Online Counseling

Whether you’re dealing with mental illness, relationship or family troubles or just need help in achieving greater life satisfaction, working through your problems (and finding solutions) with a professional counselor can be of real benefit.

You may have heard about online counseling and may be wondering what exactly it is, if it’s as good traditional ‘face to face’ counseling – and whether or not it’s a good option for you.

Well, like anything else, there are some pros and some cons to counseling delivered remotely, and since it’s a relatively new therapeutic practice, the experts don’t yet all agree on how and when it’s best used.

Read on to learn a little more about what online counseling is, some of the advantages (and disadvantages) of getting counseling from the comfort of your own home and what you need to be aware of before you give online counseling a try.

What Is Online Counseling?

In a traditional counseling session, you sit in the same room with your counselor, but in an online counseling session you sit wherever you please communicating remotely with your therapist over the internet or over the phone.

Some of the different forms of online counseling include:

• Email counseling – whereby you communicate back and forth via email messages with your therapist or counselor

• Instant messaging chat – where by you communicate in real time via text chat with your counselor – (sometimes a video window (web cam) is added)

• Telephone counseling – talking with your counselor over the phone during pre-arranged counseling sessions.

• VOIP – free internet ‘phone calls’ whereby you receive counseling over the phone. VOIP calls may have a video window as well, to aid in non verbal communication

• Avatar counseling – meeting with a counselor in a virtual world for a counseling session through avatars – Second Life, for example, or even in World of Warcraft!

• Online Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) – semi or fully automated programs that provide CBT training

Online counselors provide the following types of therapy

• Marriage or relationship
• Family
• Divorce
• Anger or stress management
• Grief and loss
• Substance abuse
• Mental health therapy (anxiety, depression etc.)
• Life coaching or career counseling
• Christian counseling
• Sex and sexuality issues
• Dealing with illness or ageing
• Many more

For people living in rural or otherwise remote locations, the advantages of online counseling are obvious. In many such locations, the only alternative to online or telephone therapy is no therapy at all!

Even in urban environments, some people will have difficulty getting to a counselor’s office. People with certain physical disabilities or anxiety disorders may find that getting needed therapy in the home has significant advantages.

But there are advantages to therapy from the comfort of your home, even for those who could easily travel to a counselor’s office, if desired. Some of the advantages of the online counseling experience include:

• Increased privacy – for example, less chance of meeting someone you know in a therapist’s waiting room.

• Easy to try – Since you can, if desired, sign up for only one or two counseling sessions with an online therapist, you don’t have to worry unduly about the worth of the therapeutic experience. You can try it out, and if you like it, continue with it. If it’s not for you - well, you didn’t lose much of your time, effort or money.

• Greater convenience – Online counseling sessions do not require that you travel to an office, and so take much less of your total time. Some forms of therapy, such as email therapy, are asynchronous, and so can be done at your convenience, whenever you have the time.

• Lower cost (sometimes) – The per-session cost of online counseling can sometimes be less than the cost of an office visit. Online counselors may have reduced overhead expenses and can thus reduce their fees accordingly. Some automated counseling/education programs, such as those that use cognitive behavioral techniques to help people overcome problems like insomnia or anxiety, may even be free or very low cost – and research proves that they work!

Online counseling offers convenience, affordability and low barriers to entry. For some people, it’s exactly what’s needed; however, it is not appropriate for people in all situations. People who may not find online counseling very useful/beneficial; include:

• People in serious crisis or with serious mental illness cannot ethically be counseled remotely. A counselor must see you in person to assess you for suicidal thoughts and for danger to others

• People needing medication cannot receive prescriptions without seeing a doctor in person

• People needing insurance to cover the costs of counseling may find it very difficult to get reimbursed for online therapy

• Without access to non verbal communication, therapists may not be as able to understand your situation and your emotional reactions

Are you a suitable candidate for online counseling? Do you meet the technical and skill competency minimums? Ask yourself the following questions to find out.

• Are you comfortable expressing yourself through chat or email communication?
• If you are considering using text chat as a form of therapy, are your familiar with this type of communication – familiar expressing the nuances of emotion via text messages?
• If you are considering email or chat counseling, are you able to put your thoughts into writing in a way that expresses what you truly feel and wish to convey?
• If you are considering live-time chat as counseling, can you type fast enough to communicate your ideas in timely manner?
• Is your internet connection stable and fast enough to facilitate seamless communication, particularly if you are considering video chat?

If you meet these minimum practical considerations, you may be an appropriate candidate to benefit from online counseling.

Although online counseling affords you some unique privacy benefits – you do have to take some basic steps to safeguard your information and to ensure that you receive counseling services from a professional qualified to provide them.

Make sure:

• You verify the identity and credentials of any online therapist under consideration. A reputable therapist should provide you with a real-world address and phone number and should list her credentials clearly on her website. You can (and should) verify the validity and good standing of any professional counseling or therapy licenses advertised with the relevant administering body. Because you will not meet in-person, you want to take extra steps to ensure that the person you take advice from is qualified to give it!

• You safeguard the security of your communication. You do not want third parties to have access to your confidential and private therapy session information. Make sure that your online therapist uses effective encryption technology to keep your private information safe. Your therapist should be able to explain what steps are taken to protect information, both in transmission and in storage on her personal computer.

• Likewise, make sure that information stored on your personal computer is private and secure from others who may also use your computer. You may want to consider a separate email address for therapy communications. Also be aware that your employer has a legal right to any information stored on a work computer.

CBT is a therapeutic method that aims to help people correct ‘wrong’ thinking. According to CBT:

Wrong or destructive thinking creates negative feelings which in turn cause negative behaviors. If you can change the way you think about things, you can change the way you feel and act.

CBT is one of the moist extensively tested effective therapeutic techniques. It doesn’t take very long to learn, it can be practiced in your everyday life and you can start seeing real benefits quickly – CBT works very well.

There are a number of online CBT programs/courses that help people with conditions such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorders and more.¹

These programs tend to be:

• Free or very inexpensive
• Done on your own time, in manageable course segments
• Able to teach you skills that you can use to help you feel better right away!