I offer Skype Counselling to my clients as an alternative to conventional face to face counselling. Online counselling can provide a useful option for a variety of reasons. Examples are:
- You may be living in a remote area and may not have easy access to face to face therapy.
- It may be a struggle to arrange childcare or get time off from work in order to travel to a therapist’s office.
- It may be difficult for you to leave home due to a physical condition or mental distress such as anxiety or agoraphobia.
- You may be looking for a more affordable option that doesn’t involve travel or parking costs.
- You may be living abroad and unable to speak the language of your host country.
In addition to all of the above, the Covid-19 pandemic made a huge difference to people’s perception of online communication as opposed to face to face. We all had to adapt to the circumstances and many people started working from home, holding online meetings and connecting to loved ones through online platforms. The psychotherapy profession has had to adapt to this incredibly quickly as we needed to continue to support our clients during these difficult times but could no longer do this face to face. Fortunately, we found that online counselling works just as well with the majority of the clients we were seeing. In my case, I’ve seen that many types of counselling including couple’s therapy and EMDR can be offered successfully online and it is still possible to establish and maintain a strong therapeutic relationship in this format.
I currently mainly use Skype (and sometimes Zoom) for online sessions and both work quite well. I ask that you familiarise yourself with the medium we will be using and try to use a laptop or desktop computer rather than a mobile when possible. It is also essential that you will be alone in a secure, quiet, confidential space free of interruptions for our sessions.
