Why choose online counselling?

Everybody has difficulties at various stages of life and sometimes we are able to cope with them better than we are at others. Occasionally there may just be too many problems and we may feel overwhelmed and uncontained.

Our counsellors are professionals who specialise in assisting people to find their way through the chaos. We aim to help to bring understanding and insight into how these situations arise and how we can better manage our way around them now and in future. Our goal is to help you to chart your route towards a more stable and meaningful way of being in the world.

Online counselling offers a number of benefits and these include:

1. Privacy
   

Consult your counsellor in the comfort of your own home or office.

1. Anonymity
   

While we collect personal information from you during the registration process, this information is treated with the full measure of confidentiality required by ethical and legal codes.

1. Convenience
   

Using email counselling, you enjoy the convenience of being able to email at any time of day or night. If you prefer chat sessions, you can choose to engage these sessions during office hours from any place that you have access to an internet-enabled computer.

1. Cost effective
   

Online counselling requires no travelling and no lost time to the complications of having to meet away from your usual place of work or home.

Online counselling also has some limitations. These include:

1. Information breaches
   

Because it involves the use of technology, there is the potential for your information to be accessed by somebody with whom you share a device used for online counselling. To avoid this, ensure that you password protect your chosen counselling device at all times and conduct your sessions in a place where you will not be overheard.

1. Service limitations
   

Most problems can be dealt with online by our experienced and comprehensively trained psychologists. However, occasionally there are problems that are not suitable for online therapy. During the registration process, if we feel that your problems are unlikely to be adequately and safely addressed by our counsellors, we may offer you appropriate guidance and refer you on to a suitable alternative counselling service. Examples of problems that we do not deal with online include, but are not limited to:

1. • Non-psychological issues, eg. Financial or legal problems;
   

2. • Child therapy (younger than 16 years);
   

3. • Suicidal and homicidal behaviour;
   

4. • Psychotic or thought disorders, i.e. where the individual struggles to tell what is real from what is not.