Conducting Online Therapy Sessions Part 2: Remaining Effective and Managing Re-entry Anxiety: Video Course

On 28 May 2020, Christiane Sanderson conducted a seminar explaining how we can run online therapy sessions that deliver results, covering the provision of a safe therapeutic space, pacing our therapeutic approach and managing our own anxieties through self-care. At this seminar, Christiane develops on the previous theme and explains how we can continue to be effective and incorporate more advanced tools and techniques including stabilisation skills, affect regulation and somatic markers. She explains the best practices that we can incorporate and how we can fine-tune the delivery of our therapeutic techniques to suit the online format.

Specifically, we consider how we can:

• Provide a safe therapeutic space, that helps manage health anxieties and trauma symptoms – reducing the longer-term impact of social distancing and isolation
• Provide a range of online platforms as a choice to clients – facilitating a choice of platform that works best for the client, while continuing to ensure privacy and confidentiality
• Build and enhance awareness of somatic markers that indicate emotional dysregulation
• Pick up cues in both verbal and non-verbal communication; and the use of voice, breath and body language to modulate and regulate emotional states so as to remain present, connected and attuned
• Incorporate trauma informed practice skills and apply a combination of top-down and bottom-up regulation techniques that enable our clients to slow down and come into the body, with a view to increasing distress tolerance and improving stress resilience
• Pace our therapeutic approach, including assessing how to balance deeper exploration of past trauma or aversive experiences with focusing on what clients need in the here-and-now; so as to reduce the activation of stress sensitivity and help them navigate their present circumstances
• Ensure that clients are sufficiently resourced to manage the long term physical and mental impact of the pandemic, as well as current anxieties including financial and employment concerns, as well as preparing for re-entry
• Model emotional regulation and engage in emotional co-regulation in the online format
• Take steps towards becoming more sentient practitioners who can mitigate anxieties and sense of isolation, while creating deeper connections with clients

About the speaker

Christiane Sanderson BSc, MSc. is a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of Roehampton, of London with 26 years of experience working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse and sexual violence. She has delivered consultancy, continuous professional development and professional training for parents, teachers, social workers, nurses, therapists, counsellors, solicitors, the NSPCC, the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Committee, the Methodist Church, the Metropolitan Police Service, SOLACE, the Refugee Council, Birmingham City Council Youth Offending Team, and HMP Bronzefield.

She is the author of Counselling Skills for Working with Shame, Counselling Skills for Working with Trauma: Healing from Child Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence and Domestic Abuse, Counselling Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, 3rd edition, Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse, The Seduction of Children: Empowering Parents and Teachers to Protect Children from Child Sexual Abuse, and Introduction to Counselling Survivors of Interpersonal Trauma, all published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. She has also written The Warrior Within: A One in Four Handbook to Aid Recovery from Sexual Violence; TheSpirit Within: A One in Four Handbook to Aid Recovery from Religious Sexual Abuse Across All Faiths and Responding to Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse: A pocket guide for professionals, partners, families and friends for the charity One in Four for whom she is a trustee.

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