How Virtual Therapy Saved Me

When I first became a therapist, my dream was a beautiful office where I could walk with people through some of their hardest moments. I built one eventually, and for years I spent long days seeing clients in person, sitting across from them in that space I'd worked so hard to create. Then COVID hit, and overnight everything changed. I was seeing clients from my home, through a screen, with no idea what that would mean for the work.

I Doubted Virtual Therapy

I assumed clients wouldn't want it and they would leave, but the opposite happened. My practice kept growing, and in the middle of that, I found a turn in my own healing I never expected.

About five years ago, my mentor Bonnie Badenoch, whom I write about in SAFE, referred me to a therapist named Jo. I’d been in therapy before, but this time felt different. We met every week for an hour and a half. I had to commit to showing up in a way I hadn’t before, which brought an unfolding that took me by surprise.

Through my time with Jo, I regressed, met younger parts of myself still carrying pain, and became vulnerable in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. Some of our sessions left me in tears, while others left me feeling stuck. There were sessions that changed how I experienced myself and my closest relationships. At one point, I asked my mentor how this could be happening so deeply through a screen. 

The Science Behind Feeling Seen Through a Screen

When I asked Bonnie, she reminded me how relational our brains are. Mirror neurons, our nervous systems, and the wiring behind human connection don’t switch off because we’re on Zoom. You can still feel seen, understood, and connected, screen or no screen. In some ways, virtual therapy gave me the greatest gift of the whole process.

I could fall apart on my own couch instead of pulling myself together for the drive home. I could wrap myself in a blanket, make a cup of tea, journal, rest, or just let my nervous system settle at its own pace. There was something incredibly healing about processing everything in the safety of my own home.

Why Attachment Wounds Heal In Relationship

I’m proud of the two books I’ve written, but I’m most proud that I kept showing up for my own work. Healing attachment wounds isn’t something we can think our way through. We heal inside safe relationships and within spaces where we feel safe enough to be truly honest with ourselves. 

Healing takes someone who can attune to you without judgment and knows how to help you gently access the memories and experiences that your body is still holding onto. There’s value in bringing a professional in who can stay present when the younger parts of you finally feel safe enough to come forward. Many of us never got that kind of attunement growing up.

When you begin experiencing consistent co-regulation and compassion from another person, your nervous system slowly starts to trust that it’s safe. Old defenses you’ve relied on for years can soften, and the memories you’ve carried alone finally have somewhere to go.

The freedom, capacity, and internal space that comes from this work are hard to put into words. It changed my life. About a month ago, my therapist retired. I’ve started working with someone new, but the deepest healing happened during those years of consistently showing up each week.

I feel incredibly grateful to study the science of attachment healing. And even more grateful to have lived it myself, with much of that journey through a screen, from the comfort and safety of my own home.

Noticing What You Need

Reading this, you might recognize a version of the doubt I also had: whether healing can really happen from a distance, or whether you’ve been holding pain alone for longer than you realized. 

Ask yourself what it would take to consistently let someone else in. That question alone can start to change things. Spend some time bringing awareness to the moments that are begging to be witnessed or feel too heavy to bring to light. Those can be the very places where you can start to find freedom, like I felt, for the very first time.

If you’re ready for this type of work, reach out and share a little about what’s been coming up for you to see if we’re a good fit. I’ve dedicated my life to this work, and I would love to accompany you on a similar healing journey that I’ve had the privilege of experiencing myself.