River: Tempest in a teacup

[mdlbear]

Those of you who have been tracking my "done since" posts way too closely may recall that in the middle of June I signed up for online therapy on a site called 7cups.com (short for 7 Cups of Tea). Since then, in addition to chatting from time to time with my therapist, I've been spending a lot of time on the site, mostly in the fora (forums? I'll go with the Latin version).

Mostly, the site is there for free conversations with (slightly) trained volunteer listeners (I wrote about the value of such conversations back in July). Besides that and the fora there are two other features of the site that some people had come to rely on: the "feed" (sort of twitter-like), and group chats.

Right now there are two different kerfuffles in progress -- the feed (officially unsupported since sometime in May) was taken down with less than 24 hours notice, and access to group chat rooms was closed off to everyone who had fewer than a certain number of 1-1 chats with listeners. That was done with no notice at all. The people who relied on the feed and the group chats are understandably upset, and I've been spending quite a lot of time making comments on forum posts.

I have to mention at this point that I haven't found much use for the volunteer listeners -- I'm paying to talk to my therapist -- and I've dipped into the group chats on a few occasions and found them almost impossible to follow and mostly uninteresting. But... I've realized a couple of things:

One is that people like me who are there mainly for the paid therapy or the fora (or the now-defunct feeds) are very much second-class citizens. The hours I've spent with my therapist don't count toward the chat quota for getting into the group chatrooms, and the money I'm spending doesn't get me any of the (rather minor) features you get with a paid membership that costs a tenth as much. It's weird -- apparently the old adage that says "if you're getting it for free you're not the customer, you're the product" doesn't apply on 7cups.

The other is why I spend so much time on the fora: I'm being helpful: making comments with encouragement, sympathy, and occasional bits of wisdom. Which is what the Middle-Sized Bear always does. For some reason I found that surprising.

NaBloPoMo stats:
   4637 words in 8 posts this month (average 579/post)
    432 words in 1 post today

Comments

[technoshaman]

Well, darn. May have to go back to #mental-health and see if I can find a different site...

[mdlbear]

Doesn't seem to have affected the conversation with my therapist any, and although I'd dropped in on the group chats from time to time I found them pretty useless -- hard to follow and largely a waste of time. 1-on-1's with listeners appear to be completely unaffected.

That said, 7c is _not_ a non-profit, it's a startup -- and if you're not the customer, you're the product. It's not clear whether there are any sites that _are_ community-run. Or therapist-run, like the massage clinic where the goat is working, which might be a good alternative given the regulatory situation.

[technoshaman]

Yeah, no. I am nobody's willing product. Especially not for HIPAA-covered stuff.

[mdlbear]

This 7 Cups of Tea Review says that therapists on the site are "required to be HIPAA compliant"; doesn't say anything about the site itself.

[jesse_the_k]

Hooray for the middle-sized bear.

I welcome opportunities to be helpful because a) helpful and b) that feeling of mastery helps me love myself.