Ask HN: Email Therapy

[stigz]

Hi,

I'm depressed and judging by posts as of late (see below), chances are, so are you.

I go to talk therapy and it's okay. Some sessions have been life saving. But the vast majority of my sessions frankly are a waste of time. The biggest waste of time - I feel - is frequently having to re-explain things. I wish I could go all "omg rtfm" to my therapist, but that's not an option - being the nature of talk therapy and all.

Have any of you considered Email Therapy[1]? The idea being you don't communicate with your therapist via spoken word (in person, phone call, zoom, etc.). Rather you communicate via written word (email, text, slack, or go full A. Ham with a written letter).

I see very little mention of it on HN over the years [2]. Therefore, I feel like it's not a well known thing in the community. And shit, I'm right there with you, I have been going to talk therapy for 20 years and today is the first day I heard of Email Therapy.

I'm going to give it a try. I'm thinking I'll ask my current therapist if they would like to convert to this form. Otherwise, I'll be looking for therapists that do offer such a service.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_counseling [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=email%20therapy&sort=byPopularity&type=story

The posts as of late. I wish you all strength.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30668506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30923701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30862058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31039849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30132560

[groffee]

If your therapist isn't listening to you - and you're paying them - it's time to kick them out the door, especially if you've been at it for 20 years.

There has to be AI therapy bots? If you send an email, the bot can parse it, and give you responses. Privacy would be a consideration, but it would be cheaper, you might even be able to roll your own.

First Google result: https://www.aimblog.io/2021/03/02/these-chatbots-are-helping...

[LanternLight83]

I'd be thrilled to find something like this that's self-hostable, even if you gotta use their app and the updates are binary blobs or w/e-- anything that I can run offline, but I think that's a looong ways off.

[leobg]

Just take a walk and dictate into your phone. Use an App like Ada Dictation where the phone actually records your voice, but also does transcription in parallel. That way, you do not get interrupted by errors as you would if you dictated using Siri. But you also have a transcript on the screen, so if you lose your train of thought, you just take one glance at the screen. And, of course, you can store the results on your phone or in Evernote for later review.

Personally, I found that 90% of therapy/having somebody to talk to is being able to get stuff out, and, while doing so, sorting through it. Real therapists can be a hindrance in that regard, because they will interrupt you, not understand things, take you off track with their own thoughts, etc.. Plus, there’s always the clock ticking.

Also, it’s not necessarily one way or the other. You can easily do five or so sessions by yourself with your phone. And then, when you have gained a clearer picture of what it is you’re actually struggling with, then you might take one session and talk to an actual human. And then, when you do it, you’re not going to waste the time by using speech to sort through your own thoughts. Instead, you will be able to use speech to communicate the things that you already have understood, as well as the questions that you have.

[ksaj]

You might be interested in an AI psychotherapy session.

The old Eliza programs attempted to recreate Rogerian psychotherapy. I can imagine it sorta kinda being useful, but it was old tech and not all that great. There were a lot of obvious flaws, but some people really liked it.

But now we have AGP which is considerably better, and can emulate speaking/writing styles much more accurately and conversationally. So Eliza done that way might be quite good.

There are a few examples, but this one you might find interesting in that vein: https://join.kokocares.org/koko-referral?source=website

[spindle]

I'm considered this but haven't tried it. Sorry to say this, but I think the problem with having to re-explain things is unavoidable unless you're rich, because you have to pay for your therapist's time, and that includes re-reading emails. I believe (I hope I'm wrong) that therapists who use email will not spend much time re-reading anything.

[helph67]

If you search for "face to face communication" you will get plenty of results pointing out the importance of such communication. A major problem with the modern use of social media is the lack of that component. With face to face you and any other parties are able to detect very much more information which is not available with text transmissions. Email therapy is not the answer. I'm not a health professional but suggest you exercise regularly, particularly walking in green parks. If you get yourself a dog you might both end up with a new friend!

[vgel]

Honestly if you're spending lots of time repeating things to your therapist, I think you need a better therapist, and/or a better therapy modality.

Talk therapy is pretty bad in this respect, IMO. I had the most success in Dialectical Behavior Therapy, where I very rarely had to rehash stuff with my therapist-- partly because she took good notes (and recorded our sessions!), but also because we were talking about new stuff every week, new concrete skills for dealing with situations, not rehashing the same feelings over and over like talk therapy (in my experience).