How to Prepare for a Teletherapy Session

During these times of social distancing, teletherapy has temporarily taken the place of in person sessions. For some, beginning teletherapy may feel like a major transition, causing additional stress and unease. This blog covers the best ways to prepare for your teletherapy session in order to get the most out of your time.

Preparing for Teletherapy

1. Clarify How to Join

At this point, you probably have a scheduled session to start with a clinician offering teletherapy. Upon scheduling, check in with your clinician to see what their specific teletherapy platform is and how to join the session. Depending on the platform used, there will be different ways to access the video session. Knowing the process ahead of time will help you to iron out any issues with accessing the platform prior to the session starting.

2. Make Sure Everything is in Place

For teletherapy sessions, you will likely need to complete a consent form in order for your clinician to provide teletherapy. Other information, such as an email address and phone number will likely be needed in order to contact you. Make sure that all of your information is correct and up to date in order to make the process as smooth as possible.

3. Remember Your Session

The recent change to many of our schedules can lead to quite a bit of confusion and forgetfulness of our upcoming sessions. When scheduling your session, be sure to mark down the session time or set a reminder on your phone to remember when the session is scheduled.

4. Get Ready Ahead of Time

While you don’t have to travel to get to the therapy office, it is still helpful for you to prepare for your therapy session at least a couple of minutes ahead of time. Making sure that you have everything together and ready to go will help you to ease into your session, rather than feeling rushed. Take a moment to make sure you have any questions or worksheets ready and ensure that your device is charged and connected to the internet.

5 .Try to Minimize Distractions

Being at home, it can be tough to limit all distractions and create a calm and quiet space for yourself. However, trying to minimize distractions can be helpful to keep you focused and engaged during the session. If you can, go to a quiet space away from others where you feel comfortable talking openly. Having a clean and organized environment is also sometimes helpful if you find that you tend to get distracted with messes around you. Keep your phone on hand, as that can be used as a backup to get in touch with your therapist if the connection breaks. However, doing things like turning off your volume and placing the phone face down can help you to remain focused on the therapy session and not on your new notifications.

Teletherapy comes with a large transition for many of us. Being out of the office and connecting through a webcam entails a different interaction, and can be accompanied by a lot of additional disruptions, distractions, and video call lags. During this process, remember to be kind with yourself. It is totally normal to feel nervous, frustrated, or distracted when doing teletherapy. Communicate any questions or concerns that you may have with your therapist so you can both work to make the process as comfortable and feasible as possible during this time.