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##  E-Mail Counseling: Skills for Maximum Impact. ERIC/CASS Digest.              

OVERVIEW
In July and August of 1999, Kate Collie (KC) conducted an             interview with Dan Mitchell (DM) and Lawrence Murphy (LM) on the                topic of online counseling skills. The interview was done by e-mail             so DM and LM could simultaneously describe and demonstrate skills               they use in their e-mail counseling practice. 
All three authors               have been involved in the development of online counseling. DM and              LM began an e-mail counseling and therapy practice in 1995 (Murphy &            Mitchell, 1998) and are among the few people who have both practiced            online counseling and published on the subject. KC has been involved            in the collaborative development of computer-supported distance art             therapy (Collie & Cubranic, 1999), an art-based form of online                  counseling that uses synchronous speech communication and shareable             hand-drawn computer art. 
The skills DM and LM have developed for              asynchronous text-only communication are relevant to many types of              distance therapeutic communication. The interview excerpt that                  follows contains a discussion of these skills. THE                            INTERVIEWKC: Hello, Dan and Lawrence. It is a pleasure to have              this opportunity to interview the two of you. 
DM: Hi Kate. I'm                very excited about this opportunity and want to thank you for the               work you're putting in to the interview. Before we begin, let me                first prepare myself (explicitly, so you know how I do it) the way I            do when replying to my clients. Before I type even my first                     keystroke, I have only one thing on my mind: express warmth and                 personal caring. If I were permitted only to say one thing in this              interview, it would be that: express warmth and personal caring. To             this end, even as I write at this moment, I have pulled up a chair              for you and a chair for Lawrence, and placed them beside me. In a               similar fashion, I would like to invite our readers to imagine the              three of us sitting in chairs in front of them as if they were                  watching the interview. They may even choose to place three chairs              in front of them. Kate, I'm imagining your warm smile, and I feel a             sense of anticipation about the insightful questions I know you're              about to ask. 
KC: Dan, I am amazed. You have certainly conveyed               warmth and caring. Beginning this interview I felt a very                       matter-of-fact and rational sense of conducting the conversation.               However your words offer me a feeling of closer rapport with you,               and I feel more inclined to speak on a more personal level. 
LM: Hi            Kate. I want to echo Dan's sentiments. It's a pleasure to be                    involved with you on this project and after reading Dan's initial               response, I'm sitting here smiling with anticipation myself. 
KC:              I'll start now with my first question about communicating with                  someone you can't see. The lack of nonverbal information is often               assumed to be a serious drawback to on-line counseling. In your                 article in the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling (Murphy &            Mitchell, 1998), you agree that the lack of nonverbal cues presents             a challenge, but you explain that you have developed techniques for             dealing with this. Two you mention are emotional bracketing and                 descriptive immediacy. What is emotional bracketing? 
LM: I'll                 explain emotional bracketing and demonstrate it at the same                     time [feeling pleased that I thought of this]. This technique is                used throughout "therap-e-mails." When we thought about our                     face-to-face therapy experiences, it seemed obvious to us that the              nonverbal element is [feeling unsure of the wording I want] in the              background of our conscious awareness. It takes effort, and indeed              training, to be aware of these elements. Once aware, we discover                that the nonverbal dimension often communicates emotional material.             Sometimes this is congruent with the person's words, sometimes                  not [now feeling very on track]. In therap-e-mail, we discovered                that we could compensate for the lack of nonverbals by bracketing               the emotional content behind the words. We place, and invite our                clients to place, important emotional content (particularly                     emotional information that we couldn't otherwise glean from the                 text) in square brackets. Here is an example of what a client might             write: 
I have reread your last therap-e-mail several                          times [feeling stupid again] and although I appreciate your                     words [can't believe you have such faith in me] I don't think I'm               ever going to have a worthwhile relationship [very very sad].                   Richard called again to say I'm an idiot [angry with myself]. He's              so mean.  But, hmm, now that I think about what you said again, I               think I'm actually more angry with him than with myself. [Weird. I              feel pretty good just now]. 
KC: Thank you, Lawrence. And what                 about descriptive immediacy? 
LM: Descriptive immediacy is a                   technique that we use to deepen the connection between client and               therapist. We also encourage clients to use it when they feel that              it will give us important information. Here is an example of what a             therapist might write: 
I have just finished reading your last                 therap-e-mail, Angie, and my smile is a mile wide. As I think about             your successes over guilt I find myself nodding my head and saying              the words "you did it, you did it" smiling all the while. If you                were here with me now you would see me shrugging my shoulders with              my hands in the air, as if to say "well...looks like guilt's power              is all burned out". Congratulations Angie. 
We use descriptive                 immediacy in several situations. First, we use it to highlight a                moment of intense emotion, any situation in which a simple verbal               response is not enough. This may be about a success, as in the                  example above, or it may be in response to a very painful                       disclosure. Second, we use it in situations where we might use                  immediacy face-to-face. An example would be a situation in which the            client's words seem incongruent, or contradict a previous                       therap-e-mail. We would use descriptive immediacy to first deepen               the intimacy between us before venturing to - even mildly -                     confront. However, the technique can be used any time the therapist             feels that it would be helpful to deepen the bond with a                        client. 
KC: Thanks. Have the two of you developed more techniques             since you wrote the British Journal of Guidance and Counselling                 article? @DM: Yes, we have! This is the part I find most exciting.              Perhaps I can first focus on the appearance of the e-mail itself.               Some clients write using 8-point fonts. Others use coloured text                with special backgrounds. Still others use the defaults that come               with their software. This creates for me something of a first                   impression - similar to the moment of having a client enter my                  physical office. From the appearance of the e-mail, I begin to form             hypotheses about clients' stories. 
Looking more closely at the                text itself, I may notice that the client has used the lower case "             i" to refer to himself. Could this client be a little bit shy?                  Possibly. Or I may notice that some words have been misspelled. Does            that mean the client was in too much of a rush to check, or does it             speak to the client's literacy level? A moment ago, I spelled the               word coloured using Canadian spelling. If a client had done so, I               would wonder whether he or she has British or Canadian                          origins. 
Sometimes clients use ALL CAPS to emphasize a point or               even to convey emotion that can be interpreted based on the context.            For example, a client may write, "I took your advice and told my                mother. I can't believe I ACTUALLY DID IT!" Clearly the client is               showing excitement and pride in his or her                                      accomplishment. 
Naturally, I can use any of these observations                therapeutically as well! For instance, perhaps it is important for              me to take a one-down position with a client so that a certain                  intervention will be effective. i may choose to do so by using lower            case "i" and by reducing the size of my font. Or I can use a dash -             or a series of dots to denote a pause in my thought process... and              thus intensify the point I'm making. 
And of course I can use                  pseudo-words such as hmmmm or intentional misspellings such as                  oooooohhh boy. Were you able to hear that long oooooohhh in your                head? 
Hmmm. Stretching the length of words... Isn't that nonverbal            communication? [Can you tell I'm feeling a little smug right                    now?] 
Did I just notice a smile creeping over your face,                      Kate? ...or was that my imagination? 
New clients can contact                  Therapy Online through their web site                                           http://www.therapyonline.ca. REFERENCESCollie, K., & Cubranic,            D. (1999). An art therapy solution to a telehealth problem. Art                 Therapy: The Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 16(4),            186-193. 
Murphy, L. J., & Mitchell, D. L. (1998). When writing                helps to heal: e-mail as therapy. British Journal of Guidance and               Counselling, 26, 21-31. 
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Kate Collie is a professional                 artist and a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Health                     Promotion Research at the University of British Columbia in                     Vancouver, British Columbia. 
Dan Mitchell is a practicing                     additions counselor, and co-founder and senior therapist with                   Therapy Online, an Internet-based counseling service in Vancouver,              British Columbia. 
Lawrence Murphy is co-founder and senior                    therapist with Therapy Online. He also works in health promotion and            substance abuse prevention in southern Ontario. 
ERIC Digests are              in the public domain and may be freely reproduced and                           disseminated. 
This publication was funded by the U.S. Department              of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement,                   Contract NO. ED-99-CO-0014. Opinions expressed in this report do not            necessarily reflect the positions of the U.S. Department of                     Education, OERI, or ERIC/CASS.                                               **Title:** E-Mail Counseling: Skills for Maximum Impact. ERIC/CASS Digest.              **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services Clearinghouse,            University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 201 Ferguson Building,              P.O. Box 26171, Greensboro, NC 27402-6171. Tel: 336-334-4114; Tel:              800-414-9769 (Toll Free); Fax: 336-334-4116; Web site:                          http://ericcass.uncg.edu; e-mail: [email protected].                         **Descriptors:**  Computer Mediated Communication, Counseling,  Counseling                       Techniques, Counselor Training,  Electronic Mail, Internet,                     Interviews, Skills                                                           **Identifiers:**  Online Counseling                                                           
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