Online Counselling
Thunder Bay Counselling Centre, in partnership with Catholic Family Development Centre and Children’s Centre Thunder Bay, is proud to introduce online counselling services. These services provide the option of accessing professional counselling at the click of a mouse.
Anyone who can navigate online can enter into the world of online counselling. Teens and youth are especially comfortable with communicating online and people living in rural communities who just can’t access counselling in the traditional way, can benefit.
The first step is to contact Thunder Bay Counselling Centre directly to see if online counselling is right for you.
(807) 684-1880
How Does it Work?
After contacting Thunder Bay Counselling Centre, you will be provided with a website to go to where you can securely register and log into your very own confidential email system. Through the account, you will be able to express what is troubling you and your counsellor will communicate with you through email.
You will need to describe the problems and issues that are challenging you. Your counsellor will want to know how you feel about the problem, how it has impacted your life and what you have already done to resolve your issues. An important key point here is that you look over what you have said (written) to your counsellor and make sure you have included as much as you can about the issue.
Your counsellor will respond in a very welcoming way, starting with a brief description of the “how to’s of online counselling” and then you will be on your way. For example, the counsellor may set up a specific day and time during which he will respond and the client can be confident that at the end of this time an e-mail will arrive that responds to the message.
The Benefits of Online Counselling
Working online provides counselling and therapy clients with several advantages in terms of choice of counsellors and “meeting” arrangements.
- Client Choice and Geography
Clients can choose an online counsellor for reasons completely independent of geographical proximity, such as theoretical orientation or specialization. Rather than starting with the question of who is available in their area, clients can start with the question of what kind of service they would like. From the counsellor’s point of view, all clients can be dealt with in the same way, whether they live on a remote island, in the centre of a large city, or in a completely different country.
- Flexible Physical Requirements
Clients don’t need to be physically mobile. Clients don’t need to be able to hear. In general, clients don’t need to be feeling physically 100% in the way they might if they were attending an appointment in the counsellor’s office. Clients can make themselves comfortable with a cup of tea, candlelight, music, or anything else that contributes to their well-being.
- Flexible, Client-Drive “Appointment” Times
For clients who are unable to keep regular appointment times for reasons of work, or who just don’t like regular appointment times for any reason at all, the flexibility of working with an asynchronous medium like email can make the difference between pursuing counselling and doing without.
- Flexible, Client-Driven Frequency
Changing methods for online counseling are now being developed that challenge the traditional model whereby counseling frequency takes place on the counsellor’s terms: instead, the client can be entirely free to set their own pace of counselling work.
- Freedom to Travel
Clients who travel for business or study, or who temporarily relocate to another country, can carry on their counselling without interruption.
