The goal of my work is to empower you to have the life you truly want and deserve.

I'm proud to be in the vanguard of professionals helping people via chat, email and video conferencing in this new medium, online therapy, sometimes called e-therapy, and online life coaching. Here are some of the questions that people most frequently ask:

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• What is the difference between Psychotherapy and Life Coaching?
• What is Online Therapy?
• Are Online Therapy and face-to-face therapy the same?
• Is Online Therapy for me?
• Technical criteria for Online Therapy
• Convenience of Online Therapy
• Emotional Reasons for Online Therapy
• Issues that indicate online therapy may not be a good choice
• How do I know what kind of Online Therapy will work for me?
• How long does Online Therapy take?
• Is Online Therapy private and confidential?
• Can I remain anonymous and still do Online Therapy?
• Are you the therapist for me?
• Where do we meet?
• Can we work together by email?
• How do I book a session?
• What are your fees?
• How do I pay?
• Why do I have to pay?
• Do you accept insurance?
• Why work with a professional?
• How do I know that you are a real therapist?

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Online Therapy is a conversation between you and a professional psychotherapist, either via phone, email, live chat. In addition, some online therapists use videophone or internet phone, both of which are available through my Online Office.

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No, they are not, but it is difficult to make comparisons between the two. For some life problems or people, there is no substitute for face-to-face therapy. If you seek out an online therapist, you may be referred to someone local for face to face meetings instead. However, for many people in a variety of situations, Online Therapy can be an effective form of psychotherapy. I've outlined some of these below:

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If you are thinking about going into therapy because you are lonely, unhappy, mildly to moderately depressed or anxious, seeking personal growth, wanting help with life choices, relationships, family issues, addictions, or creativity, or in need of support and understanding, then online therapy might be for you.

For some life problems or people, there is no substitute for face-to-face therapy. If you seek out an online therapist, you may be referred to someone local for face to face meetings instead. However, for many people in a variety of situations, Online Therapy can be an effective form of psychotherapy. I've outlined some of these below:

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• You are comfortable on the Internet -- use email and chat regularly or want to increase your time online
• You use the keyboard well enough to express your thoughts fast enough for you -- spelling is less important, or you have voice activation software, so you can transmit without typing
• You are comfortable reading and like expressing yourself through the written word
• Have adequate connectivity to the internet, and recognize and accept that the internet still has issues that occasionally cause loss of connection, sometimes at the most inconvenient of moments.

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• You have difficulty leaving your home due to disability, care giving responsibilities, or some other reason
• You live in an area where there are few or no licensed or certified helping professionals such as psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers available to do psychotherapy
• You live in a community or work in a field in which it may be important not to reveal that you are in therapy or the issues that you need to talk about
• You are too busy to spend time commuting to a therapist's office
• Your schedule varies from week to week so that you need scheduling flexibility in order to commit to therapy
• You are deaf or hard-of-hearing and typing with your therapist is the most direct method for getting therapy
• You are blind or have low vision and face-to-face contact with a therapist is not important to you
• You are uncomfortable around people, but think you might be able to open up in a private chat room with a caring therapist
• You are in the military and want safe and confidential access to support with stresses and family issues
• You and your spouse or partner want to work as a couple on your marriage or relationship, but you are currently located in different communities, states, or countries

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• You might be uncomfortable talking about some issues, like your body, your sexuality or talking about deeply disturbing issues like having been sexually abused. In your own home you may feel more comfortable facing these issues directly, especially if you've avoided dealing with them in face to face psychotherapy in the past.
• Maybe you know how helpful online supportive chats can be for people with similar issues and are most comfortable in this format, but now want more individual attention.
• You might feel out of sync with your personhood and your body because of a facial or body disfigurement. Social stigmas attached to physical differences may feel like an impediment. Maybe you have found a degree of freedom to be yourself through the internet that you aren't able to duplicate in face to face interactions with others. Scars, weight gain, even stuttering can cause people to shy away from getting help because of bias they pick up from others. These and other folks wary of face-to-face contact feel less embarrassed and encumbered when they pursue online therapy.
• You live in a community or work in a field in which it may be important not to reveal that you are in therapy or the issues that you need to talk about

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• Problems expressing yourself: People who may not find Online Therapy helpful are people for whom written expression is challenging.
• Difficulty reading: People with dyslexia sometimes misread and can misunderstand what is being written to them. Sometimes it takes a while via email or in live chat to clarify misunderstandings that could be quickly cleared up in a face-to-face session. This is one of the pitfalls of text conversations.
• Trusting others or feeling unsafe: If you have big trust or safety issues, some people find it is harder to develop a trusting therapeutic relationship with an online therapist, while other people find it easier. And, because trust is required in a good working relationship between a client and therapist, it means that it is also more challenging to be effective as a therapist. Not impossible, just more challenging.
• Technology Problems: Just as cars can break down causing missed appointments, technological snafus happen in on-line therapy as well. You can lose your modem, a dial tone, or the server can go down. When it is your therapist's network that fails, it can sometimes feel like you have been abandoned, even if the therapist had nothing to do with the problem! Technological problems can cause your therapist to be absent from the chat room at the appointed time, or not respond to an urgent email, when you were relying on them at that moment for a comforting word, reassurance or support.

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For anybody considering online therapy, an ability or willingness to talk fairly openly about yourself is a prerequisite for entering therapy.

Live Chat

If you are somebody who is at home on the internet, likes to write and can type fairly fast and/or are comfortable expressing yourself through the written word, then live chat may work well for you.

Email Online Therapy, Telephone, Video Conferencing

If you tend to be a slow typist, then email Online Therapy may work better for you as it allows you to put down your thoughts at your own pace. Live chat may provide more of a challenge to people who type slowly, particularly as live chats are time limited. If this is your situation, you may be better off looking for an online therapist who uses video conferencing or internet phone.

Since therapists in face-to-face therapy rely heavily on visual cues from a patient (body language, tone of voice, etc.), people working with online therapists often find themselves having to be a little more verbally revealing as the therapist is not in a position to access clues through normal channels. If you tend to be more comfortable expressing yourself in gestures, video conferencing may be a better fit.

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Like face to face therapy, how long online counseling or therapy lasts depends on your issues and your willingness to work on them. I do not offer "advice" or a quick solution to your problem. My job is to empower you to make life decisions that are right for you and to give you some tools for doing so. What often happens is that we meet a few times so that you can see whether you feel comfortable working online and how you like working with me. If it seems like a good fit, I’ll encourage you to "contract" with me, i.e. make a commitment, for a period of time that feels comfortable for you. At the end of that time, we will evaluate our progress, and you will decide if you want to continue.

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Yes, Online Therapy is private and confidential. As your therapist, I am bound by professional ethics to consider the confidentiality of our work a sacred trust, just as I would in office practice. While nothing on the Internet is hacker proof, the secure and private chat rooms in my Virtual Office should protect us from intrusion in all reasonable circumstances. If we meet in the live person chat room, no more than two people (you and I) can enter the room at any time. The chat room is set up so that everything we say when we're in it is deleted when you leave the site. Records are kept only in secure archives. If you choose to keep your own record of a session, you may do so by printing or copying and pasting the text immediately after the session. The private chat room, which is protected by individual passwords and an access log, is also used for groups and trainings, but you may request an individual session there. No one else will be allowed to enter the room while we are having our individual session. If you choose, you may log your session by cutting and pasting or printing the text when it ends. No transcript is stored on any server or computer.

The confidentiality of electronic and printed records created and maintained by you is your sole responsibility. Here are some things you should consider for your own records:

• Don't use a work computer to store your email therapy conversations or transcripts from your live chat sessions.
• Take extra care to address emails when writing to your online therapist. Always double check the email address before hitting Send.
• Safeguard the password for your Online Therapy email and chat room.
• Do not allow other people access to your personal computer if you have therapy transcripts.
• Make sure that any hard copies of your therapy sessions, either email or transcripts from live chat, are stored in a secure place.
• NEVER send credit card or payment information via regular email. Unless you are using an encrypted email messaging system (which is used in my virtual office), your personal information is not safe.
• If you decide to have one or more sessions with me, you will be asked to read and agree to a statement on Informed Consent, as well as other forms.

NOTE: The only exceptions to any psychotherapist's confidentiality rules are situations in which you indicate that you either plan to kill yourself or hurt and/or harm somebody else. In these situations, as a mandated reporter, therapists are required to notify the appropriate authorities. Online Therapy is no different.

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While some online therapists do work with anonymous clients, most do not. For several reasons, I do not work anonymously, except for an initial consultation to see if we are a match and if you are interested in continuing to work with me.

Also, I want to make sure you also have ways to contact me by telephone as well as through internet service and be prepared to provide me with this information as well. It is important to have alternative ways of reaching each other in case your internet service is offline and vice versa.

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A therapeutic relationship differs from other relationships in that we are both there to focus on your needs: you never have to take turns or worry about my feelings. I have worked with clients on the Internet by chat and email. Like any close relationship, the therapeutic relationship works through a combination of good fit, luck, and lots of hard work. Your personal match with a therapist is as important as the therapist’s clinical skills. The only way to know if a therapist (including me) is a match for you is to try a session or two before making any commitment to additional sessions.

In addition, I have a lot of experience in a number of different fields. I've been a clinician and master therapist, program director and a businessman and bring a wide array of experience, skills and understandings to help you. I love working with people and I am very much interested in empowering and supporting you to achieve the life you want and deserve. I can help you improve your ability to have good relationships, both by looking with you at your personal history and working through some of the issues that might arise in our interactions in treatment. I can support you through transitions and stuck points in the workplace. If you are a business person, I can help you solve perplexing problems in your company. If any of this clicks for you, I would love to see if I am a match for you.

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We meet in my Virtual Office which is hosted by www.mytherapynet.com. This ia an independent organization that provides ultra secure online virtual office space specifically designed for therapists and coaches. MyTherapyNet takes your well-being very seriously. To ensure that you receive the highest quality of mental health care available, they provide therapists and coaches with specialized tools and functionality specifically built for use with Online Therapy. MyTherapyNet employs advanced security protocols and complies with HIPAA regulation requirements for the electronic transfer of patient information.

No one at MyTherapyNet is able to see or read any of our communications with each other. No record of our Online Therapy work together is kept on the servier at MyTherapyNet, so any medical records are as secure as those in a physical office. All email exchanged via my Virtual Office is encrypted and secure, so this is the safest way for us to communicate by email.

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You may email me without charge by logging into my virtual office and sending me a message or emailing me at drpaulmalone@drpaulmalone.com to schedule or reschedule a session, for more information about my services, or briefly with concerns that come up between sessions.

You may also engage in online therapy or coaching via email at my usual fees of $2.00 per minute of my time involvement. Chat and email are both effective ways of getting professional help, so choose the one that feels most comfortable for you, or both.

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