Overcoming the absence of tone and non-verbal elements of communication in text-based cybercounselling.

Understanding is critical to productive interactions, good communication and therapeutic change. Clients may understand the meanings of words a professional uses but not what the professional intends. If both the client and the professional simply assume that the other will understand their intention because the words are understood, the meanings of the words may come into dispute. This, in turn, leads to failed communication and negative therapeutic outcomes. To counter this, we have developed and used the Presence Techniques in text-based cybercounselling for more than a decade. This paper describes these online counselling techniques and explores their use and effectiveness.