My virtual reality in counselling: digital reading & writing in text-based online-addiction-counselling

Communication technology is moving faster and faster. New communication possibilities arise, which influence the sector of counseling and psychotherapy. Traditional addiction counseling as well as addiction therapy take slowly advantage of this development and enrich their toolboxes with useful new online-tools.

At this workshop we will briefly discuss about the perception of reality (frame-related, subjective), as this is very important in text-based, anonymous online counseling. We will also talk about “writing” (text-based communication). The participants will work with the help of case studies in small groups: First they will exercise in “digital reading” which is a special way to read online-counseling-text. Then they will experiment with some practical and helpful work-concepts for the Online-Counseling process (e.g. so called “4 – transparencies - concept”). At the end of the workshop participants will have in their own tool-kit a useful First-Answer-Guide and they will be sensitized on the peculiarities of digital counseling process. They will also be able to reflect their own behaviour in digital reading and writing.

The target group of the workshop are counselors, therapists and / or supervisors from the addiction field who work online or think about working online in the near future.