After the initial assessment has taken place; we begin to work on each of the key concerns. The counsellor may teach you skills and techniques as well as recommend some appropriate books, articles or videos to help you better manage your distress.
The last 5 minutes will be used to write the session notes in a collaborative way. After the notes are written, the client/s can use this opportunity to reflect with the therapist on how that session went for them.
- What stood out to them as the main focus during that particular session?
- What stood out to them as something they could do differently over the next week?
- What insight surprised or motivated them?
Important Note: No Audio Recordings are allowed to be sent during a live-chat session, since the whole purpose of this form of counselling is to use the written form, otherwise this would affect the privacy & confidentiality from the client’s location. If you don’t feel comfortable typing, then video-call counselling is recommended, please tell the counsellor if you want to change to video-call.
Tips and Advice
- Insert face emoticons to let me know how you are feeling as you write, this way it is easier to interpret the tone of the sentence. In addition to emoticons, you may want to use square brackets i.e. [Feeling frustrated that I cannot say this to my partner!].
- During a live-chat session when expressing your feelings and emotions, I encourage you to use full sentence structure, and be as descriptive as you can, using whatever feels like comfortable language that you would normally use.
- Once the live-chat session has come to an end the therapist will erase the whole chat to ensure no record of it is left on the device, the same practice is recommended to the client to ensure maximum confidentiality.
- When using live-chat software for a therapy session, make sure that you remain throughout the whole session in a safe and private location where nobody can see your messages.
- If the therapist or the client loses connection during a videocall session and they can’t get back in touch, It could be that their electricity has gone, not allowing any internet communication to take place. In which case, the best thing to do is either use mobile data to send a quick message to explain to the other person what happened.
- Please note: If the therapist feels that the client is at risk of harm to self or others during a session that is disconnected, and the client has been contacted through two different forms of communication and hasn’t responded after 10 minutes, the emergency contact would be contacted to be advised of the situation and intervene if necessary.
Couple's Counselling Structure
Important Note: Couple's Counselling can only be carried out by video call due to the nature of the dynamic between the three parties.
After the first session when the contract has been explored, the initial assessments will be carried out with one individual at a time in different sessions, to assess the needs and goals for each individual within the couple. Therefore during those individual sessions the other partner must not be present in the same room (ideally not in the house, to avoid potential eaves dropping).
JTortosaCounselling
