Psychological Counseling Text Counseling

It is a clinically proven and effective form of psychological counseling, but the effectiveness depends entirely on whether it matches your needs and status. There is no absolute advantage or disadvantage.

I just received a visit from a 27-year-old Internet operator last week. I was so scared that I had to wait for the caller to hang up before sending a text message. I had three interviews before and ran away downstairs in the consultation room. The first time I asked for text consultation, the "The other party is typing" on the input box skipped for 20 minutes. In the end, only three lines of text were sent: "I'm afraid that my mind will go blank when I speak, and I can't explain how uncomfortable I am. I can think slowly while typing." ”This is actually the initial reason why many people choose text consultation - it does not require a buffer space for immediate response and is too friendly to people with expression disorders.

Interestingly, regarding the value of text consultation, counselors from different schools have quite different attitudes. Most of the colleagues I know who do classical psychoanalysis are not willing to receive text consultations. In their view, the core of free association is content that is "said without thinking", and the process of typing naturally has its own "polishing" attribute. Many small thoughts that pop up and carry subconscious signals will be erased during deletion and deletion. He had received a temporary text consultation before, and he casually said, "I had a fight with my mother today, and I don't feel anything." Five minutes later, he added, "Oh, I just realized that my hands have been shaking when I was typing." If it were placed in an interview, he would have caught the details of this trembling immediately, but the text delayed the transmission of emotions for several minutes.

However, many counselors who practice cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will actively recommend text counseling to visitors, especially for people with anxiety disorders and obsessive thinking. Writing itself is a process of materializing vague thoughts. Many visitors have a mess of catastrophic thoughts in their minds, but I sort out half of them the moment I type them out. I had a client who had a panic attack before. When he had a panic attack, he couldn't breathe at all and couldn't speak. But he could hold his phone and type out his current physical feelings and thoughts one by one: "My palms are sweaty now. I feel like I'm going to faint. Someone in the elevator just looked at me. Did he think I was weird?" ”The content recorded in real time is much more accurate than subsequent recall. The consultant does not need to spend time helping him sort out his memory, and can directly perform cognitive correction, which is more efficient than face-to-face consultation.

I have been doing consulting for 6 years, and the number of text consultation visits accounts for about 15% of the total. I never refuse anyone who comes. To be honest, it is indeed not suitable for everyone: if you hope that the counselor can accurately capture the avoidance of your eyes, the choking of your tone, and want that kind of face-to-face emotional resonance, then text consultation will definitely not satisfy you. ； But if you are extremely socially anxious, your mind goes blank when you talk about trauma, or you are so busy at work that you cannot squeeze in fixed consultation time, and you are used to recording the emotional fragments of the moment at any time, then it may be the most suitable choice for you. I had a client who had been sexually assaulted before. The first three text consultations only included a few scattered sentences each time. It was only in the sixth time that she typed out the entire experience, with a small sun emoticon added at the end. She said that if they sat face to face, she might not be able to speak this way in her life.

Of course the problem is quite obvious. Without the aid of facial expressions and tone of voice, it is easy for information bias to occur. Some visitors are used to using "I'm fine" and "I'm fine" to make people look careless. If you see his red eyes during the interview, you will know something is wrong, and it will be easily missed in the text. It is also easy to blur the time boundaries. Many visitors will default to text consultation as "24 hours a day to chat". They send dozens of long messages at two or three in the morning, and feel abandoned when they can't wait for a reply, which in turn destroys the consultation setting. Now when I receive text consultations, I will agree in advance. Like face-to-face consultations, each session will last for 50 minutes and end at that time. Don’t send too vague emoticons or Internet slang. Try to be more specific about your feelings—don’t just say “I’m so sad.” You can write, “I’m sitting on the sofa, tears keep falling, my chest is so tight, and I can’t swallow the water I just drank.” This kind of information density is actually no worse than face-to-face consultations.

In fact, in the final analysis, whether it is face-to-face consultation, voice, video or text, they are essentially just carriers. Just like if you want to go to the same destination, some people are afraid of the trouble and choose high-speed rail, while others want to take their time and choose shared bicycles. No one is more noble than the other. As long as you are willing to open up and the counselor can steadily catch all the emotions you throw out, that is effective counseling.