Thrive Therapy Blog

5 Tips on Engaging in Telehealth

7/16/2020

Since our office will continue to offer solely telehealth therapy sessions for the foreseeable future due to the current pandemic, I wanted to share some tips about how to help yourself or your child/teen get the most out of their session.

While some people have been reluctant to try out telehealth (video) therapy sessions - including us as therapists - we have noticed that overall we have been able to adapt our sessions to work well using video as our platform.

We think that it will help you out to also try to follow some of these tips and suggestions!

Just give it a try - Even if you are feeling reluctant to engage in video sessions, I would encourage you to try at least one to see if you might like it more than you think. For example, I had always preferred to have in person visits with my clients and even my own therapist, but in this situation, it has been such a blessing not to have to worry about the possibility of one of us being sick or spreading the virus amongst us. I have been grateful to be able to continue working with my therapist and my clients despite the health risks of being in an office together! My clients have said the same thing, that while they would prefer in person sessions, this is the best path forward for now and meets their needs just as well as in person sessions.

Finding a private space before session - Since privacy can also be a challenge in some families’ homes, make sure to figure out where you will have your session so that you do have privacy for the session. Feel free to get creative too - we have families who are having sessions in a car, on a walk, closet, or who are using music or white noise to help drown out their voices and keep their information private. Even for younger clients, we recommend they have privacy for their sessions.

Set up your space ahead of time - It will always be helpful if you can make sure to find a comfortable place for your session prior to the session. Making sure that you are settled in and have water and anything you might need will help you stay focused during the session. Along these lines, it is helpful to try to minimize distractions prior to beginning. Maybe you can turn off notifications on your phone or computer and make sure you are in a quiet space.

Make sure you have charged your devices - While this might sound basic, make sure to have your devices charged and maybe even have a back up one handy just in case. While our technology is working well most of the time, it is not perfect so having a phone as a backup option might be a good idea in case the video is not working properly at first. If we are having technical issues, please be patient as we are all working on this together! Please also communicate any challenges you are feeling about technology or video sessions with your therapist. While we do not plan to offer in person sessions anytime soon, we are open to feedback about how to make video sessions more effective!

Check in with us about your child or teen - It is certainly strange for us to be working with kids and teens in such a private setting as we are often used to checking in briefly with parents prior to or at the end of session. Even just a quick hello in the waiting room was nice to make sure we were connected to the whole family. If you are feeling disconnected from your child’s therapist, make sure to reach out to them to talk about it and find a way to check in. I have some families who email me in between sessions and others where I call the parent for the last 15 minutes of the session to check in. We would rather find a plan that works for you to feel supported and connected than for you to feel frustrated or unhappy about how things are going.

While the pandemic has certainly been difficult to adjust to and manage for all of us, we at Thrive are so grateful for our clients and ability to support them during this difficult time. If you are struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, parenting, or how you are adjusting to the pandemic, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of us for help. These are truly unprecedented and unpredictable times in our world and I believe that going through it less alone will help.

At Thrive, we take a positive, client centered approach to therapy that is focused on creating a genuine connection with our clients. If you would like to talk with a Thrive Therapist about yourself, your child, or teen attending therapy via video sessions, please reach out to us by phone at 858-342-1304.

As always, thanks for reading and comments are always welcome regarding any issues around child or teen psychotherapy services in San Diego by Thrive Therapy Studio.

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Why Thrive will keep doing telehealth for the time being

7/10/2020

As I sit alone in my office, as I have for months now during the Covid19 pandemic, I have thought a lot about Thrive’s options going forward in terms of how to provide the best care for our clients and community. I have debated with myself about the idea of reopening for in person sessions and talked with my team at length about it. I have felt sad even at the lack of activity in an office that I designed and decorated to be a safe space for both our clients and our team.

The decisions that business owners are having to make in light of the pandemic are truly challenging for all of us. While I do not have any right to comment on what any other office is doing, nor am I interested in doing so, it is my job at Thrive to lead us in the best way possible right now for our team, our clients, and our greater community.

As such, we are not planning to reopen our office to in person sessions anytime soon. So, I thought I would write a blog post to share more with our readers as to why we have come to this conclusion.

First and foremost, we want to protect our clients and prioritize our relationships with our clients. Many people, and therapists, would prefer to have more in person contact right now. I completely understand that desire and feel that way myself. However, I feel such a strong responsibility to our clients at Thrive that I do not want to take the risk that someone would be exposed to this at times very dangerous illness at our office. I personally would not want to live with the guilt I would feel about that and also feel it is my ethical responsibility to protect our clients from having to make the choice about in person or telehealth sessions. For now, I will make the hard choice to keep us in the “telehealth only plan” until the data suggests another approach would work and protect our clients.

We can do our jobs and support our clients remotely while others can’t. Our team has been thrilled with how our clients are responding to telehealth and have adjusted to meeting in this way. We were concerned about how we would all adjust and now that we are pretty much managing well, it makes sense to continue particularly because some people are not able to do their jobs remotely. We would hate for our clients to have to choose between coming to see us and another person they need to see in person. By making the choice for our office to stay virtual, they can see both of us and limit exposure.

We believe in limiting our exposure to other people in order to control the spread of Covid19. Particularly since the virus seems to spread best indoors in small spaces over prolonged exposure, it makes sense to reduce our exposure to other people. In a small office like ours, it would be difficult to guarantee distance and we would prefer for our clients to be comfortable during our sessions rather than worried about how many other people have breathed the same air or sat in their spots on the couch that day/week. As therapists, we work hard to cultivate a safe space for our clients. Unfortunately, being in close proximity to others who don’t live with us does not feel safe at this time and would most likely hinder the therapeutic relationships we have worked hard to build.

We don’t believe we can control the choices anyone else is making and want to reduce the impact of community spread. As therapists, it is not our job to judge what others are doing with their lives and how they are making their choices. If we invited people back to our office it would be hard to mitigate the reactions we might have when others are making choices we are not ready for. And vice versa. For example, I have chosen to send my son back to daycare so that we can go back to working more normal hours. My clients might not feel comfortable with this and might not want to be exposed to those germs and have every right to feel that way. While we are all in this together, it is preferable in the interest of our relationships with our clients not to be sharing the same germs to avoid negative impacts on those relationships.

We want to be a consistent form of support. The adjustment to working remotely was definitely a challenge for all of us. Now that most of us are finding some level of comfort and rhythm in this new routine, I would hate to have our team and our clients adjust to working in person only to have to move to remote sessions and adjust all over again. We would rather be a consistent form of support our clients appreciate while the world feels so unmanageable and ever-changing.

Our licensing boards and professional associations still recommend that we continue with telehealth. While Thrive is multidisciplinary in our team, our boards and professional associations are all in agreement with the premise that we should continue with telehealth for now unless there are extremely compelling reasons to return to in person sessions. In our field, it is important that we follow the standard of care for our clients’ best interests.

The data does not support us reopening. Unfortunately, Covid19 cases are increasing and as such, it seems prudent to wait until a time when cases have decreased and we can provide some level of safety for in person sessions.

We appreciate our clients so much and their willingness to hang in there with us during this difficult time. I know that it is not easy to follow all of the social distancing guidelines and maintain our mental health, both collectively and individually. If our office staying closed allows you to see a close friend or family member with less risk, I’m happy to have helped in this way. For those who are struggling with telehealth sessions and are wanting to jump right back in, please know that I care about you as well and that we will do our best to make that decision to work together in person when it makes sense and we can guarantee that you (and your loved ones) are safe with us.

5 Tips on Engaging in Telehealth

Why Thrive will keep doing telehealth for the time being

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