Online Therapy

The convenience is the best!

Extending your commute home after a long day at work or rushing across town over the lunch hour hardly creates the state of mind for a therapeutic interaction. No one needs extra miles on their vehicle or more time stuck in traffic jams. The nervousness around looking “put together” enough.

What if there was an easier way?

What if you could create a healing space in your life by doing less instead of more?

With telehealth, you control your comfort level, space, and terms. A session snuggled up with FeFe or Fido, anyone? We do away with stuffy, clinical settings, and create your environment right from where you are.

Now, if that makes your stomach turn, that’s where we start.

If “healing and your environment” sends a trickle of anxiety down your spine, that’s good information. That’s where we can begin to create openings for you. See From the Outside In – Clearing Clutter for Conscious Space page for more information.

You are healing from the outside in. As your outside environment becomes more healing, your life will begin to mirror healing in kind. Don’t believe me? Start with clearing out one drawer and notice if your head is a little clearer around where that uncashed check went…

I’m joking – but not. The obvious will start to come into alignment first, then, more and more in life will shift. I’ll tell you a secret: when the inner (thoughts/feelings/etc.) feels stuck, look at shifting the outer (environment stuff/body stuff). When the outer (environment stuff/body stuff) feels stuck, look to the inner (thoughts/feelings/etc.) – balance at its finest.

What I want for you is alignment at its best.

Creating a safe space for you…

We meet virtually on a HIPAA-compliant platform. You get a clear, well-lit video of me, and I get you in your natural environment.

We chat. Barring a topic that could potentially cause harm to you (i.e., potentially vicariously traumatizing material), I encourage clients to interview me and ask me whatever they would like to help them feel more at ease in my presence. For some, very little is needed. Others want a lot of fleshed-out background and context. Either is okay, and both approaches are 100% normal.

My whole goal is to put you at ease.

Wondering if it’s as good as meeting in person?

To say, “online therapy is the same as in-person therapy” would be like saying, “clementines are the same as oranges.” While both are orange in color and citrus by classification, they are not spitting-image identical in nature.

Meeting online is not an identical experience to meeting in person. Yet, neither has an objective, hierarchical status over the other. Neither approach is bad or good, simply not identical.

Each style comes with its own gifts. Clients have received gifts from both in-person and online formats.

In telehealth, I often get a better sense of client personalities through their environment (a picture is worth a thousand words, yes?) and have clients instantaneously shriek in delight and resonance when seeing images of my office space. Space offers information.

I read non-verbals through the screen like I would in an in-person session. I position the screen at a distance similar to sitting across the table at a coffee shop with a friend and encourage my clients to maximize their laptop screen in the same way to provide a seamless, comfortable exchange. I track eye contact and lean closer to the screen in the same moments I would in an in-person session (to emphasize a point, etc.).

And yet, I get extra information by seeing you in your environment. And with that extra information and established foundation online, we craft a methodology that makes sense for your healing journey and goals.

But it’s not the best for EVERYTHING…

Deeper trauma work often activates a much more intense pain and requires a level of holding space best accomplished by the in-the-moment resourcing of a living-breathing-right-there-beside-me person.

Disrupted attachment (wounding/development of pronounced mistrust with primary caregivers during childhood) represents one instance.
Body dysmorphia (obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance) offers another possibility.
Trauma clearings using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). As a mind-body intervention designed to assist in clearing stuck negative emotion loops, many clients find that they can release more with the added level of safety of an in-person facilitator.
Other trauma-infused systems are so entrenched that we – for whatever reason – are not gaining the expected traction toward recovery. In such instances, we may jointly elect to shift toward in-person sessions to trouble-shoot with more sensation-focused, body-based interventions.

Making the most of your online experience…

A clear, well-lit environment through a desktop, laptop, or iPad camera lens is ideal. The anchoring and visual perspectives offered through a desktop, laptop, or iPad vs. simply using an iPhone camera remains unmatched.

An alternative would be to anchor the iPhone in a stand to create a similar, hands-free experience. Think of the experience as meeting for coffee or lunch. Ideally, your hands would be free for communication and expression, not grasping a device during the entire experience.

High-speed Internet typically provides the most ease around connection.

Choose a quiet environment with minimal distractions. Privacy (i.e., no other humans around) is paramount.

Arrive 3-5 minutes before the appointment. Allow the mind and body time to transition between whatever was happening directly before the appointment and refocus on the session’s goal. Envision what you hope to accomplish.

Ready to get started?

I have received SO MUCH positive feedback from clients about online therapy. They all report receiving enormous benefits from the experience, even though we’ve never met in person.

Think about it this way: it’s all good information. If you try online therapy and hate it, good information. You can choose something more in alignment moving forward.

If you try online therapy and wait-a-minute-maybe-there’s-something-here, good information. You now have more possibilities opened to you. But you will never get that clarity if you don’t try.

The same goes for just about everything in life. 😉

I want to know more about you!

Give me a call, and let’s talk about how online therapy can help you meet your goals: (402) 937-0027.