Over the last few weeks I have got used to using Zoom for my sessions, support groups, and workshops. On the one hand, Zoom is an opportunity for connection irrespective of distance. However, I have noticed that for me it takes more work and awareness to keep a balance of attention. I can’t touch or feel or smell someone is there. It’s harder to know on a deep level that someone is there. I recently experienced working on early distress in a session, which I do if can, but then getting lost and confused for the rest of the day. We understand that it is important to have a balance of attention. We try to work with our attention away from distress. Just going back and diving into what happened to us can be confusing. We can get lost and not be able to distinguish the present from the past. 


In this extraordinary time, we need to be able to discharge in order to think flexibly. So, the questions are, “What do I need to do as a client to really know someone is there?” and “What do I need to do as a counsellor so that my client can really know I’m there?” The biggest contradiction [to distress] is most often the counsellor. Now, in the present, someone is listening, thinking, remembering my goodness and intelligence when I can’t remember. But there is a new challenge when I’m seeing and connecting with my counsellor on a screen.


I am taking more time both as counsellor and client to reach through the screen, to really connect. I have to work harder. I am now taking much more time at the beginning of sessions, both as counsellor and client, to notice and establish a real human-to-human connection.


Intelligence, as we use the term in RC, is the ability to think flexibly with each new moment. We have many challenges, many new moments, in this pandemic. It is easy to confuse the “New and Bad” with the “Old and Bad,” and easy to feel like there isn’t anyone there. The fact is that there wasn’t anyone there back then. And the way out, of course, is discharge.


I’d like to know your thoughts and creative ways of being human while counselling in the time of COVID-19.