To Zoom or not to Zoom? That is the question
The Pandemic very quickly revealed how much of work could easily be done remotely and forced us to move our social and professional lives online. This proved that the very small and until then overlooked counselling niche of teletherapy or virtual therapy could be viable, or at least, good enough for the time being. Since March 2020, online and over-the-phone counselling has been streamlined and greatly improved but is no longer the only option. Given the choice of skipping the commute to your counsellor, should you do it? Is there anything lost or gained with all this advancement of technology that has normalized telehealth?
As you may expect, there is a list of pros and cons and some of the bullet points may be more important to you than others. Do you find your mind wandering and automatically tuning out sounds coming from your laptop? Does the person on Zoom seem less real to you than your neighbour especially if you have never met them in “real life”? Do you already look at a screen all day and suffer from “zoom fatigue”? Do you prefer modalities of counselling that use the body more than words, such as somatic therapy? Then the limitations of a screen may outweigh the comfort of being in your home clothes.
However, what if you recently moved and had a great relationship with your counsellor? What if there are no counsellors where you live who specialize in the kind of therapy you need? Or if you find the sessions less emotionally taxing online? Do you prefer a more cognitive approach like CBT that does not rely so heavily on your counsellor reading your body language? Then virtual counselling may be perfectly suitable and effective for you.
Personal preferences aside, in my experience, virtual counselling is a niche that requires more training and experience to achieve the same results. Besides the difficulty of creating an emotional connection through a screen and inevitable technical problems, if you are in a crisis your counsellor will not have the same tools to help you as when you are there with them in the same room. Therefore, although it may seem easier emotionally because it can be “less real” and therefore less intense, I would not recommend it for deep work such as Inner child work and processing of trauma.
What makes virtual counselling less intense is also what makes it less effective for deep work. You may not be able to feel your emotions deeply enough for the work to be meaningful and effective because being witnessed by an empathetic person deepens your experience and the presence of your counsellor makes it more difficult to communicate online. Have you ever told the same story to different people or in different situations and one time it was funny and easy to tell while another it evoked immense sadness? In the counselling session, the therapist takes your experience seriously and lets it affect them. Seeing the effect on your counsellor can make your story really sink in. (This is not to say your counsellor is doing their job correctly if they break down when they hear your story! More on that below.)
However, the opposite is also possible and more dangerous – what if you do feel your so emotions intensely that you start reliving your trauma? Would the voice from a screen be enough to ground you in reality when the counsellor themselves may not seem very real in pixels?
With emotionally intense work, the counsellor is responsible for making sure you don’t become overwhelmed in the session while also challenging you to go as deep as you can tolerate. This is mainly done through pacing and grounding exercises but also naturally regulating your nervous system when they remain grounded and present themselves. Anxiety is contagious and so can be calm.
A long silence over the phone is confusing, over Zoom could be taken as a technical problem, while silence in the room can be transformational. We can know many things with our minds but until the body believes it emotionally, knowing something in the abstract is mostly irrelevant and inconsequential to our lives. This type of embodied insight can be achieved through many different types of therapy and mediums. However, some mediums limit the information that your counsellor receives about your emotional state and add “noise” in their communicating that they are walking alongside you.
In summary, deep work requires an experienced therapist who can help you access your emotions without becoming overwhelmed and any technological challenges can interfere with this delicate and intense process. Therefore, when choosing virtual or in-person counselling, consider how much emotional vs cognitive work you believe you need.
Dia-Logos Counselling offers online and in-person counselling for individual depth psychotherapy, CBT-based coaching, and couples counselling using the Gottman method. In-person appointments are available in Burnaby. The principal counsellor, Alexandra Marinova, is a Registered Clinical Counsellor specializing in Existential Analysis and CBT.
Dia-Logos Counselling 