If you are then still concerned and feel that you need to avoid potential complications at work, you may prefer to see a therapist on your own _and refrain from using your employer's insurance coverage_. If you see a therapist in private practice, your decision to pay your own bill may be expensive for you. If finances are a problem, bear in mind that you can frequently locate competent help through county, state, or private counseling agencies. If you go to an agency, remember that you will almost certainly be asked whether you have insurance coverage. If you admit that you do, you will have defeated your purpose in going to an agency on your own to protect your privacy. It is, after all, your right to obtain treatment that _you_ elect to pay for. MAGNIFYING YOUR NEED FOR SECRECY After reviewing these ways in which confidentiality may be broken--by accident or sometimes excessive informality, by legal requirements, or by what to many of us constitutes an invasion of personal privacy by insurance companies--you may wonder to what extent information that you disclose in therapy really _is_ protected. In fact, very seldom are the _details_ of therapy divulged to others without a client's advance consent. Most of us do not need to be worried by legal exceptions to confidentiality: most of us are not actually homicidal (though we may feel very angry at times!); most of us are not determined to take our lives (though we may at times feel very disheartened); most of us are not concerned that a court will order us to be examined by a psychiatrist. I have tried to give a realistic picture of confidentiality in therapy. The fact that you receive mental health counseling or therapy may inadvertently be disclosed by such things as a billing that goes astray or {265} by a fellow group member's inclination to talk too much outside of the group. If you decide to make use of insurance coverage, there are possible consequences you ought to be aware of. I have tried to underline the fact that most people who enter therapy blow out of proportion the real significance of these possible, but comparatively infrequent, "leaks." Karl A. Menninger, a renowned and original contributor to psychiatry, quotes one of his patients who shared her intelligent reflections with him: