How does online consultation work?
E-therapy and coaching occurs using a number of modes of communication including email, telephone, instant text, web-cam or a combination of any of the above. While all methods have the advantage of being able to access therapy in your own time and location, each of them has their own particular advantages and disadvantages.
Emails can be completed at your own pace and time which allows you to reflect, adjust, modify and mull over what you finally send out. Also, once you receive the reply you can take an equal amount of time to reflect on it and you can come back to it anytime you like. The disadvantage offcourse is that it’s not instant or interactive. Instant text has the advantage of a real time exchange and is more conversational in nature. Telephone counselling allows you to have a real time conversation and you can pick up more non-verbal cues than with email and text, on the other hand you don’t have a record of the exchange and some people don’t feel comfortable talking to someone they can’t see. Web-cam has the advantage of being able to see and hear the person you are working with, however it can be prone to lapses in continuity or synchronicity in voice and image which can be distracting and detract from the content of the exchange. Thankfully due to technological advances this is becoming less common.
On this site we have decided to stay with communication methods you are likely to already be using such as email and Skype.