I have many friends, oh yes. In fact, the numbers probably go into the hundreds. We meet regularly for a good chat, a bit of a laugh, perhaps to talk difficult things through, before heading off in our own separate directions. I’ve never actually met many of them, but all I need to do is log on to my computer, connect to the internet, and there they are.
Socialising these days is that easy, just a computer that works, and an ability to meet in a virtual world. I’m not actually talking about myself here. Yes, I can email, use the internet, and am pretty familiar with most sides of the computer. However, the rare occasions I have found myself wandering into the unknown realm of a chatroom, I have also found myself feeling as socially inept as I can in other, face-to-face situations. Once I get past the state of the weather and the journey (to wherever I am), I start to flounder.

You would think that typing social small talk would be easy, but I suspect that it triggers for many people the same fears and fantasies as would any other social encounter – getting it wrong, sounding stupid, not having anything important to say, fearing judgment (I am aware of the potential for projection here). Yet, I know several people who have found partners online, and many more who have retreated into its virtual safety, too fearful to step outside into their real world. I see too many clients for whom the world of face-to-face encounters is a terrifying prospect, and who live instead through a medium of binary numbers organised into a satisfying whole.

Then there are the others; many people for whom the internet is a means of facilitating and maintaining contact through social networking sites. I have re-established contact with several old school friends who I had otherwise lost touch with. Interestingly I have lost touch with some of them all over again, which makes me wonder about whether a) I am just a lousy friend, or b) sometimes things are just meant to be. My own children have a staggering array of online friends. Yet from my own experience, and from that of others I talk to, including other parents, clients, friends etc, the shadow side of the net can be a sinister place indeed: online bullying, humiliation, and a world of lost souls. It is perhaps truly hard to know of another’s experience online, unless you have held their mouse. (I’m not sure whether this updated version of the moccasins metaphor really works – progress is not always a good thing!)

There has been tremendous work in developing online support systems for people. The work of Kate Anthony or Terry Hanley, for example, in pushing the parameters of knowledge and understanding around online therapy, has significantly contributed to helping counsellors meet the needs of others in ways very different to a traditional model of counselling. In my own counselling setting of higher education, we are increasingly making use of online systems to reach otherwise ‘hard to reach’ clients – either because of practical difficulties, eg studying abroad or away from the university, or perhaps because otherwise they might never walk through the door of a counselling service. I have offered email counselling to clients to support long breaks in counselling (returning home for the summer, for example), and for clients for whom interpersonal contact, in a face-to-face way, would only ever be experienced as shaming.

I must acknowledge some difficulty though. When might the solution also be part of the problem? It is, of course, essential that counselling services reflect on the nature of their client group, and how they might continue to make their services appropriate and accessible. For many services, that would mean ensuring that some online provision is at least considered. However, the parallel of working with anxiety strikes me here: supporting our clients to come face-to-face with what they are frightened of, rather than colluding with an ongoing and therefore debilitating avoidance of it. Might there be occasions where offering online help in fact reinforces the pain, rather than playing a part in alleviating it?
One thing is certain, the online world is here to stay, and will continue to grow in both its application and influence, regardless of what one Luddite counsellor has to say. My children would roll their eyes at me… lol! 

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