What is email counselling and is it for me?

If you’ve clicked on this link, maybe you are curious about the idea of email counselling and want to know if it would work for you? 

Email counselling can be a really good way to work in therapy, for a number of reasons: 

• Maybe you work shifts and can’t guarantee meeting a counsellor at the same time each week?  

• Maybe your job takes you up and down the country, or abroad on a regular basis? 

• Maybe the thought of sitting in a therapy room is intimidating and claustrophobic for you? 

• Maybe you have caring responsibilities, and can’t get time away during the day 

• Or maybe you just enjoy expressing yourself in the written word, and feel like you can really get some insight by working in this way? 

Whatever your reasons, email counselling can be the right choice at the right time. 

So how does it work? 

Before we start work together, we will exchange a few emails, so that we can check this works for you, and I will give you some guidelines, to help you get started. After that, it’s down to you, what you want to explore and how you respond to my emails to you. 

Once a week you write an email to me, via a confidential email service and I will reply. This exchange gives you the opportunity to explore your experiences and how you are feeling. We each send a maximum of 500 words once a week. This might sound short, but it is quite a lot of words, and having a limit can help you to think about what is most important for you to explore.  

I spend the same time writing to you as if we were meeting for a fifty-minute session, and it’s good for you to do the same – but you don’t need to do this in one session, you can be flexible. Drafting an email, then coming back to it several hours later, or the next day, might give you some insight that you had missed - sometimes writing across a couple of days can be really effective. 

We agree to reply to each other by a certain day and time, so you’ll always know when to expect my email. I take two working days to reflect, draft and send my reply to you. This gives me time to really focus on your thoughts and words, and to consider how we can explore issues together. 

As we don’t meet face to face (although we can meet online at any point too), you have the space each week to write, read and reflect. And most importantly, to write and reply at a time that suits your needs. This might be at six in the morning, before the family wakes up, or late at night, when the house is quiet once more. 

A real benefit of working like this is that, as we reply to each other, you can look back at your progress, see how far you have come, and can refer back to our words after we finish working together - this can feel really comforting and empowering 😊.  

Keeping everything confidential 

Your privacy is vital in any work we do together, online, face to face or by email. You need to know that our emails are secure and can’t be accessed by anyone else. 

For email counselling I use a secure, encrypted email service called ProtonMail. To protect the confidentiality of our work, it is essential that you also use a ProtonMail address. It’s free and straightforward to set up – if you decide to work with me, I will send you details to help you set this up. 

You will need somewhere to write your emails that is confidential to you, where you will not be disturbed. It’s hard to write about deeply personal things if you know you might be interrupted at any moment. Writing in a coffee shop, or on public transport is not advised, as it’s not confidential, and what you are writing might leave you feeling emotional or vulnerable. 

How do we start? 

Email counselling is £50 per week/ email sent and must be booked in advance. I am happy to chat with you online to explore if this is right for you, or you can message me for more information. You can contact me at: www.rightplacewirral.co.uk/contact 

My training and development 

Always check that your therapist has had thorough training in email counselling. I was lucky to be trained by the fabulous Chloe Foster at Sussex Rainbow Counselling - www.sussexrainbowcounselling.com  

I took both foundation and advanced courses in 2024 and would recommend this to other counsellors and therapists wanting to work in this way.