How Does Online Therapy for Anxiety Work

Therapy can be daunting for those who’ve never tried it before. But it can be helpful to know what to expect when we show up, especially if we’re dealing with anxiety. Knowing what we’re walking into makes us feel more at ease.

It’s the same for online therapy. Maybe we’ve done in-person therapy before, and we’re switching to online therapy for whatever reason. Or maybe we’ve never tried any sort of therapy at all, and this is our first time doing this. Whatever the case, it would be best for us and our anxiety to know what to expect.

Types of Online Therapy

There are different types of therapy for anxiety. What we’ll find depends on what we’ve chosen. If we’ve reached out to a specialist in ACT, for example, that’s exactly what we’ll find. But this is something we’ll find when doing in-person therapy, too. This isn’t exclusive to online therapy.

But online therapy also has different kinds. Maybe we’re having sessions with our therapist through video calls. Maybe we do therapy through regular phone calls instead. Text messages and email are also part of what we call online counseling. It depends on what forms of communication our therapist relies on and what we’re okay with.

Preparing for a Session

Struggling with anxiety means we like to be prepared for any situation. That includes therapy sessions. But that preparation is different when it’s online and when it’s in person. When we’re doing online counseling, we’ll focus on finding a good, quiet spot in our home, somewhere we can have some privacy. If we live with roommates, it’s important to let them know we’re not going to be available during the session. Maybe we can hang a sign on our door reminding them of that, just in case they forget.

What’s important is that we’re comfortable and that we have some privacy. Everything else will be okay. It’s normal to be nervous, but that feeling doesn’t have to overwhelm us.

The First Session

The first session is always different from the others. It’s a starting point, so that means we start with the usual introductions. We also discuss the reason why we’ve set up an appointment to begin with. After that, we discuss everything else: the basics of our lives, and its main events. The aim of this session is for our therapist to get to know us and get to know what’s troubling us. Only then can they begin to help us.

Just as Efficient

If we’ve done in-person therapy before, we might feel a little skeptical about doing online therapy. How do we know it will truly help us? But the truth is, online therapy is just as efficient as in-person. As long as we’re either on a phone or video call with our therapist, it will have the same effects as if we were meeting at their practice.

A benefit of online counseling is that it allows us more flexibility when it comes to scheduling. It’s also far more accessible and lessens the likelihood of us being late or cancelling appointments due to travel difficulties. There’s a lot to like about online therapy.

Choosing Therapy

It’s hard to deal with anxiety without receiving help. And it can be hard to seek that help for plenty of reasons. But online therapy can help us. We don’t have to struggle with anxiety the way we do now. We can learn to cope with it, and that will change our lives for the better.

And we can help ourselves by giving counseling a chance. If we’re hesitant, or busy, or too anxious to leave the house, then online therapy is our best bet. And now that we know what to expect, it should make everything a little easier for us.