Is Virtual Therapy Helpful?

If you had asked me, a few years ago, how I felt about telehealth (virtual counseling, online therapy, etc), I would have scoffed:

“Isn’t our profession notable for books like The BODY Keeps The Score?” My training as a therapist has forced me to reconsider how unaware I am of my own body- its sensations, movements, and meaning. Why would I then choose a therapist with whom I could not be bodily present? Who could not (very easily at least) read my non-verbal cues? Wouldn’t the science and art of counseling lose too much in the process of approaching it through a screen?

Wow. Now, in 2022, I sound a bit uppity and condescending, don’t I? Perhaps even entitled? To think, at one point, we all had the luxury and ease of just getting up, getting in the car, and driving around to brick and mortar office buildings!

“What about clients who can’t physically make it to the therapy office?”

Sadly, if someone had posed that question to me, I would have lowered my head in embarrassment, having somehow never thought of that.

Now, in 2022, I have changed and so has the world of Mental Health.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only increased the need for mental health care, it also decreased access to it, at least in the traditional mode of in-person therapy.

Gratefully, a number of U.S. states responded by relaxing their laws around the practice of telehealth for licensed therapists (please refer to your own state’s laws here).

The result, at least at Bales Counseling, is that we now have more virtual clients than in-person clients. Some are out of state (as their states allow), but many are across town, somewhere in Central Florida, at their workplace, or in their living room next door to a napping baby. It’s convenient, for sure.

And it’s also effective. I have witnessed, in the very midst of my technological skepticism, deep and lasting change in the men and women I’ve met with virtually.

Here’s the thing: I have come to see that virtual therapy has revealed a cornerstone truth about the therapeutic process: it’s not about the therapist, the therapist’s methods, techniques, or theoretical models. The effectiveness of mental health counseling comes down to the readiness of the client to do the work of change.

The men and women who met with me virtually over the months of the pandemic (and still today) changed because they were ready to change. They were tired of their old habits, patterns, and relational dynamics. The pandemic ushered onto the scene of mental health not just a new mode of doing talk therapy, but a new group of men and women ready and willing to grow and stretch and feel new life.

So, I’m thankful for virtual therapy and I can promise you this: if you’re ready to do the work that counseling requires, you will reap the benefits, whether you’re sitting in my office or on your back porch in that favorite rocking chair.