Earlier this year, I became so mired in personal crisis I couldn't see any way out. I struggled against depression and desperation and barely managed to produce columns, much less keep up with my day job or my book.
My distress peaked one night and I found myself frantically searching the web for some kind of drop-in crisis counseling chat. I wasn't suicidal, so I didn't want to call a suicide hotline and tie up a volunteer who could be helping someone on the verge of ultimate despair. Yet I felt I would implode if I didn't immediately talk to someone neutral and anonymous.
You know how you can be ensnared by inertia? I'm not sure why I didn't call a counselor during regular business hours; it wasn't as if the trouble happened only that one night, without warning. Yet there I was, staring at Samaritans, a U.K. site, wondering if they would talk to me if I used Skype and pretended I was in England -- and still not clicking the number.
If you're a regular Sex Drive reader, you know I'm not shy (although I'll admit this is not the easiest lede I've ever written). And you've probably figured out that I see strength in reaching for connection and help in painful times.
So how the hell did I end up suddenly needing therapy at 2:00 a.m., when none of the "therapist online: chat now!" sites had any therapists online?
The same way anyone does. The wee hours are when we are too tired to filter ourselves, when we are most vulnerable to dropping our shields and exposing our rawest truths -- which so often, and I dare you to prove otherwise, revolve around love and sex.
Go back to your IM logs and you'll see that after midnight is when conversations with online lovers take on greater meaning and depth than outsiders can imagine. That's when you start planning to meet in person.
When members of an adult chat room are up past their bedtime, the text is ripe with passion, drama and revelation. It's a combination of the late hour and the act of writing, which taps into the part of our souls that keeps diaries and pours our heart out on the page.
If connecting online feels natural and right to you, the internet is a natural place to seek therapy. You're already accustomed to peer support through online interaction; why wouldn't you reach for a professional in the same way?
I called Susan Mankita, LCSW, a social work consultant and educator in Miami, Florida, to ask how online sex therapy fits within the counseling profession as a whole.
Mankita has been training mental-health professionals about online practice since 1995; she developed and moderated the AOL Social Work Forum for 10 years. She's seen the technology evolve, and the practice right along with it.
"(Online counseling) teaches clients to be aware of what's coming out of their mouths, what they're feeling and thinking, their wholeness and whole bodies," Mankita said. "It's an exciting and empowering thing that we haven't done in the past (in person) the way we can with text. Text is really powerful."
Online therapy is particularly suited to sex and relationship work, especially for clients who crave a layer of anonymity we can't get by going through our insurance companies or driving to an office. And clients can seek matches based on compatibility rather than proximity.
If talking about sex or admitting your faults as a partner embarrasses you, working with an online therapist can make you more comfortable expressing yourself.
Some therapists fret that text doesn't permit nuance. Public perception still insists that only freaks and losers would seek connection with a computer. A 2004 Washington Post article highlighted concerns about e-therapy.
But by its very nature, e-therapy forces us to acknowledge and express our true feelings if we want to get anything out of it. There is no audience to perform for; just you, your honesty, and a diary that writes back.
You have to cop to your feelings -- which can contradict what you want to present. In person, you can hope the therapist tunes in to your body language, providing a bridge between feeling an emotion and expressing it.
"One thing therapists learn in school first off is that when assessing a client, you balance what they say against what you see," says Mankita. "At the very beginning, it was incredibly hard to get used to (relying on clients to report their own emotions). But online therapists have found really interesting ways of getting people to be responsible."
In text, you not only have to pay attention to your emotions, you have to recognize them and express them yourself.
That means including notes like "I just welled up with tears" or "suddenly furious." Emoticons also have an important role in adding "tone," Mankita said, and both parties must work hard to lay groundwork and establish communication protocols.
As usual, the strengths of the medium are also its weakness. Everything online can be recorded and republished. An ethical sex therapist will keep everything confidential and protected, but an ethical sex therapist is not always an expert on encryption and network security.
Ultimately, I didn't call a crisis line because I didn't want to talk, I wanted to write. Like many netizens who take to chat like Labrador retrievers to tennis balls, I didn't think I would be able to go deep enough verbally.
So I wrote e-mail, including emotions, raw and fast, without editing thoughts or words on the page, and sent it to a couple of friends without letting myself revise or polish.
It was unbelievably difficult to show that naked text to anyone. Not only did it reveal where I was sad, angry and afraid; it exposed that I had been selfish and had lied to myself. Not going back through to soften it and present myself as more pulled together than I was took enormous effort and felt like a tremendous risk.
But afterwards? The peer support and conversations that resulted were rope ladders out of the pit. That would not have happened had I not written to them as if to a counselor, not friends.
Having professional sex therapists, sex educators and sex partners available at the touch of our fingers -- if we are willing to make the efforts to enter a virtual mind meld -- seems to me an excellent opportunity to promote healthy sex and relationships of all kinds.
See you next Friday,
Regina Lynn
Regina Lynn is blessed with amazing friends. Thanks, gang.
