Art Matthews, MA LPC DCC's Blog (9)

You're in a video chat session with a new client and the discussion becomes extremely confusing. After revealing a history replete with abuse and neglect in her early years, the client's physicality changes, her voice changes and she begins talking about herself in the third person, ridiculing herself and saying, "Alice is such a wimp! It's a good thing she has me to take over when she can't handle life anymore!" A few more shifts and you begin to wonder, does this client have Dissociative Ident… Continue

I had a conversation with a fellow counselor that I met while working with an "advising site" offering everything from psychic readings to distance therapy. My friend -- who continues to work with the site -- and I traded observations about the clients that seem to be drawn to those kinds of sites and wondered if clients on a more traditionally focused counseling/therapy site would be similar. We noticed that the typical "advising" site clients were more likely to be clock watchers. These sites… Continue

O.K. It's been a few months now since I completed the Distance Credentialed Counselor (DCC) training seminar, and I'm still not off the ground from a private practice standpoint. The biggest hangup has been finding a web address that 1) hasn't been used, 2) is easily memorable, and 3) I like. My criteria has perhaps been part of the problem. Succinct - I don't want some sentence like "Your Changed Life" that, when converted into an address, looks like a bunch of unconnected characters.… Continue

I need to get better at adding to my blog. I've not yet managed to multitask like a Gen-Xer. Today, I'm pretty excited. I send out a survey to our students asking those who had received counseling to rate their experience. One of the questions related to what resources students found valuable. Although I did not have a fantastic return on the survey, it was very positive and 25% of respondents specifically identified distance counseling as a resources that they found helpful. My personal exper… Continue

Working on a university campus, I have different ebbs and flows of client need than community counselors and private practice therapists. The beginning of the year, testing schedules, Holiday Breaks and of course end of year and graduation all influence how full my calendar can get. Lately, I've seen an expected jump in my appointments. My campus has roughly 750 residential students, meaning they physically attend classes on-site during their academic program. Attending a graduate school of hea… Continue

Well, I officially have asked for my LivePerson and LiveCounseling accounts to be removed. After several months of trying to persuade folks at LivePerson to address ethical concerns for their counseling clients and seeing no response, I've come to the conclusion that I don't want this fight. They are both too big for me to influence any sort of grand change. Along with my LivePerson.com (AKA Live-Counselor.com) and LiveCounseling.com (AKA LiveCounselors.com)account, I have also deleted my accou… Continue

After completing the DCC workshop last week, I hurried home to get started on my "homework assignment," a four page document listing the 20 competencies we covered in the training. Our assignment, should we choose to accept it, is to respond to the competencies one by one, outlining how we would meet the competencies in our practice after completing the training. My four page doc is now 8 and I have eight competencies to go... Pity the poor person that has to review these! I'm extremely happy t… Continue

Today I finished day one of a two-day training for Distance Credentialed Counselor. I found it very satisfying and eye opening. Some things I thought I was doing "right" I may need to look at more closely and some things that I knew were problematic are confirmed to be problematic. The training has given me more structure and guidance on how to make a go of this (though realistically it's not going to be a full-time job for anyone without a major advertising budget and a team of top-notch I.T.… Continue

I began using online therapy probably several years ago without even knowing it. I would have little conversations with clients who were canceling appointments or who were exploring if they wanted to enter counseling. Even though I was clear email was not very secure, they would send me emails and rarely ever wanted to talk over the phone. I've begun using chat as a form of counseling just in the last two years with students of mine who are out on clinical rotations (I have a day job of being a… Continue