What people always want to know about telephone or online counselling is whether they work as well as the old-fashioned office visit. Now after 20 years and hundreds of sessions with people in far-flung locales, I can assure you that the clients I talk to online or over the phone, get just as much from counselling at a distance as those I meet with in person in my consulting room.
When I first started counselling two decades ago, like other counsellors, I assumed that clients had to come and see us in order to get the full benefit from the process. But then people who lived in other parts of North America and the world started to get in touch with me, usually referred by clients I had already worked with. They told me they would rather talk to me because a friend they trusted had made the referral.
This meant more to them than finding a counsellor who they might visit in person. At first, I used the phone to talk to clients in other countries, and to my surprise, I realized that my assumption that office visits were superior was just dead wrong. It turns out there is nothing magical about a session in an office.
Online Counselling
Counselling is about what goes on in a person’s mind and heart and spirit, not where they hang their coat. The outcome depends on the rapport they feel with the counsellor, not the space they meet in. The same safety, non-judgement and confidentiality that an office visit offers is just as available over the phone and now online via Zoom and Skype.
It reminds me of the late shifts I used to work at a Distress Centre taking calls in the middle of the night. People would call the Distress Centre to talk about their problems because the telephone offered anonymity. I didn’t know who they were and they didn’t know me. No-one would know what we were talking about. And in a strange way that anonymity gave us the freedom to talk honestly and face hard truths. When I volunteered at the Distress Centre, I talked to people in pain coping with all kinds of trials and facing all kinds of challenges.
Telephone Counselling
The telephone never got in the way. I have talked people out of killing themselves over the telephone. The telephone allowed me to connect more deeply with a stranger than would have been possible had we met in person. And years later, after I became a counsellor and a coach and was speaking with people all over the world, the telephone was never a limitation. Whether it was someone in England or Prague or Japan or India, the conversation we had was never compromised. Never once did I wish I could meet these people in my office. The clients I spoke to in other parts of the world, got just as much out of counselling as those I met with personally.
And now I offer online counselling via Zoom or Skype where we can see each other face to face. Indeed after the first session I had on Skype, I remember saying to myself, “I don’t know why anyone would need to come to my office anymore.”
Even when clients live in the same city I do, they often prefer online or telephone sessions to fight the traffic to come and see me. Often it takes more time to come and go from my office than it does to have a session. Clients find Zoom, Skype or telephone calls leave them with more energy to devote to the work we are doing together.
Counselling During A Pandemic
Some clients prefer seeing me and being seen themselves and so choose to have a Zoom or Skype session online. Some prefer the intimacy of the phone which can sometimes feel as private as a confessional.
But some of my clients are diehard believers in office visits who have told me they can’t imagine a session where they aren’t with me physically in the room within which they have felt so safe and learned so much about themselves.
However, now that social distancing is preventing us from getting together in person, those clients who used to prefer office sessions have also had to have their appointments online via Zoom, Skype or by telephone. And much to their surprise, almost to a person, they admit to me afterwards that they are finding our online sessions far more effective and even more enjoyable than they ever expected. As one woman put it after her phone session, “Now I can talk to you on my own couch in my jammies.”
You too may want to consider online or telephone counselling to help cope with the anxiety and fear that this pandemic stirs up. Are you going stir crazy during the lockdown? Are you afflicted with disturbing or overwhelming thoughts? Are you terrified you may die if you catch the virus? Or perhaps you’re more afraid that you won’t survive financially?
Everyone I’ve been speaking with in our online counselling sessions has had very strong feelings and fears about the impact the pandemic is having on them personally. And the panic too! This stuff is really getting to people. But I’ve noticed after my sessions how much of a relief talking it all over can be.
I can’t help believe that in a strange way this world-wide crisis presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn things about ourselves we might never know otherwise. Wayne Dyer once observed that “circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him.” If the end result of all counselling is to help you discover who you truly are and why you think and feel and act the way you do, then there couldn’t be a better time to start on that journey than in the middle of this storm.
To encourage you to take that step now during this crisis, I am offering the initial session at half my usual rate.
Remember, whenever you need to talk about what’s really bothering you, I’m as close to you as your computer or telephone.
Online counselling and telephone counselling are an extension of personal counselling and career counselling. They are a new method of communication for receiving counselling.
To learn more about Alan Mayer, visit the homepage.