and that will make the cost cheaper for you…Thomas Mattison Betterhelp… total and then based on your answers to your questions in the previously mentioned questionnaire they will match you with a therapist i’m going to use the words therapist and therapist interchangeably throughout this video but that’s not necessarily the case and i think that much better help uses both types of psychological health professionals so just keep that in mind once they match you with your counselor you’re able to talk to them and you can set up a time to have your first main meeting so it can either be through a video call through a regular phone call or through a chat or immediate message i always do video calls but it is good to understand that all four choices three really to me however they say it’s four are readily available and i understand that’s absolutely good for some people who are maybe a little bit more worried about therapy or not interested in doing a video call due to the fact that it makes them uncomfortable when the day of your session comes you can either log into the web browser or log in to the mobile app you can’t do both at the same time only one at a time and then you wait on your counselor to join and they will link you to the session when they do a little bell ring and then you’re ready to go and you can start having your your meeting throughout your first session you’re most likely going to have simply a be familiar with you kind of session to find out why are you thinking about treatment what things do you want to resolve what are your preferences as somebody participating in treatment what are your counselors choices and what’s their design of treatment all of those things will probably get hashed out in the first conference and after that with time you’ll get more comfy with one another and you’ll have more of those like much deeper

sessions where you can talk about your problems and whatever it is that you want to deal with and after that as time goes on you’ll have sessions nevertheless you paid for it or however you set it up with your counselor so with my counselor in particular i think this does differ by therapist however we do weekly sessions for one hour and i pay 35 dollars a week broken down however i have spent for all of my sessions beforehand to get that more affordable rate so let’s carry on to the pros and the cons of the platform i think among the greatest pros of much better assistance is that it is an online therapy service which makes it really accessible and very convenient for most people as long as you have an internet connection you can choose a variety of various ways to consult with your counselor so you can do text message video calls or phone calls they send you suggestions about your visit so it’s pretty challenging to forget when you have a time established they send you both email suggestions and text reminders and they send them to you a few days ahead and also a couple of hours ahead and a few minutes ahead so it’s a bit overkill but uh certainly efficient and another cool feature of them having a digital platform is that they offer digital group sessions and webinar type of sessions that are available to any person who utilizes betterhelp entirely totally free it’s at no additional cost to what you already spend for your weekly sessions with your therapist now that being said in my viewpoint the app and the platform is not great in fact it type of draws particularly considering that better help in and of itself is a tool the item that they’re offering is this video platform that therapists can utilize to connect you to their network i suggest i guess they’re selling the network however i believe really what they’re selling is the tool and it’s not a very good one it’s pretty clunky there are no alternatives for screen sharing Thomas Mattison Betterhelp

or talking or messaging throughout a session photos are shared extremely strangely they’re shared as files and you can only send them individually so you can’t like drag and drop into a window or something you have to like browse choose the picture then put it in and then the individual can’t see a preview of the photo they need to click into the file to see it it’s simply very out-of-date small things like when you press enter in the chat window your messages do not send it really develops a line break so

Talking Thomas Mattison Betterhelp…better help is one solution as our other online companies I was pointing out earlier that there are things that I personally believe that online treatment is better suited for or offline therapy is better suited for and I’ve really I’ve in fact discussed this in other settings since it is something I feel pretty enthusiastic about and I need to say that my opinion has actually been popular by companies like better help in terms of hopefully how they how they deal with individuals that provide for care so I simply wanted to spend a couple of minutes discussing my own is my own personal viewpoint about the important things that are most suitable for online versus offline therapy so in my view I see online therapy as a terrific location for individuals who are struggling with hard life shifts for circumstances where they’re experiencing more tension than regular for circumstances where you know they have a very well-defined concern with anxiety or social anxiety and a treatment like cognitive behavior modification which is really structured can can benefit them and that treatment due to the fact that it’s not as interpersonal as others is best for online counseling since it involves a lot of homework it involves worksheets it includes learning particular skills and strategies so mild milder conditions like moderate stress and anxiety mild depression modification disorders even PTSD as long as like the person has actually gotten care at first elsewhere these are all things that can be resolved through online therapy you know think about somebody who has a agoraphobia and possibly they reach out to a therapist from their home since they can’t leave their home and simply simply to clarify agoraphobia is a disorder where people are truly horrified of being trapped and trapped in a place where they might have a panic attack therefore basically they start to restrict their activities and restrict their activities until a lot of them can’t leave their home without truly feeling substantial distress so if someone like that is at house and they can connect through their computer and connect to a counselor that’s a fantastic initial step is that going to cure them never because agoraphobia to be successfully treated needs that individual to be able to go outdoors and to resume normal activities and often that involves a therapist going to their house to help them with that process certainly online counselors are going to be able to do that but could they be the bridge that got that individual who hesitates to leave their house from that initial supportive method to counseling where they can actually have a better life 100% and this is what the space that better help intends to fill with their services my point to this to this specific video and bringing these things

up is that I I wish to clearly communicate that anything that I show you is going to be totally from where I stand as a professional psychologist and more notably what I think is as just a human being on this earth attempting to do the very best that I can therefore I I will not tell you that something is appropriate that I don’t believe is appropriate I won’t show you that online counseling is the cure-all for whatever since I don’t believe that

Thomas Mattison Betterhelp

and so you can always expect to hear my truthful opinion on what I believe from my own experience and knowledge base as a certified psychologist I hope you discovered this video fascinating and helpful if you did please like it listed below and do not hesitate to sign up for our YouTube channel where we’re going to be producing increasingly more videos on a range of different psychological health topics and please connect if there’s something specific you would like us to cover or resolve in an upcoming video