Online Therapy

When it is not possible to come to the office for your therapy session…

online appointments are available as an adjunct to in-person therapy.

Though occasional use of telehealth sessions prevents your therapy from discontinuing, in-office therapy provides you, as a client, with so much more.

Drawbacks of telehealth include:

Awkward timing: delays in wifi and technology create un-intended interruptions and un-intended silences that are longer for one person than another, obstructing the sense of a shared experience. When people inevitably speak over each other, due to slight time delays, it is impossible to hear each other whereas speaking at the same time in the same room has a very different effect, as all other senses (smell, temperature, other sounds, lighting, etc) are shared.
Understanding one another is more difficult without full body context.
Loss of the transition time provided by the commute to the office, and the emotional and mental preparation that happens as you walk from your car to the office and prepare for the session in the waiting room.
Therapy feels more valuable when it is in a special room that you are only ever in for the purpose of healing, growth, and change. This is quite different from doing therapy on your phone in your car, or on your laptop in your bed.
Couples and Family Therapy make use of structural components such as where people sit, if and how they touch one another, and how close physical interactions are. Without physical interactions, sessions with more than one client have much less opportunity for efficacy.
A study in October 2023, Zoom Conversations vs In-Person: Brain Activity Tells a Different Tale, showed a significant disparity in neural activity during face-to-face conversations compared to Zoom interactions. Researchers observed suppressed neural signals during online exchanges, while in-person discussions showed heightened brain activity with more coordinated neural responses between participants.

For these reasons and more, in-office therapy is the preferred modality for Gates Therapy clients. If your preference is telehealth for the majority of your sessions, there are many providers who work exclusively this way. TherapyDen.com is an excellent therapist search engine that can assist you in finding a provider who is a good fit.

In order to get the most value out of your online sessions, please read the following.

I encourage you to:

find a place to meet online for our session that has high speed wifi, privacy, good lighting and a comfortable place for you to sit
silence all alarms and notifications
take notes during our session
spend 3-5 minutes before and after our session to get settled, take a few breaths and think about what you’d like to have happen in the session or takeaway from it.

I discourage:

•eating •alcohol •driving •interruptions

Instructions for Online Therapy set-up:

When you schedule your appointment, you’ll receive the invitation to “Join video call” using meet.google.com. If you’ve never used google meet before, go ahead and click on that link. You will be prompted to download the google meet app.

At the time of your appointment, click on the link to join the meeting with your therapist. Sessions are 50 minutes.

Feel free to call or text with any questions or concerns. 512.814.6580

By scheduling an online therapy session, you agree to the following Informed Consent.

I acknowledge that marriage and family therapy is licensed by state. I understand that if either my therapist or I are not in a state in which my therapist is licensed, we will be working together under Kathryn’s national ACE Health Coach certification. I understand that if a problem arises in an online or phone session, during which either she or I am not in a state in which she is licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I will not receive support from a state licensing board, in the event that I’d like to register a complaint against my therapist.

Due to the nature of internet use, confidentiality is less guaranteed than when meeting in person. My therapist’s priority is to keep all of our interactions private. If third parties access information about me, I will not hold my therapist responsible. Internet hacking or other illegal activities sometimes occur with online communication. I understand that Skype instant message conversations are encrypted with strong encryption algorithms. Skype assures conversations to be secure and private during transmission.

I am freely giving my consent for treatment without undue influence.

If I have scheduled an online therapy session, the limits of confidentiality have been explained to me. These include: knowledge of harm to a minor or a dependent elder, and may include knowledge of self-harm. These are the only instances in which my therapist will intentionally disclose identified information about me and my treatment without my written consent. I will sign a Release of Confidentiality in the event that I’d like information about me to be shared with another party,

Online Therapy

When it is not possible to come to the office for your therapy session…

online appointments are available as an adjunct to in-person therapy.

Drawbacks of telehealth include:

I encourage you to:

I discourage:

Instructions for Online Therapy set-up:

By scheduling an online therapy session, you agree to the following Informed Consent.

I am freely giving my consent for treatment without undue influence.

Your comfort is of utmost priority, so please communicate openly with your therapist.

for complaints, contact:

Health Professions Council

24-hour report hotline

800-821-3205

Kathryn Gates, LMFT-S