DeeAnna Merz Nagel

Happy Birthday Online Therapy – 20 years old!

September 7, 2015 by Kate Anthony

During one of my infrequent bouts of insomnia last night, it occurred to me that in 2015 we ought to be celebrating the 20^th birthday of online counselling and therapy. It now also occurs to me that thinking about such things at 3am is a bit odd, but then those who know me know that the practice and ethics of online work is the thing that keeps me awake at night, so I’ll choose the word passionate rather than odd…

Anyway, as outlined in my 2010 book Online Therapy: A Practical Guide, co-authored with the lovely DeeAnna Nagel (now of Havana Wellness – check it out!), it’s established that the first paid-for online mental health services started appearing in mid-1995, led by pioneers such as Leonard Holmes, John Suler, David Sommers and of course, John Grohol of PsychCentral. There’s a timeline here up to 2002 from the old Metanoia.org site, one of the first websites I came across when starting to look into the emerging field in 1998.

20 years old in 2015 – that means the field is almost an adult! So I am constantly surprised when it is referred to as “new” – it may be young and dashing, but at 20 years old, it’s not exactly new anymore!

In fact, it also now occurs to me that my training programmes first emerged in a face-to-face capacity in 2000, so the sub-field of training for online services is already a teenager (read my recent BJGC paper about that here)! And let’s not forget Supervision and Coaching also taking place online!

So I was pleased to be invited to Switzerland next year to speak at a conference being offered by the University of Basel. The conference theme is “Typing Yourself Healthy…”, and I was reflecting how nice it is to see the original online therapy modality being aired – a part of online therapy which remains robust despite the great technological developments we have seen over the years, particularly with video now being a reliable method of communication with clients (this wasn’t the case back in 1995, trust me!). Even if you picture “online therapy” as “video therapy”, I’m pretty sure that there is a lot of text-based work involved. And if you have joined the excellent free-to-sign-up platform PlusGuidance, you’ll know that text-based work is very much a part of the communication tools you can use with clients.

So, apart from making me feel very old, what can we take from the history of online therapy? Our 20-year old is maturing, no doubt – BACP will shortly publish new Good Practice Guidance for working with both text and audio/video – the latest set of ethical advice from a professional organisation that first looked at the area back in the late 90’s, and first published guidelines in 2001. The number of doctoral-level studies in the field has increased since my own was awarded back in 2010, and I see many on the horizon as trainees with the Online Therapy Institute find their own burning research topics as a result of their studies. The media is less shocked by the concept of using the World Wide Web for mental health support, although they still love a story about it going pear-shaped (and always will, I suspect). Even using avatars and virtual environments for therapy doesn’t raise too many eyebrows these days.

So join me in lighting a candle for the 20^th anniversary of online practice going live! It’s been a thrilling (and sometimes frustrating) journey to adulthood, as the Internet became an everyday part of our lives and more and more clients reached out through their personal devices rather than calling their medical practice. Having an online element to your practice shouldn’t be intimidating – the pioneers of the field have had your back for ages – so maybe it’s time to reach back out to the clients who are trying to find you online!

Our new Resource Guides!

February 24, 2015 by Kate Anthony

DeeAnna and I took a bit of a leap this week after a brainstorming session! As we’ve blogged over at Online Therapy Institute, we get a lot of emails from people worldwide who haven’t got the time right now or the funds to take that all important CPD training, yet do have a burning question they need an answer to as they think about developing their online services. Or perhaps the idea of offering a blended service of using their traditional skills and newer technological tools is just a faint idea, and they need to have the pertinent information within their grasp in order to make an informed decision about going down that road before committing to it. e learning

So we wanted to do something new to meet those needs!

Those of you who are aware of our work at the Institute know that it is our mission to ensure as many practitioners are armed with what we know about working online before embarking upon doing so with those often vulnerable clients. One of my prouder moments was a graduate of mine who was able to say to me after investing in training that it was the best money she ever spent, as it told her that she was totally unsuited to the work and was so glad to have found that out beforehand. This is something we trainers should pay more attention to, I feel – knowing that sometimes when a training doesn’t work out for an individual, it isn’t a failure on our part or theirs – simply that not all tools and methods are suited to everybody. I remember during my core training being told I should sit with my wrist upwards and exposed as this indicated openness to the client. I just felt I was offering up my wrists to be slit, and the congruent me quickly abandoned that nugget of expert advice…

So we asked ourselves “how can we reach more people unprepared for using their skills in a digital environment, but who don’t want a full credential or can’t find the time and money to invest in this field as part of their continuing professional development? We can’t give it away – we’re not a charity, a library or a government entity. But we do have a mission that has been burning within us for well over 15 years now to help counsellors and coaches keep skills up to date in light of technological development and the changes in society that the Internet has brought, and TILT Magazine can only go part of the way in doing that.”

(To be honest, the discussion wasn’t as neatly put as that, and I may be paraphrasing somewhat…)

Anyway, what we have come up with is consolidating the knowledge and expertise we offer through our introductory courses into neat little resource guides! If you choose these, you’ll still be part of our community at our forum and Facebook groups for co-learning with our current and past students – and as an added bonus, if you decide that the time is right for you to take the course itself and be fully mentored by me or DeeAnna as you learn, you can simply upgrade! Woot! All this for under 50 quid!

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Courses offered as both a credential and a resource guide:

Certified Cyber Therapist

Certified Cyber Coach

Certified Aroma Coach

Certified Intuitive Practitioner

First Steps to Training!

January 2, 2015 by Kate Anthony

OK, the decorations are down, the fireworks are burnt out, and the new year resolutions are under way for the forseeable future at least. But have you thought of your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) needs as we charge into 2015? Do those needs include a feeling of how you really (really) ought to take your skills into the digital world that your clients inhabit but that you just haven’t been able to get around to yet? Would you like some guidance as to how easy this is even at an introductory level?

We’ve revisited our small courses about the world of Cyberspace and Online Therapy, and now offer them at a two-tier price level depending on just how much mentoring you desire from the experts in the field! We don’t pretend these are full trainings (see our wealth of that sort of thing here!), but they are there in case you want to know more about a specific technology, more about an area of Cyberspace you are unsure of, or even in case you want to dip your toes into our teaching methods and see how we roll!

These short courses can be taken with full lesson-by-lesson mentoring for just £150, or with no mentoring at all for just £75! You get full access to our resources and your CPD Certificate either way – we just want to be sure we meet all needs and all budgets!

And if you are ready to take your learning a step further at some point down the line, you can deduct the cost of these courses from our full CCF or PGCert trainings once completed if paying in full!

Start by checking out the list of small courses here, give Kate a shout if you have any questions at kate@onlinetherapyinstitute.com, and start 2015 by taking that first step into the world of online therapy!

Ordering Training À La Carte

December 15, 2014 by Kate Anthony

I’ve been having a think about how clients need varying levels of support in their lives at different times, and how online services can meet those needs. Sometimes a forum with no interaction by the client is enough – they can learn from previous posts about how others coped in challenging times. Sometimes, the need steps up to receive communication from another human being about an issue, and this can be done through anonymous support forums or chat rooms. Perhaps an ongoing relationship would be helpful, and a less anonymous contract for therapeutic help would be useful from a trained counsellor or psychotherapist. Perhaps that contract can in turn be stepped up to include face-to-face sessions in-room as part of a blended care package.

In short – the levels of support and contact a person needs is a fluid thing! So why not also apply this to training?

At the Online Therapy Institute, we pride ourselves on our attitude to training being a personal thing. Each of our students gets one-to-one mentoring from myself or DeeAnna, depending on what the student wants or needs to learn about (and our training catalogue is extensive and diverse!). We build a personal relationship with each student to ensure their training needs are fully met, and we have found this to be the most enjoyable process in continuing professional development for both parties. Our training model lies in the training relationship being as central to the process as the therapeutic relationship will be to their future client base. The key to learning is in the writing, and the essence of the learning being valuable comes from the personal mentoring that reflects and builds that learning into a living breathing part of a person’s professional identity.

Our Certified Cyber Facilitator and PGCert trainings are the gold standard of what we do, where students build relationships with us as expert trainers to meet professional needs on their journey to being an online practitioner. A more cost-considerate route is our streamlined versions of this, for example our Certified Cyber Therapist credential where you still get the mentoring relationship with me but at a faster pace! And to make sure that our students feel happy with the chosen route, costs of any introductory courses are fully met if the student chooses to go on to the gold standard route.

But you know what? Just as sometimes a potential client will only need to surf anonymous forums or blogs for help with their mental health, sometimes a potential trainee just needs some building blocks to discover how much training they need or can afford. This is why in 2015 I shall be offering my trainings à la carte! This means you can receive the valuable teaching tools and resources we have developed over the years, but without the one-to-one mentoring. You can always come back for more at no additional cost, and still get a certificate for CPD validation! It’s a win-win!

DeeAnna already offers this training model for our Certified Intuitive Practitioner course over at the Online AromaTherapy Institute if you want to see it in action – or drop me a comment below for updates in 2015!

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[Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]