This is also why it's incumbent upon us to be in our own therapy. Our own system processes their unresolved excrescences. As we sit with an individual, couple, family or group, we absorb information, psychic patterns and unprocessed emotional energy on behalf of the people we're working with. Our bodies and psyches are our instrument. If you run groups, it is even more crucial. If you're a therapist, keeping track of your own gut-reactions, thoughts, feelings and felt-sense experience while working with people is essential. People have since written about 'zoom fatigue' and the disorienting effect of being 'in the presence of others' absence.' For me, I discovered that it was much harder to stay embodied, to stay present with my own feelings and sensations. One question that comes up regularly is why? Why the phone, not video?Įarly on I noticed that being on a video conference was uniquely draining. But I had never run a process group over the phone and was nervous about how it would go.

I was already working with roughly half my clients over the phone, mostly because they weren't local.

My colleagues were all switching to videoconferencing, and I instead started doing all of my work over the phone. I set out to write this blog post at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, several months ago.