OCTIA Bristol 2012

This time last Saturday I was just heading off to Bristol for the 4th annual conference for OCTIA - for counsellors and psychotherapists who work online from all over the world. The subject this year was The Power of Words and Imagery in Practice.

Having had an interesting time trying to find the conference centre at The Watershed in Bristol (and managing to miss seeing a 200 ft superyacht in the harbour - even though I asked it's security guards for directions) I arrived late - but not too late to hear what Amanda Hawkins, current chair of the BACP, had to say about the increasing interest and acceptability of counselling online and it's recognition by the professional bodies. Amanda also did online training with OLT and so has insight now into the value and effectiveness of working online and how it opens doors to counselling for people who would otherwise miss out - increasing equality. This includes a move towards specialist accreditation for counsellors who work purely online and also creating divisions within BACP for different specialist areas to bring the BACP in line with other professional bodies like the BPS.

She was followed by Susanne Irving who showed images and used words we all use in everyday life but had not necessarily connected to her specialist area of gambling addiction in her role as a counsellor for the online service GAMCARE. She raised the issues behind the hidden addiction of problem gambling, looking at the ways metaphor and images can help those with the problem appreciate that they do have an addiction, the impact of the gambling on themselves and family and recognising their uses of gambling and the triggers behind their habit - helping them to make sense of their role. A particularly poingnant image of a volcano - and the release a client felt when gambling was then seen by that person as a waterfall, a much calmer image, when they chose to invert it - a turning point also in their therapy.

Lunch was followed by Kate Anthony and Jack Barton. They discussed the work of Professor Julian Leff et al and the use of Avatar therapy with schizophrenia. Kate is a leading expert in the use of technology in therapy and a fellow of the BACP and ISMHO. Using Second Life as an example, they demonstrated how the aural hallucinations of Schizophrenia can be turned into an avatar with a morphed voice. Given this persona and dialogue, it allows the sufferer to take control of the voices - over time reducing the frequency and severity and bringing acceptance that the voices are from an internal self-generated source as opposed to and external threat. They showed some extremely powerful images of the avatars built by clients of their hallucinations, real or imagined abusers. This is still in the research stage but The Online Therapy Institute will be doing 40 week training programmes in Avatar Therapy as she believes, and convinced us, may be a huge part of the future of Online Therapy.

Kate Dunn then talked about Online Text Based Therapy - Is it only words? This was a lady who really spoke my language with asynchronous connections in therapy working through the process of metaphor and imagery in mentalisation and neuroscience. There were opportunities here for trying out different attachment styles in the safe confines of asynchronous therapy - working purely with words and images. The 'silent suffering' (Moira Walker) are given the opportunity to speak - forming words on a page, on the screen but not yet in anyone's mind - and I was reminded strongly of my work with Asperger's Syndrome and Autism for which online therapy can be very effective. The time and transitional space offer opportunities for illustrating thoughts and sharing a developing metaphor. The explanation for the power of this type of work is shown in the verbal and pre verbal memory storage in the right hemisphere - implicit working and functioning. The link, therefore, is the childhood development of the right hemisphere where memories are stored and attachment types developed. Something I will certainly now be reading much more about.

Finally, Steph Palin, a leading sexual therapy consultant with Relate demonstrated very powerfully the effects of photographs and images online. She showed how different people read different things into the same image and demonstrated how a life can be relived and seen differently through family photographs. One unhappy client following this work recalled just how happy much of a forgotten childhood had been. Images help the formation of connections, identity, show transitions and memory lends a feeling of control.

All in all a fascinating day. Unfortunately due to lack of commitment from potential attendees up front, and so an inability to meet the cost demands, meant that this year's conference was not able to be followed online. However, the multi talented Mieke Haveman (who had only had to travel from The Netherlands for the conference (!) ) acted as sound and video technician and recorded the whole thing for prosperity - the video of which will shortly be available for all who attended or who missed it to buy and enjoy

- contact OCTIA at http://www.octia.org.uk/about-octia.html or OLT at onlinetrainingforcounsellors.co.uk.