ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic brought two fundamental shifts to psychotherapy: online therapy and shared trauma. In many cases, both the client and therapist were simultaneously discerning how online therapy worked and how to live through the same catastrophe. This chapter argues that feminist theory, shared resilience, trauma-informed care and accompaniment are useful in understanding how and why relational approaches meet the needs of the therapist and client during complex and uncertain times, and how these concepts informed the transition from on-ground therapy to telemental health. This chapter uses sample dialogue and case analysis to illustrate how the therapist managed her own pandemic-inspired anxiety while responding to her clients’ childhood sexual and physical abuse, job loss, posttraumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression and neurodiversity. The chapter concludes with implications for social work, including honoring human relationships over existing treatment plans, seeing clients as equal partners and recognizing the therapeutic value of self-disclosure during times of shared trauma.
Keywords: Feminist Theory, Shared Resilience, Trauma-Informed Care, Telemental Health, Case Analysis, Individual Psychotherapy, Terror Management Theory, Attachment Theory
