There are several reasons to practice psychotherapy online. Giving access to therapy for people who can’t travel, or have few options in their area is one. Long Covid, and protecting health generally is another.
Monday 19th December 2022 was supposed to be the first full day of my fortnight-long Chrismas break. I had been working a great deal and desperately needed some relaxation and had been looking forward to some rest for weeks. It was also the day I tested positive for Covid for the first, and so far, only time, despite having a booster vaccine three months earlier.
I believe I caught Covid from a therapy client. An hour in a tiny therapy room with no ventilation being, after all, near perfect conditions for transmission of any disease, there was a certain inevitability about that. Despite masking for most of the pandemic, I was aware how much masks affected the rapport when the whole face is visible.
I had been looking forward to Christmas with my family but instead spent 12 miserable days alone self-isolating. If that had been all Covid did for me, I would have written off the experience as bad luck and picked myself up.
I tested negative for the first time on New Year’s Eve but the worst, by far, was still to come. Long Covid was waiting to pound me. It was February before I could work. I had such bad brain fog I couldn’t follow the plot of the most formulaic TV drama. I would become mentally drained, unable to read challenging material, unable to express myself in writing. At times I struggled to assemble sentences to speak. I dread to think what damage it did to my brain. I was frightened I would never be myself again, never be able to think deeply, speak fluently or concentrate for extended periods.
At the same time, the fatigue was crushing. In January, a five minute walk was all the exercise I could do for the day. Before Covid I had been a member of a running club but it was late May before I could even think about gently starting to jog again by which time I’d lost every scrap of fitness I had. I quickly learned that if I pushed myself at all a fatigue reaction would set me back and I grew frustrated and despondent at how I struggled to improve. It was only nine months after Covid that I began to make slow progress after going back to absolute basics and only increasing effort up at what felt like a ridiculously small increments.
Inevitably, I gained back a lot of the weight that I’d managed to lose the year before. I then discovered another impact of Covid – my metabolism was shot to pieces and the diet that had worked the year before no longer did.
Now, a year on, I’ve essentially recovered my health but only after making it a top priority with all the restraint and focus that demanded. My energy levels are still below what they were and my weight is still higher. I haven’t been back to the running club but hope to do so soon. Yet I know I’m one of the lucky ones. Many people describe being more frequently sick, and sickness lasting longer. We all need to do what we can for protecting health.
With antibodies from infection or vaccination lasting only a few months, as I understand it, I can’t rule out that a subsequent infection will be as bad, or even worse than the first one. The risk is too high.
Luckily, in my professional life I have been working online as a homeworker continuously for almost twenty years and it is, for me, an absolutely natural way of interacting. So although I would love to be able to counsel in person, and look forward to the day – after sterilising vaccines are available – to do so again, for now I’ve reluctantly decided that online is the best way to safeguard both my clients’ health and my own.
