Is online therapy confidential?

Confidentiality is not a courtesy in therapy. It is the condition that makes the work possible, because nobody says the true version of a difficult thing to someone who might repeat it. So it is worth knowing exactly what it covers, and exactly where it stops.

What is covered

Everything you say in a session, the fact that you are in therapy at all, and any notes kept about your work. I do not confirm to anyone — family, employer, partner — that you are a client. If someone contacts me claiming to be concerned about you, I do not acknowledge that you exist.

Where confidentiality has limits

Every ethical practitioner has limits, and any practitioner who claims otherwise is either inexperienced or not being straight with you. Mine are explained in the first session, before you have told me anything.

• —Serious risk to your life. If I believe you are in immediate danger, I may need to involve someone who can keep you safe.
• —Risk of serious harm to another person, particularly a child or someone unable to protect themselves.
• —A court order. Rare, but courts can compel disclosure of records.
• —Clinical supervision. Psychologists discuss their work with a supervisor. This is a professional safeguard that improves your care, it is bound by the same confidentiality, and identifying details are removed.

These exist to protect life, not to police what you say. Talking about anger, intrusive thoughts, an affair, a past you are ashamed of, or feeling that you cannot go on is not a trigger for disclosure — those are the things therapy is for.

What happens to your records

I keep brief working notes: what we covered, what we are working on. They are stored securely, they are not shared, and they are not detailed transcripts of what you said.

Your booking details — name, contact, the intake form — are used to arrange and hold the session and nothing else. They are never sold, never used for marketing, and never shared with a third party for their own purposes. The privacy policy sets out the specifics.

Sessions are not recorded

I do not record sessions. If a practitioner ever wants to, that requires your explicit, informed, freely given consent, and refusing must carry no consequence for your care.

The risk that is actually yours

This is the part that gets least attention and matters most. In online therapy, the weakest link in confidentiality is almost never the therapist. It is the environment at the client’s end.

• —Use headphones. Without them, my half of the conversation is audible to anyone nearby.
• —Check what is behind the door, not just that it is shut. Thin walls carry more than people assume.
• —Be careful with shared devices. A browser logged into a shared family laptop leaves a trail.
• —Consider how the payment appears. If bank messages are visible to someone else, that is a disclosure you did not intend.
• —Avoid the shared calendar. A session titled with a psychologist’s name on a family or work calendar is the most common accidental disclosure I see.

If secrecy is the obstacle

Plenty of people in India need therapy to stay entirely private, often from family. That is a legitimate choice and it is workable — therapy without telling your family deals with it directly.