As I was sitting in the traffic in Liverpool city centre recently, the dulcet tones of the Today programme were drifting around my car. Murder here, war there, financial crisis over there – that depressingly familiar start to the day.

My attention was taken by the sound of a beautifully crafted, soothing ping as an email arrived on my iPhone. I grabbed it and read the said email. It promised me that I could increase my ‘member’ simply by taking some pills. What member? I thought – I haven’t joined anything recently. Anyway, I put the phone away and slid back into my vacancy. (I need to point out at this stage that obviously I didn’t read my email because I was in a car and that would have been potentially illegal, and if I had, I certainly wouldn’t incriminate myself on the pages of a magazine that is distributed to 32,000 law-abiding therapists.)

Back to the story. Thought for the Day came on the radio. As a captive audience I listened attentively. It was excellent – really got me thinking (and not just for that day). It was about the communication age and how, with the emergence of fancy Smartphones and mobile communications, we have 24-hour easy-peasy access to all our emails any time we want (or don’t want, as it happens). Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, that beautifully crafted, soothing ping can hit us at any point. We can be online day and night, week in, week out, rain or shine. Oh joy to be so important that we have to check emails at any point... just in case there is something interesting or urgent.

I know it is not just me. I receive emails now with that telltale signature strip of Sent from my iPhone!, or perhaps Delivered Courtesy of my HTC Wireless Blackberry blah! The speaker on Thought for the Day was talking about how the immediacy of technology-based contact was stealing reflective space – eroding the moment-by-moment experience of relationships, thinking, feeling and being. He talked of working on his laptop while in the bath, which, I must admit, alarmed me on several levels.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone – and I don’t mean just love it, I mean lurve it. I carry it with me everywhere. EVERYWHERE! I scroll through its lovely screens, fiddle with its playful applications, caress its smooth and silky back, and simply stare and marvel at its sheer beauty. Are you getting the idea? But the Thought for the Day man was right – I had given myself entirely to it without question, like asking a lover to move in without checking if they were willing to pay their half of the rent first; so I reflected.

It became apparent to me how much my sense of stress, of rushing without thought or reflection, of missing the important things, had increased significantly since I had become hard-wired into the ‘always on’ communication. How many times did I check for emails instead of listening to my daughter’s latest account of her school day, or my partner’s own worries or joys – that sense of always being available to others, and yet no longer being available to myself?

Well, I was on a roll. I thought about my counselling, and how what I do to myself now is so contradictory with what I advocate for my clients: a move towards increased self-awareness and esteem, a respect for space and the importance of expression. I was talking the talk, but no longer walking the walk (I wonder if there is an app for that?). How could I truly be with my client, allow the silence, pay attention to the moment-by-moment process of our therapeutic exploration, hear the unspoken, connect with the despair, or sit with the unknown if my attention was continually being sidetracked by communications of the ether, coded into text and delivered with a ping? I couldn’t, and shouldn’t.

So I did something drastic; when I left work that day I turned it off. The Thought for the Day man had spoken of the addiction of communication, and it was true. I felt anxious that I might miss something important, and that twitching desire to turn it back on... just in case, you never know. But I didn’t; I went cold turkey and left it off (and continue to when I finish work). It was like getting into a warm bath at the end of a busy day; I actually began to enjoy being free, my head clearer, and my breathing calmer. Sometimes the most simple and obvious changes can have the biggest impact.

Andrew Reeves is a counsellor at the University of Liverpool Counselling Service and editor of Counselling and Psychotherapy Research (CPR)