to talk.”

6. Avoid inflicting FOMO on your friends (and yourself).

While it’s great to post photos and updates of all the cool and groovy things you do in your life, remember that people are going to see these updates who may feel very hurt and left out when they find out you had a big birthday bash and neglected to invite them.

Be mindful of what it means to have wide audiences who are now privy to your every social engagement and think about whether you really want to share these things with everyone or whether you want to create filters and friend groups so that you are not in inadvertently pissing off half of the folks you call your friends.

And if you’re prone to FOMO yourself, start booking up your own social calendar rather than cruising for online information of what you’re missing out on. If you’re feeling like you’re missing out on too much, it may be a sign that it’s time to work a bit harder on creating more offline activities for yourself than online ones.

The Bay Area organization, Gaylesta, (The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Psychotherapists Association of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area) is organizing a project called 50 Things You Need to Know About Working with LGBTQ Couples.

They are asking both psychotherapists and LGBTQ couples who have gone to therapy to submit brief information about that experience that would help other therapists. The goal of this project is to collect and share information will help other therapists to provide better care for LGBTQ clients.

Please note that the deadline to submit this information is February 1st. You can send your responses to: gro.atselyagnull@tcejorpselpuoc

You can find out more about the project here.

Some of the information Gaylesta would like to know from clients includes:

• How important is it that your therapist be willing to disclose their sexual identity?  Does it matter to you whether they identify as LGBTQ? Why or why not?
• How have differences related to class/race/ethnicity/religion/etc. impacted your relationship?
• What was particularly helpful or not helpful in the way your therapist supported exploration regarding sexual difficulties?
• How has your therapist been able to be supportive or not during the transitioning of one member of the couple?
• If applicable, what has helped you feel that your therapist has understood and supported your alternative relationship constellation (i.e. polyamorous or nonmonogamous)?
• What do you wish your therapist knew about your identity and/or life that would (have) help(ed) in the therapy?
• What technique or insight initiated by your therapist in relation to you being LGBTQ helped the therapy?

Please note that this is not research and it’s not anonymous. Gaylesta intends to compile the responses, however your name will be removed from them.

I’m happy to report that our slides are up summarizing the data Dan Taube and I collected on clients encountering their psychotherapist’s information on the Internet.

We will soon be writing up our findings to submit for publication, but I’m pleased to be able to share this data with all of the folks who participated in our research and those who helped us reach out to potential participants. We could not have done this without the magic of social media and all of your help!

I’m very appreciative and I hope that our findings help bring greater awareness and understanding to how the Internet and social media are impacting the psychotherapy relationship.

I’m so very pleased and excited to announce the launch of Without My Consent, a project on which I sit on the Advisory Board with a fine group of Internet superheroes. This project was co-founded by Erica Johnstone and Colette Vogele.

Without My Consent is intended to provide resources and information to victims of online harassment to help them find safety, seek justice, and stand up for their rights. We also hope to provide psychological resources for people who have been harmed.

It is also our hope that our site serves as a deterrent to those who may be thinking of doing harm to another individual. These individuals may wish to seek help to process the intense or disturbing feelings that might lead them to want to lash out against another person in such a way.

This project was recently mentioned on June 2, 2011 in The New York Times story How to Unmask the Internet’s Vilest Characters. This article discussed one of Without My Consent’s strategies: encouraging victims to file suit pseudonymously.

Keep your eye on us. There will be some interesting news and updates coming soon.

The website OnGoodAuthority is featuring a new CE course called Facebook and Google and Twitter…Oh My! Ethical Issues for Clinicians.

I’m pleased to be one of the contributors to this course.

This 3 unit CE course presents four audio interviews by Barbara Alexander, LCSW, BCD with the following speakers:

• Curt Kearney, MA, LCPC – “My Patient Wants to ‘Friend’ Me”
• Keely Kolmes, Psy.D.  – “A Social Media Policy for Your Practice”
• Lisa Johnson, Ph.D. – “Social Media Enhances Clinical Work”
• Frederick Reamer, Ph.D. – “Standards for Using the Internet and Social Media”

There is currently a pre-order special: $35 until January 15, 2011.

After that, the price will go up to $55.

Currently, you must order this by phone: 800-835-9636.

For those who do not wish to take the CE but who still want to listen to the interview, I will upload my segment here in the near future.

Listen to a brief clip of this interview:

Are you a person 18 years old or over, who has been in psychotherapy, and has sought or found information about your therapist on the Internet? If so, we would appreciate your taking the time to complete a survey.

Our names are Keely Kolmes and Dan Taube and we are licensed psychologists who would like to request your participation in our research on the effects of encountering your past or current therapist’s information on the Internet. This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of Alliant International University.

As a participant, you will be asked to complete an online survey covering your basic demographic information and your experiences regarding seeking or accidentally discovering information about your therapist on the Internet. We expect the survey to take about 20 to 35 minutes to complete.

Your input may help therapists to better understand if and how this information affects clients.

No names or personal information will be linked to the study and your participation will be completely anonymous so long as you do not put your name in your responses. If you should wish to contact the researchers directly, your participation may become confidential rather than anonymous, although your name will not be linked to any of the data you submit.

To be eligible for the study, you must be 18 or older, currently in psychotherapy, or have been in psychotherapy in the past, and have encountered or sought information about your therapist on the Internet.

If you meet the above criteria and are interested in participating in the study, you can access the survey at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/finalclient

If you do not qualify for the study but you know others who might be interested in participating, feel free to forward this notice or URL. You may also share our research page with others on Facebook.

Thank you for your interest and participation.

Sincerely,

Keely Kolmes, Psy.D. moc.liamhsuhnull@semlokkrd

Daniel Taube, Ph.D., J.D. ude.tnaillanull@ebuatd

Therapist-Client Interactions on the Internet

Thank you to everyone who participated in our survey. The summary of the results of the research Dan Taube, J.D., Ph.D. and I conducted on psychotherapists who have had intentional and accidental extra-therapeutic encounters with their clients on the Internet are posted on my research page. A larger slideshow can be viewed here.

To read a brief lit review and description of the research, please see our article Clinical implications of therapist-client interactions on the Internet: Boundary considerations in cyberspace.

Funny vs. Not Funny

Recently, on a professional listserv, someone posted a joke that a number of people found offensive. As the flood of responses filtered through, the listserv became divided. Some were disturbed to see the joke posted in a professional forum. Others defended the joke and the joker. As the conversation evolved, it became clear that the sender had knowingly posted the joke, that she thought it was funny, and now she felt hurt and misrepresented by those who found it offensive.

Well, there we were.

That was racist!

The thread brought to mind one of my favorite web videos called “How to Tell People They Sound Racist.” The video provides a model for how to talk to people when they’ve said something offensive and how to bring the focus to what was said rather than the speaker’s intentions.

While reading the exchanges on the e-mail list, I started to realize how much more useful it would be to have guidelines for how to respond when someone tells you that you’ve said something racist or otherwise offensive. This is an even harder task, and it’s where many of us probably need the most help.

Think of it this way: If someone tells you that you stepped on their foot, you don’t usually say, “How dare you think I’m someone who goes around stomping on feet! I’m offended that you would make such a negative assessment of my character!”

Of course, not. That would be ridiculous. Instead, most people say, “Oops! I’m so sorry!”

Why then, is it so difficult to respond in this fashion when someone says we’ve said something racist, offensive, or just plain hurtful?

Deconstructing difficult conversations

I see couples who struggle with this very problem on a much smaller scale. Let’s take the racist and offensive part out of it: two people come to my office trying to be heard, messages are getting misinterpreted, and both partners wind up frustrated, sad, or angered by these failures to connect. Maybe they want to give up entirely.

I do a lot of work with couples about communicating their feelings in conflict and how to respond in ways that help each of them get heard. Oftentimes, this means separating an accusation from the expression of hurt feelings. Sometimes one partner hears that blame even when the first partner hasn’t made any accusation. We work on restructuring a better interaction, slowing communication down, and tracking where and how it went off the rails.

Private vs. Public

I can think of few circumstances more challenging than being told you’ve said something hurtful or offensive to another person (other than perhaps having to be the one to bring up the hurt in the first place) even in private. So imagine how this challenge can be even more compounded if you’re told you’ve said something hurtful to an entire group, it’s in public, and it’s a professional setting with an audience of hundreds.

Yikes. Talk about a context for a difficult conversation!

The most natural thing to do in such a situation is to defend yourself and explain your intention. This is the “You should not have been offended by what I said and here’s why….” tactic. It feels right because most of us don’t intend to hurt other people, so it feels true. But….it misses the point.

A better alternative

If I’m ever in such a situation, what I hope to do would look a lot like what I try to do in smaller scale conversations and what I try to teach my couples to do: offer a validating response. This includes acknowledging the hurt or offense (even when you don’t necessarily agree that it should have hurt), recognizing why it may have been hurtful, and then — if you can muster it — expressing some appreciation to the person for letting you know and for educating you.

Try these steps:

1. Breathe
2. Acknowledge the hurt and offer validation.
3. Show appreciation to the person for letting you know.

Here is what that could look like: “Oh my, I can see how that sounded awful. I can imagine it hurt your feelings and maybe the feelings of others who heard it as well. I’m glad you brought it to my attention so I can be more sensitive in the future. Thank you for gently teaching me something here.”

These things typically should come before you explain where you were coming from. If you’ve conveyed an interest in hearing how you affected the other person, they are far more likely to be interested in hearing what you meant to say. Of course, all of this is much easier to imagine when you’re outside of such a conversation!

When we are in these conversations, we feel attacked. Or embarrassed. We defend. We forget to breathe. We get lost.

Give yourself (and others) a break

Take a moment to consider how much grace it takes to pause, reflect, breathe, and respond in ways that promote and preserve goodwill and understanding. Make an effort to try to bring this into your next difficult conversation. These are the conversations that could happen and that need to happen, both in one-on-one conversations and on a collective level.

Practice makes perfect

Remember that these skills can be learned and improved upon and they do get easier with practice.

Also conversations and relationships are ongoing. If you think you messed up a conversation that could have gone better, that doesn’t mean it’s over and gone forever. Try asking for a do-over. Or notice that you didn’t respond the way you would have liked and say you want to go back and say what you think you left out.

Most people are happy for the opportunity to feel better and this is a great way to show that you really care and you’re making an effort.

Our networking group for Bay Area Psychotherapists has a new mission statement:

We are a group of San Francisco Bay Area psychotherapists and psychotherapy students who affirm that sexual and gender diversity are natural expressions of the human experience.

We provide a safe haven for mental health clinicians to gather, network, support, and
consult.

Our psychotherapy practices welcome and serve:

● Clients who engage in consensual sexual behaviors, including but not limited to kink and polyamory.
● Clients who are gender variant.

Our group welcomes:

● Students seeking mentorship in working affirmatively and responsibly with said clients.
● Professionals seeking networking, support, and consultation in working affirmatively and responsibly with said clients.

We are committed to expanding affirmative psychological understandings of sexual and gender diversity, and to counteracting the historical and present day harm done by pathologizing diagnoses, stigma, and invisibility.

We are committed to identifying standards of affirmative and culturally competent care, and to sharing this information with each other and our colleagues so that we may better serve our clients and their communities.

We have all agreed to abide by the ethical guidelines of our respective disciplines.

If you are interested in joining our group, please email Keely Kolmes, Psy.D. PSY21284

In your email, please provide your name, license, practice and/or school information, and a brief bio about your interest in the group. This information will be shared only with other members of our group.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Facebook has released a new Location feature that already has critics — including the ACLU — worried about privacy concerns. As someone with a Facebook account, I found myself once again wondering why it was that I was hearing of new features on Facebook from news sources, rather than being notified of them when logging into my account. If you care about your privacy or you work with co-workers or clinical populations who have privacy worries, you may want to be aware of the new information that may be shared.

Those who want control over Locations should take the following steps.

1. Log into your Facebook account and in the upper right hand corner where it shows Account, click on that and drag down to Privacy Settings.

2. Here you will see what you are sharing on Facebook. Check to see what is selected for Places I Check In which may be set up as “Everyone,” Friends of Friends,” or “Friends Only.”

(Clicking on all images will let you view them in large size.)

3. If you want to modify the setting, click on Customize Settings at the bottom.

4. This will bring you to the following screen.

5. If you want the greatest level of privacy, you would make sure three things are selected here:

First, make sure “Only Me” is selected for “Places I Check In.”

Second, Disable “Include me in People Here Now” after I check in. Enabling this will allow others to see if you are at the venue (feel free to click the “See an example” link on Facebook to see what this will look like to anyone else checking in).

Third, at the bottom, make sure “Friends can check me into Places” is Disabled.

You can read more about the new feature and the concerns of others on mashable and also on Violet Blue’s blog in which she publicized the potential problem raised by @RodBegbie about what happens when someone adds your home address as a venue on Facebook. It sounds as though users will have to go through a tedious process of flagging a venue and then waiting for Facebook to respond in order to get their personal information removed.