Online Therapy as a Supplement to In-Person Therapy

Has this been discussed before?

Does anyone do this? Is it helpful?

I've been considering it since I tend to reach out in between sessions. We have good boundaries in place, and I absolutely respect them and my T was upfront and honest about them. But, I think it might be better for me to have access to more therapeutic support outside of sessions that a text-based T might be able to help with. Especially as I'm dealing with a lot of resistance within myself now, I like the idea of being able to address things right when they come up.

So... yeah, just looking for opinions or thoughts or experiences.

Text based therapy leaves a lot of room for error and generally not a vehicle for a well thought out response. Just my two cents.

I do text therapy and it's been very helpful so far. I've been fortunate enough to find a T who offers live chat. I think email type response wouldn't be enough for me as a main therapy, but if you do have your main in person T then email might be enough.

I agree that text based therapy does leave a lot of room for potential error. But if you’re aware of this, and of what is “your stuff” and the therapist’s stuff, it could be helpful, imo. Just be sure to stop the therapy if the therapist really isn’t understanding.

I think it depends on the therapist, you could find a great online therapist and a very sub optimal face to face therapist who is either clueless or worse

I tried it. I think just like any other therapeutic relationship it depends on the fit between the therapist and the client as to if it will work or not. For me it didn't really. The first therapist I got was not that helpful with what I wanted to work on. The second one seemed really, really young.

I think it could have worked if I had been able to find a better therapist. Unfortunately I live in a small state and they insist on matching you with someone from your state. So even though they say they have like 2000 therapists, the vast majority of them you can't talk to. I think that is a stupid rule but there it is. I was thinking about lying about my state and trying again, but I don't know if I could get away with it.

from what i understand, by law the therapists can only provide therapy to people from the state that they are licensed to work in.

I have never tried online therapy but had extensive email interactions with my Ts between sessions. I agree that it leaves a lot of room for error and misinterpretation, especially if the people interacting online have quite different thinking and emotional styles. There is just one channel of perception, less reality check, and easy to infuse it with all sorts of biased meaning. Sometimes, for some people, it is easier to write things without direct exposure though, so that can help.

I don't think this would work very well for me personally because I find that bringing my concerns back to my therapist (resistance, frustration, anxiety about the time between sessions, wildly fluctuating feelings about the therapeutic relationship, etc) enhances the connection and deepens my therapy. It's all a big, messy thing that ultimately pushes me forward. So I think the in-person relationship would be less rich if I were sometimes taking those thoughts and feelings to a third party. Sometimes I don't even talk at length about therapy issues with my spouse for the same reason. It defuses the tension but in a way that dissipates the energy away from therapeutic growth, if that makes sense.

It sounds like you and your T have a good understanding about outside contact. Do you feel like what you're currently able to do in terms of contact isn't enough to feel adequately supported? Are you well within your therapist's limits but still worried about contacting them too much? I guess I'm mostly curious about whether the online therapist could give you something that your current therapist can't.