Five Strategies to Maximize Telehealth Therapy in New York City

Have you wondered how to approach your first therapy session best online when starting Telehealth or virtual therapy? Here are some of our best suggestions for how to optimize your teletherapy sessions with our practice, or any mental health care provider.

At Healthy Minds NYC, we have offered Telehealth sessions with clients for years. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, like most therapy practices around the country, we experienced an increase in the number of clients who prefer to have sessions virtually rather than come into the office. While we still value in-person therapy sessions, and our team is ready to meet with you in our beautiful office space in midtown Manhattan, we also enjoy providing therapy online.

Over the course of the past few years, here are some of the best practices we’ve noticed among our clients who seem to thrive in the virtual setting for therapy.

How to Maximize Your Experience in a Telehealth Therapy Session

1.) Give yourself a chance to go from getting to the telehealth session to being in the session.

Remember when we used to commute places? Time spent on the train or in a car provided valuable transition space to mentally prepare for what was coming next. Even walking a few blocks to a therapy session, with a moment in between to grab a coffee or a bite to eat on the way, gave mental space to shake off the rest of the day and re-center on personal concerns before entering a therapy session. Now, travel time looks like waiting 1.3 seconds to click “join meeting.” As a result, it’s easy to feel like we’re running from one thing to the next with no preparation. We simply hop out of one meeting and into the next. You’ve likely experienced this shift in your work life over the past few years. If you’re like many of our clients who work in meeting-rich environments, you probably feel some stress and mental strain from everything going remote.

So how do we fix this?

At Healthy Minds NYC, we recommend carving out space to mentally shift gears before your telehealth session. This is as simple as blocking three minutes before online therapy to sit in silence. If you don’t take enough time to pause between activities, you might spend most of your telehealth session processing a secondary issue in your life.

For example, let’s say you’ve been suffering from underlying stress related to a conflict you had years ago with your sibling. Or maybe you never had time to grieve the way your parent’s marriage fell apart when you were a teenager. The pain from these experiences is causing all kinds of conflict in your present life as you often feel misunderstood or abandoned in new relationships. But instead of processing these deeper hurts and grief in therapy, if you haven’t transitioned into a telehealth session well, you might spend most of the session on a less salient topic, like processing a negative interaction you had with a client or a frustrating experience you had with a colleague in the middle of your day. These issues are certainly important, and any great therapist can use them to tie back to larger patterns of behavior in your life or areas that might be tripping you up in terms of being successful. However, focusing on these issues rather than addressing core issues may cause you to leave the session feeling unfulfilled. You’ll lose out on valuable therapy time dealing with secondary issues while neglecting the deeper problems that frustrate you again and again.

Always make sure to give yourself about five to ten minutes to transition mentally and prepare before you start your telehealth session.

2.) Set the scene for Telehealth by preparing your environment.

The next space that you want to consider as you prepare for a telehealth appointment is to focus on the physical environment where you are having your session. Ask yourself, are there any visual cues that will distract or make it hard to focus during the session? Often we have environmental triggers that take our minds in directions we’d rather not go. For example, a stack of bills you haven’t paid or photos of an ex littered around your apartment might send you spiraling into a mental framework that isn’t helpful to your emotional health.

When you think about the space where you’ll have your therapy session, also consider how well other people can see or hear you. Imagine sharing private thoughts and then later discovering your partner or roommate was overhearing comments you shared in confidence. Learning this might impact your willingness to be open later, which is necessary for treatment. In terms of sound, also make note of what sounds you might hear. Investing in a white noise machine can be helpful to block out the voices outside your door. Sometimes catching stray portions of conversations people have outside of our therapy space can be enough to derail our thought process. Give yourself true privacy so you don’t block your breakthrough in a telehealth session.

All of the senses are important to consider when preparing your space for a virtual session. What will you see that might pull you out of the moment? Is the room temperature comfortable, or will you feel too cold or too hot? Grabbing a cardigan or a cozy blanket to keep with you during the session can help you feel more at ease. Is there a weird smell in the room? Light a candle. Set the stage before you start your session.

3.) Get equipped with the right tools for your telehealth session.

The next step in preparing for a telehealth session is to bring materials to help you maximize the session. One tool we love is a journal or notebook you can keep nearby where you can take notes. Not only does this help you stay focused during the session, but it might give you a great point of reference for later. We love a notebook that can be a thought journal for processing between sessions and a place to track therapist recommendations or progress during sessions. If you struggle with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a notebook or fidget-spinner device can be a useful aid to direct your thoughts throughout the session.

If you’re not a notetaker, it’s fine to disregard using a journal. But you might want to have a piece of paper on hand in case you want to jot a note to yourself to research or bring up for discussion later with your therapist or coach.

4.) Optimize and test your technology set-up for a telehealth session.

Next, ensure your tech is set. Like any virtual meeting you might have for work or communicating with friends, tech etiquette for a video meeting with your therapist is similar. it’s ideal for a telehealth session to have a camera set up at the proper height. The therapist needs the opportunity to see your face clearly, as most of what we communicate is nonverbal. One of the biggest losses we’ve had with doing telehealth and teletherapy appointments is we miss out on all of what’s communicated when sitting across from one another in a room. That’s why Healthy Minds NYC does not offer phone-only therapy sessions. We require video to ensure you are safe and to better care for you by reading your nonverbal reactions and cues during the session. Our goal is to protect you, and we never want to take you emotionally to a place that leaves you feeling dysregulated. Knowing where you are and what’s happening in your life is really helpful.

During your telehealth session, be bold in sharing with your therapist what they may not see or be able to pick up on video. Communicate with your therapist if new emotions are firing. For example, tears are welling up in the corner of your eyes, but your therapist can’t see it because of the camera resolution. Or if you feel like your heart is racing or breathing is labored, share these experiences. Non-verbal responses are more difficult to pick up on a typical video conference call. So it’s OK to ask your therapist to pause and express that you feel overwhelmed by what’s being discussed. Say, “I know you can’t see it, but my hands are starting to tremble.” These are the kinds of physical signs that we would’ve been able to catch during an in-person meeting to inform how we pace the session. Volunteering this information equips your therapist to support you better.

In addition to your camera, prioritize setting up great audio by either using the microphone that comes with your computer system or attaching a simple external camera.

5.) Sandwich self-care around your telehealth sessions.

Finally, try to schedule self-care around your sessions. Therapy can be hard emotional work. Honor your time and emotional energy investment by treating yourself kindly before and after the telehealth session. We already discussed how leading into the sessions, it’s valuable to allot time to transition and mentally prepare. The same is true for the end of the session. Following a telehealth session, reserve time to process what you experienced and shift gears into the rest of your day. Fifteen to thirty minutes is a sufficient amount of time to debrief.

We recommend planning for a short burst of physical self-care to pull you out of your mind and back into your body. Go for a short walk around the block. Pour yourself a nice cup of tea or drink a cool, refreshing glass of water. You can also turn on some of your favorite music or watch a YouTube short. Choose whatever feels most restorative and replenishing to you. Also, double-check that your next session is scheduled at Healthy Minds NYC and you don’t have any time conflicts that will keep you from your next appointment.

Therapy is meant to be a meaningful experience and one that should feel inspiring, encouraging, and generally progressive. If you leave your therapy session, feeling more discouraged, more distracted, or more anxious than when you started, it may be because you and your therapist were unable to close off a certain conversation properly. Make sure you share with your therapist as much information as you can about how your experience was in the session beyond simply the things that you were talking about within the session.

SCHEDULE A FREE THERAPY CONSULTATION

If you’re ready to begin working with a therapist, coach, or psychiatrist today, Healthy Minds NYC is accepting new clients. We are also happy to provide you with a free consultation with one of our Care Coordinators to help you on your search for mental health care. Contact our office using our text feature today or schedule now online.