I got a lot of positive response from my clients. I got more skepticism form coworkers or people who haven’t tried skype therapy jet. I believe any form of therapy has its pros and cons and I don’t find online therapy any different.
In my psychotherapy education I was told that skype therapy doesn’t work, that it is not the same as face to face and mostly I hear comments like that form colleagues. But I decided to give it a try before I made my own decision.
In my experience, online therapy does work the same as face to face. With clients I can form a profound relationship that heals. People are different, and we can form different kind of relationships, some more deep, other more businesslike, no matter what type of therapy we are having.
The only down side of online treatment for me is that I can’t do body therapy with my online clients. I am also trained as body psychotherapist and I do body work with face to face clients if they are open to it. That gives me a new challenge to think and developed different types of possible exercises for skype therapy. I use movie therapy, writing, drawing and relaxation techniques.
I would also like to share some different studies that you might find interesting on online therapy. In general studies show that online therapy is just as effective as face-to-face therapy.
This research is focusing on therapeutic relationship (or working alliance) over the Internet and whether it influences treatment outcome as it does in traditional face-to-face therapy. More here.
“Despite limitations, however, working alliance levels demonstrate that participants felt a collaborative, bonding relationship with therapists, and comments overwhelmingly indicated participants’ belief that online therapy was a positive experience with unique advantages over face- to-face counseling.” (Doyle and Cook, p. 102, year 2002). More here.
Systematic review of online therapy for adults. More here.