Kate Anthony

OTI Europe Ltd | Consultancy, Personal Training and Research for Online Therapeutic Services

   
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No, YOU hang up!

November 26, 2014 by Kate Anthony

Ending conversations can sometimes be awkward, particularly if we are online.  If we are in the physical presence of someone, there are clues from our body language that we are about to move away – sometimes a kiss on the cheek, a handshake, or a facial expression that denotes a cheery farewell or that the situation is at an end.  But what is the protocol when we are online? Have we got used to the often unfamiliar ending of a communication, or do we need to take more care to ensure we have prepared for when a chat comes to an end?

A colleague of mine once told me that she found the end of a social conversation with her daughter on Skype unbearable because she had to ID-100146553actively turn the camera off, even though this was done by clicking a phone-down icon.  She felt that she was somehow clicking an off button on her daughter herself, leaving the teenager statically in place for ever, rather than ending a call.  Another felt that her continued presence on a platform such as Google, denoted by the green “available” dot, meant that she felt pressured to make herself invisible after a chat session, despite a clear goodbye once the chat session had been ended.

And yet, when texting via our phones, we rarely actively end a conversation, leaving an endlessly open channel of communication which remains formally unended!  And now we switch from platform to platform and device to device to communicate – just yesterday I held one conversation via my laptop, smartphone and tablet via text message, GoogleChat and Hangouts.  I don’t dare download SnapChat…

I’ve been thinking about this because we need to prepare clients for the end of a session which by its nature has less formality than closing a door behind someone, as we generally do after a face-to-face session.  As part of their learning, Online Therapy Institute students learn how to do this effectively, both for synchronous communication and for those exchange-of-message situations that don’t take place at the same time, such as when we use email. Our face-to-face clients have the formality of a clock denoting a set time, getting up from the chair, a door opening and closing, and then the journey home to mark an ending.  When working online, we tend to be in the same position with the same screen after therapy has ended – this doesn’t tend to foster the sense of closure that we need to hold the client until the next session.

Or perhaps I am over-thinking this!

But before I say goodbye, take some time to consider how that your last goodbye at the end of the session may have felt to the other person.  Was it too abrupt, leaving them uncared for and brushed off? Or did you over-compensate for the lack of physical presence, wanting to be the last person to speak before the camera went off or to have the last word in the overall therapy contract via email?

It’s sometimes a fine line to manage closure – perhaps a little mindfulness of how we actively do it may be in order to ensure the other person isn’t left hanging!

Goodbye!

P.S thanks to FreeDigitalPhotos.Net and Stuart Miles for the image!  Goodbye!

Gaming online – when does it turn into a diagnosable psychiatric disorder?

October 1, 2014 by Kate Anthony

I have a special interest in this field, not only as part of my work in general but as an avid gamer myself.  With the exception of World of Warcraft (more on that later), I’ve pretty much run the gamut of gaming, from the Atari’s Pacman and Space Invader games back in the 70s right through the Legend of Zelda suite to the current rash of mobile and Facebook time-sucks (I use that term fondly) such as Bubble Witch Saga 2 and Candy Crush.

And I can truthfully say that Level 500 of CCS sucks:

cc

Recently a group of researchers tackled the controversial fact that the DSM-V includes non-substance addiction as a psychiatric diagnosis, in the journal Addiction.  This is a very welcome paper, not least because the DSM-V has pretty much sidelined the concept of general Internet addiction in favour of the specific behaviours conducted over the Internet. This has wide implications for various online addictions, including gambling, sex and virtual reality environments.

I found the recent showing in the UK of Web Junkie riveting – of course I was aware of the gaming boot camps in China, but watching the participants discuss their use of nappies to ensure they didn’t miss a minute of the game for their hygienic needs really brought home the huge problems gaming can cause.  These boot camps cost twice the parent’s average monthly income to attend – it is apparently never voluntary and often involves subterfuge to get the young people there in the first place.  Indeed, when a group of the boot camp members “escaped”, they headed straight for the nearest Internet Cafe to play for four hours before being “caught”.  Many cite combating loneliness as one of the main attractions.

I took one look at the game World of Warcraft when at a friend’s house, and vowed never to touch it.  The appeal of those beautiful graphics, the team-playing, the role-playing, the social side of like-minded people banding together to defeat obstacles and missions…  what’s not to like if you are an avid gamer?  My gaming colleagues and friends (you know who you are) have tempted me over the years – but WoW is a time-suck too far for someone who already has mild(ish) issues with online gaming.  I have almost (almost) sacrosanct boundaries in place for my gaming habit, playing only three in any one period (currently Bubble Witch Saga 2, Diamond Diggers Saga and the epic Tribez and Castlez, since you didn’t ask). These boundaries are necessary for reasons of both time (addiction/avoidance) and finance (in-gaming purchases to facilitate the addiction) – my time on Candy Crush Saga and Kitchen Scramble meant I eventually had to block them from all my devices (though if you’re ever stuck on a level, give me a shout 😉 )

There are complicated reasons for all addictions, and those within online gaming should not be ignored.  My current work is focusing on the innocent use of gaming to combat other addictions, not least gambling -after all, it’s only virtual money, right?  Wrong – my anecdotal research with gamblers show that online freemium play models are triggers, and a short step to being back in the offline casino or similar.  The DSM-V inclusion is welcome if only to bring the topic to the fore and allow academics to reach conclusions around potential treatment.

But let’s not forget the inclusion of the excellent concept of gamification in therapy!  For further reading, I’ll refer you to my colleague Mike at GamerTherapist.com – the guru of gamer affirmative psychotherapy.  Check out his blog to understand the positives gaming can bring to life experience – and happy (boundaried) gaming!

🙂

Lost for Words

April 30, 2014 by Kate Anthony

Laptop with polkadots

This week, I had a laptop meltdown.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my Sony Vaio. Yes, it has a few scratches and dents, and some keys are a little sticky due to my terrible work-chocolate interface habit, and the bottom left of the mousepad has worn away due to constant clicking – but on the whole it’s been a friend, this one. It comes on all my travels with me, nestled in my hand luggage, with its slightly-too-heavy casing giving me a sense of security.

And then I loaded a couple of CDs at the weekend and that was apparently a step too far. It froze.

Now it may have been my choice in music (thanks, Alabama 3!), but I do expect my devices to last longer than the two years or so I’ve had this one. Of course I lust after new technology, and the thought of splashing out on a cheeky little Lenova Yoga often tickles my brain after a hard day at the Vaioface, but until a device literally either falls apart or falls off the table and smashes, I’m a fairly constant devotee of the one I use daily. I don’t flirt with Kindles or iPads – me and my lappy are BFFs.

However. Having taken my laptop to the rather friendly and efficient computer repair shop (which is rather conveniently at the end of my road) to be wiped so I could start over with it, I realised just how much was on it. In fact, I can tell you. There were 21,439 files on that machine. Even assuming a load of those were pics, the occasional video, and the magic files that make laptops do what laptops do – that’s a lot of words.

If you work almost exclusively online as I do, communicating mostly via email or chat and with a heavy output of publication, you may like to pause to wonder just how many words you write every day. I paused to wonder and my head nearly exploded. No wonder that left click on the mousepad has worn away. I’m amazed my fingertips haven’t worn away.

But I do have some good news that I’d like to share – I had Cloud backup. I’ve paid for Cloud backup annually for around three years – a trickle of around £40 that poof goes out of my account and which I’ve never really thought about before (more expensive plans are available if you require HIPAA compliancy, from my personal choice of Carbonite). I had no reason to think about it – I just vaguely knew that once a day some sort of magic stuff happened in my favour.

Until my laptop had a breakdown and I nearly lost 21,439 files.

How many times are we told to back-up, back-up, back-up? How many of us do?

Now the nice people at Cloudwards haave created an interactive comparison chart where users can find the best fitting Cloud Backup solutions for their needs: https://www.cloudwards.net/award/best-online-backup-services

Also, check out this comparison of pCloud v MEGA: https://www.cloudwards.net/pcloud-vs-mega/

So please do learn from my experience and get around to taking advantage of that lovely nebulous Cloud that we hear so much about for back-up – I’ve felt the pain so you don’t have to. Now I get to leave all those files up there and start over with a clean hard drive, and my BFF is safely back in my hand luggage for now.

🙂
Kate

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