Most people will never understand what it truly feels like to wake up one day and find your name released into the public domain — not because of a criminal conviction, not because of a trial, not even because of any proven wrongdoing, but simply because of a complaint filed in private, behind closed doors, in a system that never once looked you in the eye.
When the Health and Disability Commissioner publicly named me — both as a person and as a professional — it didn’t just feel like a betrayal. It felt like a silent explosion. A life-altering rupture I didn’t see coming, and one that I was completely unprepared for.
There was no phone call. No hearing. No chance to speak to someone face to face. No legal process. No public interest test. No balanced headline.
Just a report.
Posted online.
With my full name and the name of my business beside it.
Framed as fact.
Left to circulate endlessly — while I stood in silence.
What came next was immediate and consuming panic. I wasn’t just under professional scrutiny — I was being socially marked, digitally archived, and publicly judged by strangers who had never met me, never spoken to me, and never asked to hear the other side.
And the most devastating part?
I had no voice.
No way to respond in real time.
No public defence.
No right of reply.
No one to say, “This isn’t who he is.”
I was rendered invisible in the very moment my name became unforgettable.
The emotional fallout wasn’t just difficult — it was brutal.
I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating properly. I lived in a state of ongoing panic, refreshing Google constantly, terrified of what new article or post might appear next. My chest tightened every time my name was mentioned. My thoughts spiraled every time I imagined what people were thinking behind closed doors.
I was afraid of losing my clients.
Afraid my family would start seeing me differently.
Afraid my life’s work was over.
There were days — and I say this with full honesty —
I struggled to see a future. The sense of despair was overwhelming, and the emotional toll left me questioning whether I had the strength to keep going.
Disintegration, Isolation, and Silent Suffering
As the days turned into weeks, and the article remained live — searchable, linkable, permanent — something inside me quietly began to unravel.
It wasn’t just a headline anymore. It was a label. A shadow that followed me into every room, every conversation, every moment of stillness. I could feel its weight on my shoulders long before anyone even spoke. It became part of my identity — and I never chose it.
People in my life didn’t know how to respond. Some pulled away, uncomfortable with the uncertainty. Others offered polite concern, but it skimmed the surface — like they were ticking a box rather than truly seeing my pain. A few believed what they had read, without ever coming to me directly. They replaced our relationship with assumptions.
Even within my own extended family, something shifted.
Conversations grew shorter.
The air grew colder.
Trust, once implicit, became hesitant and strained.
I was watching my world recede — piece by piece — and I felt powerless to stop it.
I stopped functioning like myself. I didn’t recognise who I was anymore. I turned to alcohol to dull the noise in my head. I stopped caring about my health. I gained weight, neglected routines, let life pile up around me. My thoughts became tangled and erratic. I lost the structure that had once grounded me.
I became more irritable. More reactive. More shut down. I began to engage in behaviours that were out of character — risky, reckless things that screamed of someone desperate for escape. I was collapsing inward.
And through it all, I still had to show up for others.
To sit across from clients — people in pain, people in crisis — and be their anchor.
To listen, regulate, hold space, and stay present while my own insides were breaking apart.
That’s the quiet tragedy of being a mental health professional.
The expectation is that we’ll rise above it.
That we’ll know better.
That we’ll somehow cope with betrayal, loss, public shame, and personal collapse — and keep showing up like none of it touches us.
But no one — no matter how trained, how grounded, or how experienced — is built to be publicly shamed, globally searchable, and permanently judged without breaking.
Especially when it happens without a trial, without a voice, and without any warning.
Professional Collapse and the Fear of Being Googled
As a counsellor, your reputation isn’t just part of your career — it is your career. Clients entrust you with their innermost fears, traumas, and vulnerabilities because they believe you’re safe, stable, and trustworthy. But after I was publicly named by the HDC, that trust became fragile — not because I had done anything wrong, but because of what people could find online.
I began dreading every new client intake. Not because I didn’t want to help — but because I knew what came next: the inevitable Google search.
Some never returned.
Some asked pointed questions.
Some, even when they chose to continue, looked at me differently.
That look — the pause in their voice, the slight shift in tone — became a quiet confirmation that the damage was done.
In couples counselling, the stakes are already high. The room is often filled with tension, mistrust, and deep emotional wounds. You are there as a neutral, steady presence — a facilitator of safety, honesty, and forward movement. But that dynamic can collapse instantly when one party brings outside information into the room to discredit the process or the professional facilitating it.
All it takes is a quick Google search.
One partner stumbles across the article.
And suddenly, I’m no longer a trusted third party — I’m ammunition.
I watched it happen more than once. A partner would reference what they had read, sometimes explicitly, sometimes with thinly veiled suspicion. It was used to undermine my credibility, to erode the other partner’s trust in me, and to shift the power dynamics of the session entirely. What was once a safe space became a weaponised space. I was no longer the guide — I was the problem.
This wasn’t just awkward.
It was professionally destabilising.
It fundamentally altered the energy of the room, the effectiveness of the work, and the ability for progress to be made. And even when clients didn’t say anything, I could feel it — the hesitation, the guardedness, the doubt.
The sessions I once entered with certainty and confidence became minefields of anxiety. I questioned every word, every gesture, every moment of silence. I became hyper-aware of how I might be perceived — not just by my clients, but by the public court of opinion I never asked to appear before.
- Am I being too careful?
- Too clinical?
- Not warm enough?
- Too direct?
- Could this be misread?
- Could this be twisted into another complaint?
The long-term psychological impact of that kind of exposure isn’t just a wave of shame.
It’s erosion.
A slow, silent disintegration of:
- Your professional self-esteem
- Your confidence in your ability to help
- Your sense of safety in your own work
- And your trust in the very systems that are supposed to support ethical practitioners
You stop feeling free to do your job.
You lose that flow state that’s so essential in therapy — the deep attunement, the instinct, the intuitive presence.
Instead, you’re analysing yourself in real time. Editing yourself. Bracing for impact.
That’s not how therapy is meant to be delivered.
And it’s not how therapy should be received.
And yet, this is the reality I’ve had to navigate since being publicly named — not because of wrongdoing, but because a flawed, unbalanced process made a decision without understanding the damage it would cause.
Life Under Digital Judgment, and a Call for Reform
There is something uniquely, devastatingly cruel about living under permanent digital judgment — a form of modern punishment that requires no conviction, no trial, and no chance to defend yourself in a meaningful or public way.
Every article. Every headline. Every misinterpreted quote. Every keyword that includes your name becomes a digital fingerprint — not of who you are, but of who others now think you must be.
It’s searchable. Shareable. Screenshot-able.
It gets passed around in group chats. Whispered about in waiting rooms. Opened quietly during consultations by clients who want to “just check something.”
It follows you everywhere — into job applications, client referrals, professional circles, and personal relationships. It hovers over your credibility like a question mark you didn’t ask for and can’t erase.
It becomes a shadow that tells only part of your story — or worse, tells a story that isn’t true at all.
Let me be clear: I was never found guilty of professional misconduct in a court of law.
I was never charged.
I was never criminally investigated.
There was no judge.
No jury.
No cross-examination.
No opportunity to present evidence or speak in my own defence in a formal, balanced, and protected setting.
And yet, when the HDC publicly named me — along with my business — the impact was equal to, if not greater than, that of a formal conviction. It came without legal protections, without a hearing, and without the ability to challenge the narrative in real time. There was no warning. No advocate. No safeguard against the reputational explosion that followed.
This wasn’t justice.
It was exposure.
And it came with lifelong consequences.
What makes this even more outrageous is the contrast: in New Zealand, individuals convicted of rape, child abuse, and even murder have been granted name suppression by the courts. Their privacy is protected to prevent undue harm, preserve fair trial rights, or safeguard their families.
Yet I — a counsellor, not convicted or charged, but merely accused during an administrative investigation — was publicly named, digitally archived, and globally searchable forever.
I was judged not by a courtroom, but by headlines.
Not by evidence, but by omission.
Not by the public interest, but by a process that seems designed to protect its own image — not the humans caught in its machinery.
And I ask again, with all sincerity:
How can that be right?
A Final Word to the Public, to Practitioners, and to the System
If you’re reading this and wondering how this could happen — I want you to know that it can, and it does. Often.
If you’re a member of the public, please look beyond the headlines. Understand that not every person who appears in a government decision is guilty of wrongdoing — and not every process is just.
If you’re a practitioner, and you’ve felt that same terror of being publicly misrepresented or professionally destroyed — you are not alone. You are seen.
And if you work within a regulatory body, please hear this: You cannot ignore the emotional and reputational toll of public naming. You cannot claim fairness while enabling irreversible harm. And you cannot allow non-legal processes to carry the weight of public condemnation.
What I’ve lived through was not accountability — it was abandonment.
And it must not be allowed to continue.
For those unfamiliar with the background of my situation, I’ve shared the full story in this detailed statement:
👉 Neil Oliver Counsellor – The Truth Behind the HDC Complaint