How does it work? Betterhelp/Michael…
After filling in a survey to establish what specific flavour of psychological you are, you’re paired with a counsellor, who you can mercilessly switch for a various one at any time. (I got Dr. Laura Dabney, from Virginia). You then kick off an immediate messaged therapy session that both you and your counsellor can drop in and out of, and which could, in theory, go on and on up until one of you eventually passed away.
What does it cost?
You get a complimentary seven-day trial – much like a free Netflix or Amazon Prime trial, other than with method more concerns about what your childhood resembled. After that, it costs from �,� 24.50 a week for limitless message-based counselling and one ‘free’ phone session with your counsellor each month. Yeah, I do not get how it’s free either, but whatever.
How much is BetterHelp monthly?
Filtering that through immediate messaging might be useful if you find the idea of baring your soul to a stranger a bit awks. You won’t get the very same connection just like in person counselling, but the semi-anonymity might make it easier to open up if you have actually been consuming two bottles of rum and dancing around in your dead nan’s wedding dress every night.
She initially established the scale of my anxiety, what activates it– social situations, fulfilling people for the first time– and after that dived headlong into my fractious youth (separated parents, stretched familial relationships, bullied in junior school). She was quite nosey tbh, but then that’s her task, isn’t it?
Overall, the service is impressively slick. The conversation can be a little stop-starty at times, but it was in fact a far smoother and more on-tap experience than I anticipated. I even got quick reactions to messages over the weekend, which was unforeseen.
Talkspace vs Betterhelp
The fact you can edit messages before sending them implies you’re unlikely to blurt out something unguarded and revealing in the heat of the minute. Profound moments of realisation might be hard to come by if you can’t get an unwinded flow going.
Who do I think it might it benefit?
Anybody with a low-end psychological health concern who’s cool with getting counselled in a really internet-y, 2016-y way. If you’re living under the blackest, bleakest cloud imaginable and need major attention (and potentially some medications), probably isn’t for you Betterhelp/Michael