Online counseling and online therapy in WA state are pretty much the same. Therapy, counseling, psychotherapy, and mental health care are often interchangeable terms.

When looking for an online counselor or online therapist in Tacoma, WA, you just want someone who is licensed and who has the expertise to help you reach your goals.

You also want someone who you feel comfortable with. Many clients have told me at first they were concerned that it would be hard to make a connection with a therapist if they were online rather than in-person, but they go on to say that after the first couple of sessions, “it’s like the screen fades away and I’m just here with this person who understands me.”

Even though you are meeting online, you can still make a great connection with a therapist who can help you achieve your goals. Even therapies like brainspotting are very effective online.

Each week you will get a unique link to our session. You can sign on to the session using your phone, tablet, or laptop. Generally, the connection works best over a solid wifi signal. We will use a secure telehealth platform designed for therapy. It is user-friendly and you don’t have to be a “techie” person to be able to figure out how to sign on. I can help you with any tech issues if they arise. All you need to do is sign on from a comfortable and private place with good wifi for your session.

The first appointment is what we call the intake session. This is a chance for us to both get to know each other better. I will ask you a lot of questions about the symptoms you are having, the challenges you are facing, and try to get a picture of what your life is like now. This involves talking about your job, living situation, relationships, health conditions, and whatever else is relevant, We will also talk a little about your childhood and family growing up, to have a sense of how that has shaped you. We won’t just talk about the hard stuff, but also we will touch on your strengths, resources, and support system, to also understand the supports we can draw from in your life.

In the second session, we will set specific goals about how you want your life to improve as a result of counseling. This is our treatment plan, and it will be our roadmap to helping see tangible progress. I will ask you about the progress you are noticing frequently as we continue to meet. If we are not moving forward on your goals, we may adjust our methods so you can get what you want out of this process. This also helps us know when you are ready to graduate therapy after we have achieved all of your goals.

After this, week after week we will use our treatment plan to help guide our work. We will use a combination of methods to help you see positive changes.

This may include learning skills to help you understand your emotions, techniques to help you calm your nervous system and manage stress, communication skills to better handle conflict and boundary-setting, trauma work like brainspotting to help you heal at a deep brain-body level from past pain, and more.

And if something unexpected comes up, we can always pivot our session to address whatever changing priorities you bring up. This is your time, and I want to make sure we are making the most of it in a way that will give you the results you want.

If you’d like to understand more about the process of therapy, you can check out this blog post about what to expect from therapy in Tacoma, WA.