What's Online Counselling Really Like?
A reflection for trainee and newly qualified counsellors
One of the questions trainee counsellors often ask me is what online counselling is really like.
Not how to do it.
What it actually feels like.
I understand why.
Before I started working online, I imagined I'd spend most of my time thinking about cameras, eye contact, internet connections and whether it would ever feel quite as natural as sitting together in the same room.
I thought the technology would somehow become part of the relationship.
It didn't.
If anything, what surprised me most was how quickly it disappeared.
Within a few minutes, neither the client nor I seemed particularly aware of the screen between us. We were simply having the same conversation we might have had in my therapy room.
The technology had become little more than the way we happened to meet that day.
I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions about online counselling.
People often assume something important is lost because you're not sharing the same physical space.
My experience has usually been the opposite.
Many clients appear more relaxed in their own surroundings. They're sitting in a chair they know, holding their own mug, sometimes wrapped in a blanket, occasionally with the family dog asleep beside them. Rather than arriving somewhere unfamiliar, they're inviting me into a small part of their everyday world.
That changes the atmosphere in ways I hadn't expected.
Looking back, I realise I spent far more time worrying about online counselling than most of my clients ever did.
They weren't analysing camera angles or wondering whether the therapeutic relationship could survive Wi-Fi.
They wanted exactly what every client wants.
Someone who would listen.
Someone who wouldn't rush them.
Someone who could stay with them while they tried to make sense of something difficult.
That doesn't mean online counselling is identical to working face to face.
It isn't.
Doorbells ring.
Children occasionally wander into the room.
Internet connections fail at inconvenient moments.
Sometimes a client has forgotten to charge their laptop.
Those things happen.
Like every other aspect of therapy, they simply become part of the work.
One of the things online counselling has reinforced for me is that presence has very little to do with geography.
Clients rarely remember whether the session happened online.
They remember whether they felt heard.
Whether they felt accepted.
Whether they managed to say something out loud that had been sitting quietly inside them for months, or sometimes years.
Those moments happen online every day.
I also think it's important that trainee counsellors don't see online work as a lesser version of therapy.
The setting may be different.
The foundations remain exactly the same.
Our responsibility to work ethically.
To protect confidentiality.
To be genuine.
To listen carefully.
To understand another person's experience as fully as we can.
None of that changes because we're communicating through a screen.
If anything, online counselling has reminded me that therapy has never really been about the room.
It's about the relationship.
Whether we're sitting opposite one another or speaking from opposite ends of the country, counselling still begins in exactly the same place.
Two people.
One conversation.
A willingness to understand what another human being is carrying.
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→ Helping Clients Prepare for Their First Online Counselling Session