Teletherapy vs In-Person Therapy
The question: Is virtual therapy different than in person therapy?
In some ways, yes - it is different! You don’t get the in-person experience with your therapist. You lose out on some of the body language cues or going into an office to have your sessions.
Virtual therapy actually has some huge benefits. You can do therapy from the comfort of your home - you can be in your pajamas (who isn’t these days?), drinking coffee and being in your own space. This is different than the many Zoom calls you probably have to take for work because this is your time and your session. The therapist is here for you and you get show up authentically and genuinely, which can feel rare these days.
You don’t need to take time out of your day to commute to the therapist’s office for your session, or in the case of the pandemic life - leave your house to meet your therapist. If you are traveling to work from home within the state of California, you don’t necessarily have to cancel your session. You can join from San Francisco or Tahoe or LA. There is a lot of flexibility with that and this means you you don’t have to miss or cancel sessions that you might have needed to if you were trying to see your therapist in person.
In most ways, however, virtual therapy is not different than in-person. I was very skeptical of teletherapy before the pandemic. I was convinced that it wouldn’t work for me as a therapist or a client, that I wouldn’t be able to connect with people in the same way and that I just would not like it. Then COVID-19 forced me to begin to do teletherapy and it was nothing like I thought. For the most part, it feels the same for me. I am still able to connect with and have intimate conversations with people where we explore and do the work they came to therapy to do. That is what matters at the end of the day! Sure, I might not know how tall you are or what you look like from the chest down, but we can do the work you came to therapy for.
If you are hesitant or unsure about meeting with a therapist via Zoom, my suggestion would be to give it a try. There is no harm in meeting with someone and seeing how you feel - that’s what therapy is really about! If you decide it isn’t for you, that’s totally fine. If you have questions or concerns about it, that is a great place to start. Talk to the therapist and find out what they think!
