Justine Blakeman, BACP

Practical therapeutic approaches for online care

Client-centred therapy keeps the person’s experience at the heart of sessions and focuses on understanding what matters most to the individual. It helps people feel heard and guides the conversation around their goals and priorities.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts, feelings and actions interact. It teaches simple exercises and experiments to test unhelpful thoughts and try new behaviours, which can be useful for anxiety, low mood and stress.

Dialectical behaviour therapy, or DBT, offers skills for managing strong emotions and improving interpersonal effectiveness. It provides step-by-step strategies for handling crisis moments and building more stable routines.

Finding the right approach is part of the work. The counsellor will discuss needs, goals and preferences and together try methods that fit the person. That collaborative exploration helps steer sessions towards what feels most helpful.

Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet. Video calls let people use visual cues and more conversational space. Phone sessions are useful when bandwidth is limited or for shorter check-ins. Live chat and text-based messaging suit people who prefer writing or who want quick, on-the-go exchanges. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy lives and to keep contact between sessions when needed.