Online therapy works great for me, but I have a few qualities and supports in my life that make it viable. I'm articulate (writer by trade), willing to be deeply emotionally honest, which is necessary as the therapist doesn't have the benefit of body language cues, I have a committed relationship (married with a child), interact socially well enough, and am highly functional in my life, so it's not a matter of needing the physical presence to work through issues quite so much. Both methods of therapy have benefits, but there are a number of them in online therapy (extreme flexibility, session records, do therapy from comfort of my home, etc.) in my personal situation, so I'm very glad to have the option.

I've been working with my therapist for about 18 weeks now.

I pay a fee per email. A standard email session is $35, a long/complex one is $50. Once, it was $75 for an extremely long thread w/a lot of back and forth. There are no limits to the lengths of my emails, except that I need to start a new one each day, no week-long email threads for example. For chats, I pay per minute. I'm sure it's her answering because of the service we use, also, we've had phone sessions, but much moreso because we have a good relationship- I know some things about her, she remembers nearly everything I've told her, and she has a unique voice, I recognize it clearly in chats, her manner of typing, phrases she uses, etc. I can tell she's not multitasking because of the pacing of our sessions, speed of her replies, level of detail, and our sense of connection. Plus, I trust her. She takes her work very seriously, and she has integrity.

Hope that helps.

P.S. Thank you everyone for your comments. Thanks Mixedupemotions for your perspective that this is a learning experience, sigh, it's true... but... it's hard for me to see myself spending so much money to learn, ha. I feel the spending's out of control lately, I have to bring it back into control.

Thanks tinyrabit for helping me see the value- it was actually a great chat, she opened up a lot too, which was so nice, if only I were not cognizant of the $$$ it would be better, ha. I guess that's always true in life.

And anilam, you know, I guess I'm lucky to have the relationship w/my therapist. We're very close, and yes, I do believe I need her much more than she needs me, but I'm her only regular client at the moment that I'm aware of and we're having a lot of sessions, so that makes it harder I think, for me to feel so attached. It's true- she is safer in a way, because I have so much to risk. She would miss me if I quit, but... it's higher stakes for me, for sure.