Dr. Ellyn Bader and Dr. Pete Pearson
How to Start Telehealth Sessions and Work More Effectively with Couples Online
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Thanks for your interest. On this page you’ll find some new information about working with couples online and also some thought-provoking questions. There’s a 5-minute video about starting online sessions, a chart showing advantages and disadvantages of working online, and a list of important considerations.
Seeing your couples online holds a great deal of potential – and possibly anxiety, too. We hope you’ll find the information on this page helpful.
5-Minute Video About Beginning Sessions.
Some Advantages and Disadvantages of Working Online:
Advantages
- Potential to use the crisis/quarantine to improve and reinforce the couple’s ability to work as a team
- Increased intimacy from “meeting” their kids/pets
- Therapist skills increase because being directive and intervening quickly is essential
- Ability to reach and work with people from a broader geographic area
- Convenient for partners who travel a lot
- Save on office rent if you work from home
- More flexibility for your schedule
- Couples like the flexibility, too.
- Efficient – couples don’t have to take as much time away from work.
- Unlike telephone work, you can see their nonverbal facial cues
- Powerful work can be done with the two partners in different locations
- You can frontload the work before the first session.
Disadvantages
- Zoom fatigue and headaches from too much screen time
- New modality causes more exhaustion at end of the day
- Internet and tech challenges
- You feel less able to control fights and negative energy
- You can’t control interruptions from family members, phones and pets
- It is easier for a client to leave a session prematurely
- Harder to do somatic work
What to Consider as You Move to Working Online.
- How do you choose whether to work with a new couple or not?
- What questionnaires or diagnostic forms do you use to screen new clients?
- Do you always do a phone screening first or do you do some other type of diagnostic evaluation?
- What is the optimal length of time between first contact and your availability for a first session?
- How do you accept payment?
- What is and is not okay to put in email?
- Do you use an online scheduling calendar or not?
- How do you deal with internet connection issues?
- How do you make a strong, solid emotional connection with each partner?
- What has changed about starting your sessions?
- What has changed about ending your sessions?
- Do you ask partners to be in the same room or two different rooms?
- Do you ask partners to be on one screen or two?
- When is it essential to be able to see both partners on the screen?
- How do you onboard old clients who are returning?
- Do you have strategies for working with fights and volatility?
- How do you determine clients’ willingness to be accountable for self change?
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Register for How To Work More Effectively With Couples Online webinar
Discover to the How to Work More Effectively with Couples Online
If you’d like to go deeper in discovering how we’re now working with couples online, you might be interested in our full 90-minute recorded training.
Watch this panel presentation of my husband and me along with Sue Diamond and Nancy St. John - two therapists who have been seeing couples online for years. Collectively, we’ve seen many hundreds of couples online. We want to share what we’ve learned with you.
Learn to do experiential work with couples online, connect closely with each partner, manage hostile interactions actively, onboard new clients, and get couples to book regular sessions.
In our recorded training, How to Work More Effectively with Couples Online, you’ll get 90 minutes of tips, techniques, and suggestions for overcoming your biggest challenges to online couples work.
Here is what we cover:
- How to get past your anxiety about technology
- How to get self-accountability, starting with the first phone call
- How to define your expectations of the client
- How to start and end sessions – screening for stress level
- Effective questions to ask at the beginning to get more productive sessions
- How to end angry sessions
- How to manage hostility
- When and how to use appreciations
- Negotiating routines
- How to use experiential exercises
- Using the stop/replay exercise for repairing triggers
- And much more
Here’s what people are saying about the training…
“Hurrah for Ellyn! You are so generous! And much appreciated!”
“I have been doing online counselling for a while now and your suggestions are very helpful. Thank you.”
“This has been terrific. Muchas gracias to the four of you!”
“Wonderful time spent – encouraging and enjoyable, too.”
“Couples Institute and gang are doing a beautiful service for all. Thank you so very much!”
“Thank you so much to all the panelists. This was very helpful and informative.”
“You all have been wonderful and the relationship arenas are all the better as a result of your work and training! Thank you so much!”