I’m not super familiar with your work but I can imagine this is a great resource for lots of people, and I recognise that therapy or similar support can be really hard to access. I think it’s was worth noting though, that I’ve really valued having my main therapy and some of my support be outside of EA.
I think this actually allows me to look more honestly at my feelings and feel more psychological safety when exploring them. I do think the shared context of EA can be really helpful (I do seek support from EA friends about things) - but just wanted to note that there are pros and cons, particularly if you’re aiming to work on “deeper seated issues” which is quite a vulnerable spot to be in.
For those considering this, it might be worth taking a minute to check in with yourself about if you’d benefit more from the shared context this provides, or you’d benefit more from being able to talk about your hard stuff with people who you’re much, much less likely to cross paths with professionally.
Just a note on data protection and potential conflict of interest:
Data protection: We work with Google Workplace. We inform our participants that for some this might not represent the highest level of data security and that they are free to work with an anonymized email address as well as an alias or just their first name when interacting online during the program. Our online community can also be accessed using an alias (Telegram). The “only” people who will definitely have seen you are the other people in your 5- people support group (if you choose the standard guidance), or only your buddy (if you choose the 1:1 guidance).
Conflict of interest: We carefully match our participants so that none accidentally runs into their colleague, or other people they might have professional relationships with.
My experience is that it’s more possible to avoid current conflicts of interest, but as people work in the same ecosystem they often have multiple interactions in different contexts over time. I’d want people to keep in mind that the person in their group now may later end up being their colleague, funder, etc. To me, this is still a reason to seriously consider mental health resources outside the community.
Thank you, Julia, for pointing out that there might be potential future conflicts of interest. In our minimum guidance and buddy guidance version, this risk is very low because participants in those versions only share more personal information with one other person (their buddy) or only abstractly about applied methods in a larger online community without their real names (minimum guidance).
I’m not super familiar with your work but I can imagine this is a great resource for lots of people, and I recognise that therapy or similar support can be really hard to access. I think it’s was worth noting though, that I’ve really valued having my main therapy and some of my support be outside of EA.
I think this actually allows me to look more honestly at my feelings and feel more psychological safety when exploring them. I do think the shared context of EA can be really helpful (I do seek support from EA friends about things) - but just wanted to note that there are pros and cons, particularly if you’re aiming to work on “deeper seated issues” which is quite a vulnerable spot to be in.
For those considering this, it might be worth taking a minute to check in with yourself about if you’d benefit more from the shared context this provides, or you’d benefit more from being able to talk about your hard stuff with people who you’re much, much less likely to cross paths with professionally.
Just a note on data protection and potential conflict of interest:
Data protection: We work with Google Workplace. We inform our participants that for some this might not represent the highest level of data security and that they are free to work with an anonymized email address as well as an alias or just their first name when interacting online during the program. Our online community can also be accessed using an alias (Telegram). The “only” people who will definitely have seen you are the other people in your 5- people support group (if you choose the standard guidance), or only your buddy (if you choose the 1:1 guidance).
Conflict of interest: We carefully match our participants so that none accidentally runs into their colleague, or other people they might have professional relationships with.
My experience is that it’s more possible to avoid current conflicts of interest, but as people work in the same ecosystem they often have multiple interactions in different contexts over time. I’d want people to keep in mind that the person in their group now may later end up being their colleague, funder, etc. To me, this is still a reason to seriously consider mental health resources outside the community.
Thank you, Julia, for pointing out that there might be potential future conflicts of interest.
In our minimum guidance and buddy guidance version, this risk is very low because participants in those versions only share more personal information with one other person (their buddy) or only abstractly about applied methods in a larger online community without their real names (minimum guidance).