Email counselling:
Online counselling which uses email to communicate. You and your counsellor will send emails to each other.
Advantages of E – therapy
there are actually several advantages to E-therapy:
- Since it is over the internet, counsellor and client do not need to be in the same town or even country. This means increased access to a counsellor. Counsellor and client work together to help the client resolve problems, as they would do with face to face counselling.
- You can feel more at ease in your office or home than in a consulting room; you are not concerned about speaking or seeing your counsellor.
- You can take more time to think about what you want to tell us
- There is no schedule to keep to, no penalties for missed appointments
- Less embarrassment when discussing personal matters
- Easier to finish therapy when you want to
- No need to arrange sessions in advance; When working by email, you can choose your own time of day to communicate
- You find it easier expressing yourself using the written word rather than speaking.
- You are at ease with a keyboard, but feel you are not a fast typist.
- You do not want people to hear what you are saying.
- You do not have access to a microphone or webcam.
- You do not have broadband internet access
Add to this the fact that all our therapists are carefully selected and you can see how easy it can be to find safe and effective professional help for your problems.
- What kind of problems is e-therapy for?
Anything that’s on your mind…
Whether you’re feeling depressed, anxious, or just plain stressed out, talking about it can help. When you feel unhappy with your relationships, when you feel stuck in your job, in your creative work, or in your life in general, exploring this with another person can help you become “unstuck” and increase your ability to change things for the better.
You can contact me for either a one time consultation or with the thought of starting a therapy process.
- When is e-therapy a good choice
- … you’re comfortable with putting your thoughts in writing and are able to do so in a reasonably organized manner.
- You’re hesitant about going to a “live” psychotherapist – e-mail just feels more comfortable to you.
- You’re stuck at the office all day…or you live in an area where psychotherapy is not available…or you have a physical disability that makes online therapy more convenient.
- You were in therapy, but your psychotherapist left town 🙁
- You’ve never been in any form of counselling, might want to try face to face psychotherapy but are checking this out first.
- When is e – therapy not a good choice
- If you have any psychotic symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, thought disorganization)
- If you are suicidal or homicidal
- If you need intense support, phone contact, hospitalisation
- Does this replace traditional, face to face, psychotherapy
It’s new…it’s different…it’s another tool…but it certainly cannot replace “old fashioned” psychotherapy for everything.
Some disadvantages of doing therapy via e-mail: first, the loss of non verbal communication – the body lingo, the expression, the sighs, the pauses. This is not absolute, though, as every person has their own distinctive writing style, and much of your personality can be expressed through writing. Second, there is a lot more to psychotherapy than discussion of issues on an intellectual level. A lot of it is about the relationship you develop with your psychotherapist. Ultimately, nothing can really equal the benefits and comfort of a long term relationship with a good face to face psychotherapist, especially for people who were severely damaged in their childhood and lead very chaotic lives.
The advantages are that you can take as much time as you like to compose your thoughts and put them down in writing, you can do this whenever you have free time, and can do it in the comfort of your own home. As long as you have a computer and a modem – you can access this from anywhere. Another advantage to e-mail therapy is the intriguing combination of distance and closeness that e-mail provides. This usually has a disinhibiting effect – many people find it easier to talk online than to talk to someone who’s in real space with them.
In short – online therapy is Flexible and Accessible.
How long will this therapy take?
From a one-time e-mail to e-mail several times a week for an indefinite time, whatever works for you? I do ask that should you decide to discontinue therapy, send me a brief e-mail about this.
How It Works
For Email counselling, we will agree on a set appointment time when I will respond to your email. You can of course still write your part of the email at a time that’s most convenient to you, just make sure that you send it to me no later than at the start of our agreed appointment time. I would suggest that you spend 50 minutes writing your email. I will in return spend 50 minutes on reading your email and composing my reply to you. This way we can ensure that our email exchanges mimic the process of face to face counselling as much as possible.
In order to ensure that our email exchanges remain completely confidential, you will have to send your messages via Hushmail. This is a fully encrypted secure web-mail service that is available free of charge at www.hushmail.com. Setting up a free Hushmail account is very easy and only takes a few minutes.( Please note that this is a mandatory step in order to comply with the BACP’s guidelines for online counselling.)
Making a Booking
For Email counselling Just follow the links and you will find the booking form to register your interest in email counselling. You must register by filling out our short questionnaire and pay for the session before any emails will be sent.
Initial Email Consultation
The first part of your journey with ITS will be to book an initial Email consultation. This consists of your answers to a few simple questions and my initial response to this with some more questions which will arise and then another e – mail from you with finally another reply from me to round up this consultation. Then after that you can choose from our range of treatment options.
When you click on the link below you will be guided to a page that will have our treatment plans and the price list along with payment methods. (You may need to open a paypal account if you don’t already have one– this is a once only procedure. You can do this by clicking on the Paypal graphic).
Once you have picked the payment method you will be asked to pick your treatment plan and then follow the onscreen instructions.
What You Will Need – System Requirements
For Email Counselling:
- A broadband or dial up connection
- An email address that you have regular access to.
You must ensure that you have all of these elements and that they are working correctly before you book or start your session.
