There and many benefits to working online, it allows or clients to receive therapy in the comfort of their own homes, they haven’t got to drive to us and park and get dressed, they can wear what they want, sit where they want and have a therapist on the other side of the world. They save money in fuel and we can save money too, buy not renting a therapy room for the session. During the Covid Pandemic, it was the only way to receive therapy and many Hypnotherapists embraced this and now only work this way, some say it is equally effective as face-to-face therapy. Payments can be taken by sending payment links and accepting credit cards, making the process very easy.
Working online does pose some questions.
Are the conversations we have with our clients confidential? we have no control who else may be listening to our sessions, you would assume that it would be a family member or friend of the client that may overhear, but this is totally out of our control. We should advise the client to find a comfortable, private area to receive therapy, one where they will not be disturbed or potentially over heard, this allows the client to be in control of their environment with our recommendations.
How do we gain consent? Verbal isn’t good enough and we will not be recording the sessions, so we will still have to resort to sending consent forms to the client to complete prior to the session. Sending a signature link to sign a consent form is a possibility, or accepting an email stating the client agrees to hypnotherapy is another option.
Are our client’s “Tech Savvy”? will they be able to log on to sessions, do they have a good enough connection or broadband speed and what happens if the internet goes down? Is the session rescheduled at no cost, or lost? Allowing extra time for the first session is wise to allow for a little first time set up. We may have to instruct clients in the use of the online system the first time they use it. Agreeing in advance of what will be done if the line goes down is important as we do not want the client to feel that they have paid for a session ands lost it through no fault of their own.
What happens in an emergency? How could we deal with something that could be happening many miles away? What if the client doesn’t come out of trance and falls asleep? Rules would have to be in place as to whether the client would like to be woken up at the end of the session, if they do, we should ensure we have access to their phone numbers to give them a wake-up call. We need to know where they are and have the address and phone number, in case of an emergency.
Are we missing something? Can we gauge their expressions properly? Can we see their breathing pattern? Can we tell if they are in trance or not? the question is, do we actually need to?? We only rely on the client being in a light relaxed trance for Solution Focused Hypnotherapy, so this may not be such an issue for us. But of course, being aware of body language helps greatly and the more we can gauge how our client is behaving, the better it is for their session.
So, we have pros and cons to Online therapy, as long as we can confidently offer a beneficial service that adheres to the codes of conduct that we subscribe to, is in line with GDPR and we have emergency contact information, it would be wise to offer as an alternative to face to face sessions and gives the clients a free choice. If our clients are comfortable and happy, their therapy will start on the right foot.
In my experience, online therapy has produced very similar outcomes to face to face sessions, so whichever method the client is happy with, you can rest assured that it will provide them with what they need.
