Online Counselling: Safe Spaces at your Fingertips!
Often in a room full of people I have struggled to find my strength and support to talk
Often in a room full of known people, family, friends, I have felt lonely
Often I have carried out my work with a smile, when I am feeling low, under-confident, worthless deep down
Often in such situations I have survived because a safe space was just a click away
Knowing we are not alone in the room, and have a safe space a call away lets’ us keep going and pushing our boundaries. Technology has certainly become a major means to help us keep in touch with our safe space by minimising space-time constraints.
Mental health, as defined by WHO is, “A state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community”.
The stigma attached to ‘not feeling in control’, ‘losing it’, ‘wanting help’, is so high that more often than not, we tend to keep ourselves and our thoughts and our feelings at the edge and keep going with the flow. Until when it comes to a point wherein everything breaks down. Emotional urgency is as important as physical urgency and in recent times it has started to get the attention it deserves.
Whenever we need someone to hear us out, an understanding, empathetic space becomes extremely important for us to express and share better. Being able to talk about things bothering us, being able to talk about our feelings and thoughts helps us live a healthier and better quality of life. Life feels in better control and one is able to take charge and handle problems more effectively. Recent studies have shown how apart from medication, psychotherapy can be efficient in helping people sail through the boat over the sea of life a little more smoothly.
Psychotherapy provides a space to explore different troubled areas with a professional, who uses different set of techniques and approaches to explore the feelings and thoughts of the person. Being understanding, non judgemental, empathetic and staying with the stories and narratives, creates safe spaces, which enables the therapist to see the concerns from the lens of the client and provide them insight to carry out the journey of better mental health. The therapist and the client have a therapeutic working alliance and they work collaboratively for improvement in the lives of the clients.
With the need to take care of the emotions and mental health of a person being acknowledged, there comes the need to have enough services to be able to take care of the people seeking help. With the world moving ahead with technology, a change from the couch to the chat window is being witnessed. Technological advancement has helped to connect the service providers and service seekers in different parts of the world. This has lead to the growth of online counselling — playing twofold role of spreading awareness people about mental health as well as providing services.
Online therapy can be carried out through the means of text, call and video conferencing. Texting or talking on the phone ensures anonymity and privacy. It provides hope to people who are not comfortable with face to face interaction. Having online platform ensures getting help as and when required, rather than postponing our feelings and thoughts to the scheduled counselling session in traditional setups. Postponing might lead to rationalising our thoughts, rather than looking deep into them, until they come back again to haunt us.
While in-person interaction helps in reading body language and physical presence has a therapeutic impact, online spaces have unique advantages which are easy to look over but are very crucial. Typing it all helps us organise our thoughts and provide subjective experiences to the therapist in real time, giving them better information to understand the person. Online spaces reach wider and diverse population, ensuring more people being able to seek out help. Services can be attained at the comfort of our personal space and also are confidential, anonymous, convenient and cost effective.
Empathy, non-judgemental attitude, active listening and reflection helps to build strong working alliance between the client and the therapist which has seen to provide more positive outcomes in therapy. Since technological advancements are here to stay, online therapy seems to be a way of life in the coming future. In such a scenario, it becomes all the more important to make sure that the services are delivered with proper ethical guidelines being followed, maintaining privacy and the confidentiality of the clients.
Expression of our distress, self doubts, anger, anxiety, stress, thoughts and feelings which seem to make the daily living difficult, require safe spaces. Psychotherapy has enabled availability of such spaces, helping people a better quality of life. Online therapy has helped move from in-person interaction to help being just a call/text away. With technology helping bridging the gap between the service provider and seeker, one has to be careful around its usage as well. Although a lot need to be done to ensure efficiency and efficacy of online therapy, it is clearly helping to bridge the divide between help and help-seekers.
