last revised May 2026
why this policy exists
The British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors requires any Registered Clinical Counsellor who uses social media to maintain a written policy on the matter. What follows is mine. It is intended for clients, prospective clients, and any reader who wants to know how I conduct myself online and what that means for the boundaries of the clinical work.
If you have read the methodology page, some of what follows will be familiar; the present document is concerned with the platforms themselves rather than with the writing that appears on them.
the asymmetry
The clinical work I do is private. The writing I do is public. This site is the place where the two practices meet, and the meeting is asymmetric by design: my work is visible to you in a way yours is not visible to me.
If you are working with me, or considering working with me, you may have read some of my published work before our first session. You may continue reading during our work together. You may read everything I publish. I write with the awareness that this is the case. I will sometimes refer in session to ideas I have written about, when it is useful to do so. The published work is not background to the clinical work; it is part of what I bring to the room.
The asymmetry goes the other way, too. I will not search for you on social media, on review sites, or via general search engines. The rare exceptions — situations in which it is clinically necessary, such as an active safety concern — are first discussed with you in session.
LinkedIn is the only social media platform I maintain for professional purposes. I do not have personal accounts on other platforms in any active sense.
I do not accept LinkedIn connection requests from current or former clients. The presence of a professional connection between us on a public platform could compromise both your privacy and the clinical frame, neither of which is worth that small public visibility. If you have sent a connection request and I have not responded, this is the reason.
If we are no longer working together and you wish to remain in touch with the published work, the most reliable way is to subscribe to a slow correspondence, the email newsletter, which is private and is not visible to anyone else.
comments and public responses
You may sometimes wish to respond publicly to something I have written — a comment on a LinkedIn post, a reply on this site if commenting is open, a public note elsewhere. You are welcome to do so; I encourage public engagement with the work from any reader.
If we are working together, I will not respond publicly to anything you write that could identify you as a client, even indirectly. This is not personal. It is because I cannot risk confirming, even implicitly, that you are someone I am working with. If you have a strong reaction to something I have written and you would like to discuss it, the most useful place to do that is in our next session.
reviews and testimonials
The BCACC Code of Ethical Conduct prohibits Registered Clinical Counsellors from soliciting testimonials, expressly or by implication. I follow this prohibition strictly. I will never ask you to leave a review of my practice. I will not respond to reviews if they appear.
If you find a listing of my practice on Google, Yelp, Psychology Today, or another review site, please understand that it is not a request for a testimonial. If you wish to express something about our work, the most useful place is in session.
encountering published material
I have never published anything that identifies a client. The dialogues on this site, and the forthcoming book Anxiety as a Neuro-deviance, follow the consent and pseudonym practices described on the methodology page. If a piece of published material is about you, you already know — because you wrote it with me and approved it before publication.
If something I publish makes you feel as though it might be about you, in the absence of any actual identification, that experience is itself worth talking about in session.
email and electronic communication
Email is not a confidential medium. Please use the contact form on this site or the Jane App intake form for first contact. Once we are working together, scheduling and logistics communication runs through the Jane App messaging system, which is encrypted and clinically appropriate.
updates to this policy
This policy may be revised as the writing practice and the regulatory environment evolve. Significant changes will be noted at the top of the page and, when relevant, mentioned in session.
If you have questions about anything in this policy, please write to [email].
This policy is adapted, with substantial modifications for the public-writing dimension of my practice, from the social media policy of Keely Kolmes, Psy.D., used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.